Direct Mail Spending Grows 5.0% in 2007

According to Winterberry Group, direct mail growth continues to outpace that of both “above-the-line” advertising and virtually all other non-interactive marketing media. But that growth slowed dramatically in 2007 from the previous year, when marketers increased their year-over-year investment in direct mail by over 7 percent. The report concludes: “With [the postage rate] increase now a distant memory—and with the threat of future such hikes mitigated by postal reform legislation that sets an effective cap on new postage increases—the focus for 2008 will shift to advancing the role of direct mail as a component of the multichannel marketing mix… Expect marketers to continue turning to new applications (including analytical modeling, event triggering, multichannel coordination and advanced postal optimization initiatives) in order to reinforce their presence in the mailbox and complement other on- and offline marketing approaches.”