Something old, something new makes the perfect marketing marriage

Last week I attended the launch of the IPA’s third TouchPoints survey that aims to describe a week in the life of the average Joe.

Russell Parsons
Russell Parsons

Among 1001 key observations was that consumers are not looking for digital media to replace traditional media but to complement it.

I was reminded of this when I read the latest industry attitudes survey on direct marketing this week.

Direct marketers from companies of all shapes, sizes and flavours responded and the results suggested a shift from the traditional to the new.

Almost all of those polled (97%) use email, while 70% use physical mail. Almost a third (32%) say that email is the most effective DM to reach consumers, compared with 13% for mail.

Unfortunately, this is the first survey of its kind that Marketing Week has run so it is difficult to gauge if this constitutes a trend, but I strongly suspect it does.

Unattributable qualifications from some respondents suggest that physical mail is costly and environmentally unsound in comparison to its electronic sibling.

Traditional mail has its benefits and fans, of course. Elsewhere in this newsletter, Mark Thomson, media director at the Royal Mail makes a persuasive argument for the creative bank canvas that DM provides.

It is not, however, a case of one or the other. As TouchPoints found, consumers are receptive to a panoply of mediums.

Integrating the traditional and the digital in a careful, well targeted way is the key.

The two are not mutually exclusive and shouldn’t be treated as such. Email and other digital channels have their plusses and conventional mail has its own – but put together the campaign is stronger.