Hey B2B marketers, how do you feel when you get a piece of direct mail? Are you engaged in the message? Excited to receive it? Do you think "where has this company been all my life," or do you barely glance at it before it ends up in the recycle bin? Seriously, when was the last time direct mail compelled you to reach out to the company? Before you spend one more dime on direct mail, you should put yourself in your recipient's shoes.

Correctly managing a direct mail campaign is difficult, not to mention expensive. You have to come up with a concept, work with an artist, produce the piece, and then mail it. Then, 30 days later, you need to somehow be able to justify the expense to the boss through some kind of ROI analysis, and trash bins don't provide analytics.

There are definitely some advantages to direct mail, namely:

1. Receipt assurance. There is a high level of confidence that the piece will actually be received by the intended target (though it may not be read!)
2. Personalization. PURL technology can personalize your message and also do a pretty good job of identifying whether that specific person responded to the piece. Ironically, PURLs require a recipient to go to a website to get the information.
3. Highly Targeted. You can build/buy a mailing list of highly targeted prospects so that you know that your message isn't being 'wasted' on non-prospects - the rifle vs. shotgun approach.

But there are also a number of downsides:

1. Direct mail is reactive. By definition, the recipient is getting something they haven't asked for. For direct mail to be effective, your timing has to be perfect and get your message in the hands of your prospect exactly when they are looking for your solution.
2. Direct mail is expensive. Between postage, materials, design, and production, it probably costs over $2.00 per for each direct mail piece. If you're using PURLs, the price is even higher. Just mailing to 1,000 recipients could easily cost $2,500 to $5,000.
3. Lack of measurement. Even with PURLs, direct mail is difficult to measure and track. Without PURLs, it's nearly impossible to know whether the prospect received and understood your message, let alone acted on it.
4. Bad lists. We've all bought lousy lists. In many cases, the recipient is not the right person, even though they are on your target list. They may have changed jobs or responsibilities, or even left the company.
5. Static content. Once your message is printed, there is no modifying it if it's wrong or not working well.
6. Direct mail kills trees. Putting a message on paper that could be conveyed without paper is environmentally irresponsible.

In B2B Magazine's 2011 Outlook survey, 78.5% of respondents said that they were increasing their online budgets, by far the largest increase of any channel. By contrast, 36.6% of respondents were increasing their direct mail spend and 12% were decreasing it.

The increase in online marketing budgets makes perfect sense. What's the first thing that you do when you're looking for something? You Google it. Google's so ubiquitous that it's now a verb. B2B buyers aren't different from you and me, when they go looking for solutions; they start with Google, not the US Postal Service.

B2B marketers who want to get the most out of their campaign must make digital a larger part of their budget. Digital offers year-round actionable intelligence through analytics and reports, dynamic content and incredible targeting opportunities all at the cost of a couple of direct mail pieces.

What do you think? Is your organization embracing digital marketing at the expense of other 'more traditional' marketing channels? Let us know...