A Channel in Transformation: Vertical Market Trends in Direct Mail 2009 .

The year 2008, in short, presented an extraordinary set of challenges to the practitioners and suppliers of direct mail marketing.

Unprecedented economic, political and even social forces converged to rewrite—at times radically—long-established rules governing how customers are cultivated and profits are earned. Likewise, certain business models dependent on the mail for a flow of prospects were dispatched as obsolete, often the victims of financial concerns far removed from the everyday issues of package design, postage rates and even return-on-investment.

To mailer and supplier alike, the influences of the last 18 months have brought about nothing short of complete transformation to a medium that had grown crisply and consistently for over a decade. Direct mail has seen its influence as a high-volume, mass-oriented response driver all but vanish. Skyrocketing costs have critically wounded industries (including the catalog, credit card and not-for-profit sectors) that long depended on the mail as a source of new revenue. And a supply chain whose fortunes were tied to mail’s continuing primacy in the marketing mix has been greatly undermined, with an assembly of newly-shuttered production facilities standing as testament to the impact of that rapid upheaval.

But while direct mail’s transformation has been grim for some, it has also brought with it pockets of real (and apparently reasonable) growth opportunity.

To download WhitePaper CLICK on link below:
http://www.winterberrygroup.com/research/wp/>

Skip to content