According to a new study, eBusinesses that want to contact people through direct mail advertising might be best off trying to reach men between the ages of 55 and 64. Compared to 2003, though, their odds of reaching just about everybody are significantly better.
Direct Mail Advertising’s Online Effects
“Twenty-one percent of total adults in 2007 have responded to direct mail advertising in the past month by visiting a sender’s Web site, up from 14 percent in 2003,” stated Vertis Communications. This may have happened as people became increasingly familiar with the Internet, or, to give marketers their due, may just be the result of more effective advertising.
Regardless, Jim Litwin, Vertis’s vice president of market insights, has an idea about why older men were particularly responsive – “men reach retirement and find more time to surf the Web,” he told Jack Loechner. If that’s correct, businesses should remain aware that many women participate in a similar end-of-working cycle.
Yet for whatever reason, reaching retirement seems to be a little more conducive to this behavior than retirement itself, as 28 percent of men between 55 and 64 responded to advertising and only 15 percent of men 65 and older followed suit.
It’s all stuff to think about when trying to reach people with direct mail advertising.