Junk mailers pay real hard currency for every letter they send, so they've can't afford to use ineffective copy. Online, there is no cost to to sending an email, publishing a blog post, etc., so it's more difficult to determine what copy actually works.
Only if you're not paying for the servers or the copy-writers, etc.
"so it's more difficult to determine what copy actually works."
That doesn't follow. Any sort of tracking, A/B testing, etc. that you could do with junk mail, you can do with spam or more accepted email marketing - and probably more cheaply.
They may well continue to make money regardless, or for some other reason than the money they spend on direct marketing (or on online advertising, for that matter).
What we need are some serious studies published in peer reviewed journals that prove that direct marketing works, not claims that if it didn't work businesses wouldn't spend money on it.
Display Advertising PPC Advertising TV Advertising Radio Advertising Trade Shows In-Mall Kiosks etc.
Also, how would you do the study anyway? Some people do this effectively and others do not. Certain types of advertising are better for reaching some customers and others are not. It seems you are assuming that in the general case direct mail does not work at all and people are using it just because they haven't measured their marketing ROI for that channel. With minimal research you could see that this is false.
So far all I've seen are claims (mostly by direct marketers themselves), not any kind of reliable proof.
As for how the studies would be done, I have no doubt that scientists (who are very clever at coming up with innovative research protocols) could figure something out.
But here is a modest proposal: track the spending habits of a reasonably large, randomized group of people (should be easy enough to do these days), along with the ads they receive. See how many of the products are bought by people who receive and read direct mail ads vs those that don't. That should be a good start.
After all this, a particular company will know exactly the demographic that buys, exactly the headline that grabs attention, the copy that gets people to keep turning the page, the post-script message that increases conversions, etc.
This kind of marketing has been perfected, as the author says. A good direct-mail marketer will get a conversion rate of 5%-10%. There are some books you can read to get at specific numbers of different campaigns... This is one of them http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Everything-You-Can-Youve/dp/03....
It would be nice to see some studies in credible peer-reviewed journals about the efficacy of direct marketing at getting consumers to buy their products.
Though, from the quantity of junk mail that I've received, I personally have no doubt as to the efficacy of direct marketers at getting businesses to hire them. But that's a different thing from being effective at getting consumers to buy whatever it is they're selling.
It's perfectly fine to disagree, but to request a peer-reviewed journal about the efficacy of A/B testing? I don't know, maybe something like that exists, but my hunch is that the only things that get peer-reviewed are new ideas that are unproven and require the tough scrutiny of other smart people who are intimiately familiar with the subject matter.
Regarding A/B testing, go try it. Write down 10 different ways to ask out a girl. Go and ask out 10 girls with the first method, 10 with the next, and on down the line measuring the effectiveness of each approach.
You'll figure it out. :-)
Anyway, I'm not questioning the effectiveness of "A/B testing". I'm questioning the effectiveness of direct marketing. Two very different things.
Here are statistics that show that people respond to direct mail. This data is old (2003) but it's quite comprehensive.
How about something published in a respectable peer-reviewed journal?
Certain things are bulk mailed to an extremely large group of people, but this isn't always true. Targeting also does not have to be nonexistent. For example, you could go buy this list at ListSource (http://www.listsource.com/) for about $50:
All the people that live in the Bay Area that live in and own a 3 bedroom condo in a building that has more than 20 units that cost above $500,000 and was refinanced in the last 3 years.
You just can't get that with online targeting, and sometimes when search volume is low or CPCs are high this method becomes much more effective than online advertising.
One could argue that it must be effective, as it's expensive to print and post mail, yet marketers have been doing it for decades. Its results are also generally more measurable than those of mass market advertising.
> You have no other means to reach your customer
On the contrary, (addressed) direct mail is generally sent to as targeted a market as possible. If you know your market, you're generally better off putting a lot of resources into a well-qualified set of prospects, than taking a more "shotgun" approach.