It is worth to mention that western companies pay less attention to direct mail as advertisement tool. This connected with growing level of protection from spam from mail hosting such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail and low number of real feedback from users of direct mail. However, well planned and implemented direct mail can be very effective. Otherwise, it can damage your reputation.

There are two ways of direct mail:

1. Users register at your website, leaving their emails. You send your news, announcement and proposals via these emails.

2. Mass direct mail with help of special services or companies, which propose such services.

The first method is beneficial as you send emails to only interested persons. But, what can you do with consumers, who do not know your products. So, the first drawback is that it is impossible to cover audience, who is not familiar with your products.

Other drawback is that people can be fed up with messages from your company and can include your email to spam. Once your email is included to black list it is difficult to return it to trusted zone. There are several sites, which abuse with direct mail. Here problem is now about frequency of emails, but low quality of content. Believe me, your clients do not want know about all your events. You should use corporate blog for this purpose. In direct mail, you should inform only about important events and useful information for them.

Second way is good and relatively cheap advertisement way. But, low number of people can be interested in your proposals despite large number of recipients. You will get less feedback when you have mass advertisement. One should remember, it is difficult to “hook” targeted auditory with mass advertisement compared to targeted ones.

Besides, email of the company will be added to spam list in future. Besides, consumers, who interested in your products, could include your email to spam list after receiving 5-10 emails with uninteresting proposals. Of course, everything depends of direct mail frequency and quality of content.

Artem Safarov is author of the section “People and Brands”. He is specialist in marketing and PR. He studied crisis management at World Technological University. He worked as manager and director of marketing and PR. He launched his first product in the market at his 20s.