Ann Dosen
In July we had the idea to test the effectiveness of traditional mailer campaigns. We figured the data we collect will help companies decide where to invest their marketing dollars.
We mailed a postcard to the APMA National 2022 attendee list with a simple call to action and added bonus of receiving a free gift from us as a thank you.
The postcard went out to 584 addresses. Out of those, 16 were returned as undeliverable. From the 568 postcards that landed in mailboxes, we only received 19 responses! That is only 3.2%.
Postcard Mailer
568 recipients
19 responses – 3.2%
Here is the interesting part: the question we asked on the mini-poll was “Do you like receiving mailers like this one from industry vendors before a conference?”
As you can see in the table below, 57.9% of respondents say they prefer mailers, while only 5.3% said they prefer emails.
BUT – only 19 out of 568 (3.2%) recipients actually noticed the postcard at all! 
By comparison, when we send an email, about 62% of our 12,000 email subscribers open it.
Email
12,000 recipients
62% response rate
So, what I learned from this test is that mailers do reach a small demographic of physicians – those that do not prefer email communication. Is it worth the money? Hard to say. This mailer cost us about $450.