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Advertising mail, also known as direct mail (by its senders), junk mail (by its recipients), mailshot or admail (North America), letterbox drop or letterboxing (Australia), is the delivery of advertising material to recipients of postal mail. The delivery of advertising mail forms a large and growing service for many postal services, and direct-mail marketing forms a significant portion of the direct marketing industry. Some organizations attempt to help people opt out of receiving advertising mail, in many cases motivated by a concern over its negative environmental impact.
Advertising mail includes advertising circulars, plastic mailers, coupon envelopes (Money Mailer, Valpak), catalogs, Compact Disc, "prescreen" credit card applications, and other commercial merchandising materials delivered to homes and businesses. It may be addressed to pre-selected individuals, or unaddressed and delivered on a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood basis.
Income from advertising mail represents a significant and growing portion of some postal services' budgets, and it is a service actively marketed by them.See e.g. In the United States, ad mail dollars decreased from $96.6 billion in 2004, to $80.9 billion in 2013. A study by Boston Consulting Group predicts that overall share of ad-spend in the US will increase from 11% in to 12% by 2020. In Canada, addressed and unaddressed advertising mail accounted for 20% of Canada Post's revenue in 2005, and the share is increasing. Postal services employ the terms advertising mail, admail, and direct mail, while avoiding and objecting to the pejorative term junk mail.
The United States Postal Service offers a direct mail service known as Every Door Direct Mail, What is EDDM?, USPS that provides resources allowing businesses to target, design, print and mail to specific households without needing to know the addresses.
In many developed countries, advertising mail represents a significant and growing amount of the total volume of mail. In the United States, "Standard mail: advertising" comprised 29% of all mail in 1980 and 43% in 2003.
Often advertisers will include a Johnson Box in letters. These are aimed at drawing the targeted consumers into reading further in the letter.
Certain organizations and individuals have become known for their prowess in direct mail, including in the US, the Free Congress Foundation in the 1970s, Response Dynamics, Inc. in the 1980s, the National Congressional Club, and Richard Viguerie. With the advent of the Internet in political campaigns, direct mail became just one of many campaign management tools, but still played a significant role.
It was only with the advent in the 1960s of the ZIP code and, later, the computer that direct mail fundraising began to gain wide use. Before the ZIP code, it was difficult to target appropriate recipients of direct mail fundraising appeals, and before the computer, compiling and maintaining lists of supporters was tedious and costly. During the 1970s, when computers became increasingly affordable, the use of direct mail fundraising spread widely. It quickly became the means by which most Americans learned about and first provided financial support for their charities of choice.
The explosive growth of the nonprofit sector in the United States—quadrupling in the 1980s and doubling again in the 1990s and early 2000s—led to a massive expansion in the use of direct mail to build and sustain large, nationwide donor and membership lists. Today, direct mail fundraising accounts for at least one-fifth of the more than $250 billion contributed annually in the U.S. to the nation's 1.6 million nonprofit organizations
Direct mail fundraising has its own unique jargon, with much of it related to the art and science of creating, producing and mailing the right appeal to the right list at the right time, and measuring the results.Sharpe, Alan. Ed. Direct Mail Fundraising Glossary.
In recent years, electronic communication media has been used more commonly among nonprofits. Online, email, and social media campaigns, collectively referred to as digital fundraising, have been used in coordination with direct mail fundraising. Nonprofits supplement direct mail campaigns with email blasts and social media posts, using similar messaging and visuals to tie the various communications together. However, digital fundraising has not grown fast enough to replace direct mail for most nonprofits. In 2012, digital fundraising accounted for 7 percent of charitable donations in the United States.
This form of marketing is increasingly used by charitable groups in the UK. In 2013, £239 million was spent by British charities on direct mail advertising campaigns.
In the United States, the common practice of address standardization can defeat the purpose of advertising mail by stripping away local identity, thus leaving many recipients alienated. It is also argued that direct mail is not cost-efficient. It has been suggested that social media will eventually replace direct mail as the preferred method for marketing communications. Those who believe direct mail marketing has a future cite its strong growth in 2011. It has been reported that large publishers like the Tribune Company and RR Donnelley have growing direct mail divisions. Nonprofit organizations continue to use direct mail at a subsidized USPS rate.
One method of direct mailing used in B2B is known as "bill-me." In this direct-mail marketing offer, the buyer is shipped the product prior to payment and is then sent an invoice later.
Several websites critical of junk mail have guides for people interested in reducing the amount of junk mail they get, such as the Center for a New American Dream.See e.g. ,
In response to a US Supreme Court ruling ( Rowan v. Post Office Dept., 397 U.S. 728 (1970)), the United States Postal Service enables an applicant to obtain a Prohibitory Order, which gives people the power to stop non-governmental organizations from sending them mail, and to demand such organizations remove the consumers’ information from their mailing lists.
In Canada, the highly publicized Red Dot Campaign offers advice on reducing unaddressed advertising mail. The campaign focuses on advertising the Canada Post policy to respect "No Junkmail" signs, noting that this policy is not promoted by Canada Post itself. The name "red dot" refers to an internal marker used by Canada Post to indicate which households do not wish to receive unaddressed admail.
The UK Royal Mail also offers an opt-out service, though unaddressed government mailings cannot be separated from advertisements, and those who opted out of the latter would stop receiving the former as well.
In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 44% of junk mail is discarded without being opened or read, equalling four million tons of waste paper per year, with 32% recovered for recycling. Further, the Ohio Office of Compliance Assistance and Pollution Prevention (OCAPP) estimates that 250,000 homes could be heated for a single day's junk mail (70,000,000,000,000/3 btus of energy or 28,870,000,000/21 kWh of energy).
In the UK, the Minister of State responsible for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimated that "direct mail and promotions" accounted for between 500,000 and 600,000 tonnes of paper in 2002, with 13% being recycled. The government and the Direct Marketing Association (UK) together agreed on recycling targets for the direct mail industry, including a goal of 55% by 2009, though the DMA's latest estimates are that the industry will fall well short of this mark.
Mike Berners-Lee estimates that receiving five letters per day plus two printed catalogs per week results in CO2e per year.
A New York Times article from 2009 states that in the United States 51.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gases are emitted each year from mail advertisements. The Environmental Protection Agency indicates that in 2009 total US greenhouse gas emissions were 6,700.10 million metric tons.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Direct Marketing Association (DMA) Junk Mail Opt-Out
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