Traditional modes of communication are experiencing a revival as email inboxes become inundated with spam, according to direct mail provider Stannp.com.
Health food delivery companies and fashion retailers are among the businesses turning to direct mail to entice customers to return to their online platforms and complete their purchases. Meanwhile, estate agencies and utility firms are sending letters and postcards featuring QR codes for convenient digital access.
Some retailers are going a step further by sending physical letters to remind customers of items lingering in their digital shopping carts, complete with images of the abandoned products.
Data released by Statista reveals that, as of 2023, Britons receive a staggering 6.9 billion spam emails daily.
Sam Heaton, CEO at Stannp.com, commented, “The number of people opening marketing emails has gone off a cliff – essentially we have reached spam overload, so firms are reverting to more traditional methods again.”
He continued, “We have so many options to communicate now. Our devices are constantly pinging with notifications from email, SMS, WhatsApp, Messenger, and social media channels, and an increasing number of people actively try to ‘switch off’ from digital communications, with the rise of ad blockers and spam filters.”
“Around 45 per cent of emails are now considered spam and consumers are becoming more selective over which emails they stay subscribed to,” added Heaton. “It’s almost too much effort to be constantly deleting emails, let alone reading and then taking action.”
Stannp.com offers business-to-business direct mail services and assists over 40,000 customers in boosting revenue, retaining and updating customer information, and generating reviews.
Heaton noted, “Junk mail is now email with Gen Z. They rarely get a real letter sent to them and they react differently to older generations who remember a world before email.”
“Advertising mail has grown by 42 per cent in the last five years and on average advertising mail is kept in a household for 17 days.”
“Conversely, 57 per cent of email addresses are being abandoned as there is simply too much junk email. People are creating email addresses solely for marketing emails and never have any intention to even login to these accounts.”
Established in June 2014, Stannp.com was founded to offer a Software as a Service SaaS solution for direct mail, providing companies with a fully digital, integrated solution for their direct mail requirements.
The company advocates the use of QR codes in letters, serving multiple purposes. In addition to directing recipients to designated web pages, QR codes enable tracking features that create insightful reports on direct mail campaigns by monitoring how many recipients have scanned the code.
Sam elaborated, “Whilst it might be harder to track the ‘open’ rate of direct mail, the Stannp.com platform allows you track the mail you send from production, through the postal system and shows when it has been delivered to the recipient. On average, Stannp.com can see our customers experience an average QR Code scan rate of over 15 per cent. We find that the call-to-action on the QR code is as impactful as the subject line on an email.”
For further information about Stannp.com, visit their website at https://www.stannp.com.