Why Print Needs to Be Part of Your Overall Strategy
The past few years have been filled with prophetic warnings that can be condensed into a single decree: Print is dead. If print is dead, then magazine subscriptions will suffer, everyone – and everything we do – will move online and customers will be unreachable with paper, there will be no need for a mailboxes or mail delivery service.
Even with all this woe, and even with more activity happening online and on the go, print retains its power. Here’s why:
- People have to make a conscious decision to throw print pieces away. This pertains especially to direct mail. If a brochure or a postcard or a letter ends up in your mailbox, it needs to pass through your hands at least once and a decision must be made on whether to throw it away or keep it. In other words, some thought is involved. People can absentmindedly delete emails.
- People retain information better if they see it in print. A study by the University of Houston found that print readers recall more than online readers. One group was asked to read a print edition of the New York Times while the other was asked to read it online. At the end of 20 minutes, participants were tested. The results were this: Print readers remembered an average of 4.24 stories while online readers recalled an average of 3.35 stories. The study’s participants were college students, a generation you would expect to see higher preference and ability with digital because of long-time exposure and use.
- Print pieces cut through all the distraction of a digital world. A print piece doesn’t demand an instant response or any response at all, and it doesn’t clog your inbox or your spam filter multiple times a week. With so much activity happening on digital, sometimes it’s nice to connect with your customers more directly by taking the time and resources it takes to put together a print piece, whether it’s a magazine, a brochure, a booklet, or a one-page safety sheet.
- Print is perceived as more trustworthy. Think about it, every important document in your life is on a piece of paper: your birth certificate, your social security card, you marriage license, the deed to your house, your passport. The list goes on. In the marketing world, printed communications still carry a lot of weight. An International Communications Research survey found that 73% of consumers actually prefer mail over other advertising methods, and the UK Direct Marketing Association found that 56% of customers find print marketing to be the most trustworthy type of marketing.
- Print triggers response. This covers all types of response. Print pieces usually include several options to respond, so that the customer can choose, including integrating digital and social media options – driving traffic to those channels as well. Brian Morris of the Digital Marketing Ramblings provides several statistics that support this: Since 2004, direct mail marketing response rates have increased by 14%. Email response rates have fallen by 57% in that same period. Here’s another one: 39% of customers try a business for the first time because of direct mail advertising.
All of this is not to say that e-mail or anything digital is not important; to the contrary. Our world is dedicated to digital now and we have developed digital habits. It’s a fact that some people respond better to digital efforts. But the most successful companies have a multi-component, multi-media strategy with efforts and strategies that complement one another, in order to maximize reach, communicate with customers, and build relationships.
Make sure yours is one of them.