Junk Mail vs Junk Email

Nobody likes returning home to a pile of junk mail, tripping over it as you open your front door. Now, spam emails have become the bane of everyone’s life. According to Royal Mail it seems direct mail is falling year by year. In 2005, 6.17 billion of 19.7 billion letters sent were direct mail but this dropped in 2012 to just 4.4 billion of the 13.8 billion letters sent.

Forecasts have suggested that the future will see an even larger drop. By 2023, there’s a forecasted 8.3bn total letters, of which 3.1bn will be direct mail. Let’s consider what this means to the everyday homeowner. In 2013, it’s estimated that residents in the City of London received 650 pieces of junk mail per household per year — making up 4.4% of the UK’s annual consumption of paper and cardboard.

The rise of digital mail

In this era, it seems unwanted junk mail is being overtaken by emails. If we look at the stats, we receive an average of 2 pieces of ‘junk’ mail per day in comparison to a whopping average of 121 emails per day.

Since March 2016, spam emails have accounted for around 56.52% of the 205 billion emails that are sent every day. To put that into perspective, that means there are over 115,866,000,000 spam emails sent each day. With 7.4 billion people living on planet earth, this means at least 16 spam emails can be sent to every single person on the planet…every single day.

Still think direct mail is the problem?

According to the CMO Council, emails have an average open rate of only 22.87% in comparison to direct mail’s open rate of 56%, proving that direct mail is more effective at getting a message in front of an audience. The direct mail response rate is also higher at 3.4% rather than a small 0.12% response for emails. With that in mind, it’s clear that more people read and respond to so called ‘junk mail’ than ‘junk email’.

Email vs letters- the contrast

When you consider the amount of emails that are sent (around 74 trillion per year) versus the number of letters sent, it is no surprise that direct mail has a greater read and response rate. That being said, in the UK alone, there are 13.8 billion letters sent each year which means 37,808,219 are sent each day — 12,098,630 of which are direct mail.

However, that figure is only 0.01% of the amount of spam mail sent everyday around the world. Does that 12,098,630 figure sound a lot still?

The verdict

So, with all that in mind, do you want to contribute to the ‘email overload’ which has an open rate of only 0.12%? Is it worth it? Opt for a better marketing campaign with memorable direct mail solutions instead. A good direct mail campaign gives you the opportunity to step ahead of your competitors and put you in front of an audience which will respond.

Sources

• http://www.royalmailgroup.com/sites/default/files/The%20outlook%20for%20UK%20mail%20volumes%20to%202023.pdf
• http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/environment-and-planning/waste-and-recycling/household-waste-and-recycling/Pages/Say-no-to-junk-mail.aspx
• http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Email-Statistics-Report-2015-2019-Executive-Summary.pdf
• http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/email-statistics/
• http://www.statista.com/statistics/420391/spam-email-traffic-share/
• https://www.cmocouncil.org/facts-stats-categories.php?view=all&category=direct-marketing
• http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/email-communications-strategy/statistics-sources-for-email-marketing/