The power of direct mail supersedes digital

In the digital age, it is easy to get wrapped up in new technologies, thinking they’re easy solutions to past marketing troubles. Many professionals rushed to embrace Facebook as the next platform on which they could leverage their promotional messages to the masses. However, those same marketers failed to realize the hiccups that traditionally come with new media services, and Facebook proves not to be any different.

Facebook is relatively new to the world of advertising and marketing. In the beginning, many companies figured that using the social media service to reach its millions of active users would produce lucrative results. Unfortunately, Facebook recently announced that, while many people use Facebook for genuine purposes, there are approximately 83.09 million fake accounts floating around the social network. The service plans to discover these profiles and disable them permanently, but until then, brands could be reaching out to people who don’t even exist. In an updated regulatory filing released last week, Facebook said that 8.7 percent of its 955 million monthly active users worldwide are duplicate or false accounts.

“On Facebook we have a really large commitment in general to finding and disabling false accounts,” Facebook’s chief security officer Joe Sullivan told CNN. “Our entire platform is based on people using their real identities.”

How do the fake accounts breakdown?
Facebook broke down the 8.7 percent into three categories of people: duplicates, misclassified accounts and troublesome profiles. Repeat accounts make up 4.8 percent of Facebook’s total active member tally, and are often the result of people creating profiles for users under the age of 13 or wanting a second account to use for varying purposes. Misclassified profiles are the accounts that have been made for pets, companies or groups. Mostly these accounts were created before Facebook transitioned to Pages, and those sites will be deleted or converted into appropriate profiles. Lastly, troublesome accounts make up 1.5 percent of the 8.7 percent, and these accounts have been opened specifically to violate the company’s terms.

Is there a solution to better direct marketing?
While Facebook may be a growing phenomenon, its kinks have yet to be worked out. Even when Facebook does improve its services, marketers should still diversify their advertising practices to reach the widest audience possible. Direct mail continues to prove its worth in today’s complex landscape, and it still generates the highest response rate compared to all other outreach efforts.

According to a recent study conducted by Direct Marketing Association (DMA), a direct mail campaign generates 30 times greater response rates than email. When a creative team uses all available resources in the conceptualization and creation of a compelling direct marketing solution, the results can hold many benefits for the brand.

In order to make sure a direct mail campaign is worthwhile, professionals first need to discover what kind of response rate is needed to break even. This evaluation sets a benchmark that must be met if a campaign is to be successful and, from there, a creative team can then test various mailings to see which produces the highest return. This small amount of preparation can help a business target and segment accordingly, leading to higher conversion and response rates.

Of course, many will continue to complain about the cost of direct mail compared to digital outreach options. Fortunately, web to print solutions allow creative teams to develop templates online, which can cut costs and save time in the future. Additionally, through web to print, campaigns can be printed and distributed quickly, which improves turnaround time and reduces the costs normally allocated toward outsourcing the design, print and distribution of campaigns.