The evolution of the Internet and digital platforms might have altered the popularity of print, but it didn’t change the need for it. Print materials are a necessary part of a successful and effective communication strategy and exist in places digital media can’t, giving cross-media campaigns the chance to reach a bigger audience. Print is very much alive and plays a vital part in any marketing effort, and here’s why:

You know direct mail – you receive it, you use it, and it’s more effective than ever. But why? Why in our era of feature-rich, multimedia, permission-based marketing does direct mail still endure? Why do marketers know in their gut that direct mail is irreplaceable? When we sit down and spell it out, the not-so-obvious answers become obvious.

1. Direct mail is proven. Research shows that typical direct mail response rates are between 3 and 5 percent. Though this seems small, it is still a statistically reliable number for expected response rates and it could be very successful depending on the product or service being sold. For instance, a high-ticket item like a $10K window installation may only require one sale to pay for the entire mailing and then some. In this case, even a 0.5 percent response rate could be very profitable. The key is to determine your desired response rate at the onset so that you can calculate the proper investment and expected ROI.

While social media continues to gain headway, continuity, or drip campaigns (email, direct mail or a combination) still remain a highly effective approach for nurturing prospects towards increased engagement and interaction with your brand. When coupled with an online element, such as URLs, PURLs or QR codes, measurement tools offered through marketing resource management (MRM) systems can deliver powerful analytics to optimize the sales cycle – providing a wealth of data to improve customer segmentation and content personalization.