National Clothesline

A landmark study has just been completed by the well-known marketing consulting firm, Yankelovich, Inc. They specialize in lifestyle trends and target marketing solutions. This groundbreaking study focused on consumer attitudes about direct marketing.

Although consumers often complain about direct marketing (e-mail, telemarketing and direct-mail), there’s no disputing the fact that these work. In fact, more today than ever.

It seems consumers just like to complain about direct marketing as much as they like complaining about their drycleaner. Or at least, their former drycleaner.

Yankelovich suggests that maybe the reason consumers complain so much is not because they dislike direct marketing, but because they like it so much!

Have you ever heard people complain about having a buffet meal, not because they didn’t like the food, but because they like it so much they found themselves over-eating? The same was found to be true for direct-mail, but less so, for unsolicited telemarketing and unsolicited e-mail.

Eighty-five percent of consumers say they receive too much unsolicited mail. Eighty-eight percent feel the sale of telemarketing lists, without permission, is an invasion of their privacy and 87 percent say the same about e-mail address files.

Notwithstanding this high annoyance factor, the majority of consumers (54 percent) reported that they had responded to at least one direct marketing offer in the past six months. And three-quarters of those responding to direct marketing (40 percent of all consumers) reported that in the past six months, they purchased the product or service being marketed.

While the response to any particular direct marketing program is always lower, direct marketing motivates a large number of customers to buy. It seems customers’ high displeasure with direct marketing mirrors their high response rate. Much the same as with an “all-you-can-eat” buffet.

Consumers with more education and income were more likely to report having responded to a direct marketing offer in the past six months; married consumers were also more likely to respond than singles. The demographic characteristics of higher education and income that makes the average direct marketing purchaser an attractive consumer also make that person a more demanding customers.

Compared with people who do respond to direct marketing, direct marketing customers are: “more comfortable with technology, such as the Internet, more involved with shopping, more likely to seek out product information and bargains, and more likely to describe themselves as smart shoppers as well as confident, competent, creative, intelligent, optimistic, talented and well-educated.”

Consumers who complain already believe in direct marketing’s value because they use it most. The challenge here is honing the design and execution of marketing programs to better fit these customers’ needs and preferences.

Many complaints tend to come from a desire for direct marketers to do a better job. And until that happens, consumers will continue to make it harder and harder for direct marketers to reach them, even as they continue to use direct marketing to make their purchasing decisions.

Direct marketing customers are people concerned about the pace of their lives, so a relentless flood of marginally relevant offers, such as Val-Pak and cash register receipts, will fail to provide the kind of connection that will soften their resistance. The challenge is: learning to do more with less.

Consumers have clear preferences, according to the survey, about the ways they want to be contacted. Whether it’s a company they know or one new to them, customers overwhelmingly (42 percent) prefer that contact be made through regular mail. Familiarity makes a few consumers more open to phone (23 percent) or e-mail (9 percent) contact, but postal mail is still the preferred method of contact for the majority of consumers.

Younger consumers are more willing to be contacted by e-mail than older consumers, yet they still emphatically prefer regular mail. Higher income, better-educated customers, despite their generally greater lifestyles and sophistication with technology, prefer to be contacted through regular postal mail far more strongly than consumers who earn less income and who are not as well educated.

The Internet has changed the face of direct marketing, but not by displacing direct mail and telemarketing or even making them obsolete. Customers who use the Internet are no less likely to use other marketing channels. Internet use is the common characteristic of those who buy most often from direct marketing, even though their main purchasing medium is not the Internet.

Online marketing was supposed to cannibalize other marketing methods due to its minimal expense and fast turnaround speed. Marketers love it, but Yankelovich found that consumers don’t. At least not as much as they do more traditional mediums. When prospecting for new customers, direct-mail is still the dominant method.