The Reach Platform specializes in direct mail marketing and consumer targeting analysis. It’s what we do.

One of the common problems in direct mail, like with many marketing tactics, is that senders aren’t accurate enough with their targeting to make campaigns successful. Mailing people unlikely to respond or make a purchase is very costly and hinders marketing success. Loose targeting significantly inflates channel costs per sale as success rates dip. This is a practice we try to avoid in email marketing, a channel that is far less costly per send than direct mail, for fear of penalties and potentially harming the brand. Direct mail should be approached with even more caution, because the consequences are even more dire if we're not careful with our targeting.

Recently, we thought it would be interesting to do a survey of mailers employees receive as a ‘gut-check’ estimate of mail targeting accuracy. For the survey, we collected thousands of direct mails that employees received for quantitative analysis, regarding how accurately the mail was addressed, and followed up with some qualitative questions to see how employees felt the direct mail influenced their behavior and purchase decisions.

The results were pretty interesting!