Average Direct Mail Response Rates

Direct mail has an average response rate of 4.4 percent for prospect lists and 9 percent for house lists.¹ This is a higher response rate than email! In fact, direct mail marketing is five times more effective for sales than email marketing.

When creating a direct mail campaign, you have a variety of mail formats to choose from, including postcards, oversized envelopes, and more. Oversized envelopes produce the highest response rates at 5 percent. Postcards are right behind with 4.25 percent.²

Direct Mail Return on Investment

When you launch a marketing campaign, you probably are hoping for a good return on investment (ROI). Finding out your ROI for your direct mail campaign is fairly easy and follows this basic formula:

ROI = Net Profit/Total Investment x 100

On average, direct mail has a high ROI of 29 percent.² This is roughly the equivalent of social media’s ROI.

Direct mail’s response rates are even higher. Response rates for direct mail offer a 112 percent return on investment.² This is higher than SMS messages, email, and even social media.

Direct mail has the unique advantage of being distraction-free. When advertising on social media, phones, or the internet, you have to compete with incoming notifications and the barrage of available information. Mail doesn’t have the same distractions when someone is reading it.

How Do Americans Feel About Direct Mail?

There’s something exciting about getting mail. Going to the mailbox and seeing something with your name that you can read was addressed to you specifically. This is good news for direct mail marketing—even better when you learn that 41 percent of Americans look forward to checking their mail daily!²

Once inside the home, direct mail is kept in the household for an average of 17 days.² What happens to mail during that time? It gets read, potentially more than once. There is plenty of time for potential customers to read your direct mail piece, return to it, and decide to take action.

Promotions included in direct mail may aid in keeping it in the household. Someone may hold into your postcard if it’s got a service offer for their vehicle’s next oil change. Your dealership remains on your customer’s mind, helping build that relationship between your customer and your business.