Marketing: From Direct Mail to Social Media

1872: Direct marketing begins with the first direct mail catalog sent by Montgomery Ward.  The industry has continued to grow, though response rates have been declining and costs increasing, with an estimated 44% of direct mail being discarded before it is even looked at.

1900: Stores start to install phones; stores in Manhattan take orders by phone and do local delivery.  Telemarketing and cold calling follows, reaching a peak in the 1980s or 1990s when Americans can remember getting multiple calls during the dinner hour trying to sell them something.  Do Not Call legislation is passed in 2003, and now there are 200 million numbers on the US do not call list.

1995: Email marketing begins, and continues to grow.  Today about 90% of all emails sent are spam, totaling over 90 trillion spam messages sent every year.  Increasingly, email open rates are declining and with new technologies from Google and Facebook it is harder and harder for marketers to reach the consumer’s inbox.

2005 to today: Consumers start to use social media as a communication platform, and companies begin to listen and engage with their customers using social media.  Social media is interesting because it is the first of these communication methods that is inherently permission based.  If you are not my friend, you can’t send me a message – unlike mail, phone or email where if you know my address, you can annoy me without my permission.

Social media is a key resource to expand your marketing database- it’s the next generation of being able to connect one-on-one with people.

Source: HubSpot Blog

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