With all the hype today about internet marketing it seems “snail mail” has gone the way of all the earth. Stamps are now 44 Cents for a single letter and the cost of the envelope and inserted material can be an additional 20 to 30 Cents! It’s no wonder so many are turning to Internet Marketing to get the word out. Direct Mail on the other hand may still be an effective tool to market goods and services. According to Wikipedia “The delivery of advertising mail form a large and growing service for many postal services, and direct mail marketing form a significant portion of the direct marketing industry.” It seems either direct marketing is keeping the postal service alive or that the postal service is keeping direct marketing alive.

Recently mailed packets I have received contain multiple ads, coupons and a sales letter promising rewards of up to thousands of dollars by merely mailing a little money to the person whose name appears last on the list. Some even make the claim that it is perfectly legal…wrong! This is a chain letter and is specifically prohibited by law. I suppose one could do this with recipes or love letters, but when it comes to cash or money, turn tail and run! There are other ways to make money legally.

Also in several direct mail offerings, kits or packets of information on “how to” become successful are offered. This idea has been very successful for some and does not violate any laws, especially if the kit is free or requires only the cost of mailing. This is of minimal risk to the recipient and most of these offers allow for a trial period. Frankly, if there were no trial period offered, I would run from this kind of offering also! It is much easier to send a kit back than it is to try to get your money back on a so-called “money back guarantee.” It takes a very organized and detailed business to track and properly reply to direct mail marketing. There are no auto responders, no click tracking and only mechanical automation. The cost of qualified leads far exceeds that of internet-obtained leads and takes much more time to produce.

Web-based business on the other hand could take a lesson from the ma-and-pa businesses using snail mail to drive business to their front door. There are still many people out there without computers or connections to the internet that have money to spend. In spite of marketers creatively filling their mail boxes with “junk mail,” they still enjoy getting mail in their mail box and many of them read it!

In spite of the many consumers without computers, it seems to make more sense today to market to ten thousand prospects for $10 online rather than spending $7,400 for 10,000 mailings. You be the judge.

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