• Expense: If you outsource both your email and direct mail marketing efforts, costs for email should be half or less than that of direct mail. Average production plus delivery costs for email are $0.15/message versus $0.40/message for direct mail.
• Speed: This is a measure of production time plus delivery time. Email production intervals of 1-2 days and immediate delivery compare to 2-5 days for direct mail production plus 5-7 days delivery time or longer. Want to get a promotional message out quickly? Most dealers wont even try with direct mail unless they can justify first class mail delivery.
• Interactivity: With email, customers or prospects can immediately click through to your dealership Website where they can find more information about sales or service-day or night. With direct mail, the customer or prospect is directed to pick up the phone and call. But what if your dealership is closed? The direct mail piece is more likely to be discarded if the dealership is not available real time to answer questions or provide more information.
• Clutter: With the flood of spam, emails effectiveness has arguably slipped compared to direct mail. A person sitting at a desk checking their email at work is much more likely to disregard marketing messages than the same person sorting through postal mail while at home later in the day.
• Message: Detailed messages hurt email read rates- email readers want information quickly, so keep complex offers and supporting information to a minimum. Direct mail offers a greater ability to provide more information to the customer or prospect.
• Lists: Given the legal wrangling over privacy in the past few years, email lacks the quality of rentable lists compared to the direct mail environment. The exception is homegrown customer lists where dealers have actively collected their customers email information in sales or service.

Should your dealership abandon direct mail in favor of email? While there is no catch-all answer that applies to every dealer, consider the following: First, while email is not considered as mature of a medium as direct mail, it has proven to be more effective when engaging current customers. Dealers looking for conquest business will find direct mail much better suited to their needs. Second, email and direct mail can work very effectively in an integrated approach when a dealers goals are well defined. Start the process by asking your direct mail company to work together with your email-marketing supplier. Youll be surprised and pleased with the results!