What Gives You the Best Response Rate? The Latest DMA Findings

According to the DMA we should be calling you with this information for the best response, but we believe digital still has some legs. Since 2003, the DMA has been publishing their Response Rate Report, the latest edition was released last week.

As in previous years, the report was based on data collected through an email survey, but this year included an analysis of transactional data provided by Bizo and Epsilon of more than 29 billion emails and 2 billion online display impressions. In another first for this edition, DMA compares direct mail response rates over time.  The time series reveals that direct mail response rates have dropped nearly 25% over the past nine years

Telephone Response Rates Highest

According to the DMA report, telephone marketing may have the highest response rates, but it also has the highest costs, at nearly $78 per order or lead for a house list, and $190 for a prospect list. 

Direct Mail Tops Email For Response Rates; Costs Per Lead Similar
Comparing the return-on-cost of direct mail with email, Yory Wurmser, DMA’s director of marketing and media insights said: "The cost is equivalent when we're talking about getting a new customer, but for [a response from] an existing customer, email is more efficient, with ROI that's four times higher than direct mail."

Other Key Findings
The transactional data reveals that only 6% of the actions following an online display ad occur immediately following a click, suggesting that click-through rates drastically underestimate online display’s impact.

CPG boasted the highest email click to open rate (46.5%).

B2B campaigns saw generally higher costs than B2C campaigns. For letter-sized mailings, B2C outperformed B2B in response rates, 4.01% to 3.12%. For all other formats, B2B had higher response.

Conclusion

No matter what medium you choose, you'll get what you pay for. We think the question is really "What do you want to achieve". Have you asked yourself that lately?