In 2012 the average response rate for direct mail was 4.4 percent for both business to business and business to consumer mailings, considerably higher than industry expectations. Envelope-sized direct mail letters achieve a 3.4 percent response rate when mailed to a house list, and a 1.28 percent response rate when mailed to a prospect list.

45% of marketers cite email as the channel they use most to connect with brands they trust, and 49% of non-smartphone consumers and 36% of smartphone consumers say the same. [However], marketers are much more likely to make a purchase after receiving an email (93%) than consumers (49%).

Traditional marketing tactics are not dead. 74% of B2B marketers rate direct mail as very effective, while 72% say the same about live events and 71% call email marketing critical.

In a USPS poll, 64% of customers said they valued the mail they received, only 36% of business owners believed customers valued their mailings.

54% of mailed postcards are read by recipients.

Emails containing special offers, discounts or vouchers still remain the most popular type of email, with money-off emails taking the top spot with 55%, followed by free delivery at 13% and loyalty coupons at 12%.

Research also showed that 91% of consumers still access emails primarily through their desktop computer despite the boom in the mobile web.

Spending on direct marketing, which uses consumer data lists, continues to grow at a healthy 5 percent clip, accounting for more than $163 billion last year, or half of the total advertising spending in the U.S. Digital channels are a big part of that growth, making up nearly 20 percent of the total.

Indeed, according to Forrester Research, by 2012, B2B spending on search, web advertising, email and mobile is expected to reach $5.7 billion.

According to Print Media Centr’s data, the print industry is made up of $640 Billion with a projected increase of 50% on orders online by 2017.

According to the Direct Marketing Association, typical response rates are 4.4% for direct mail (overall), 4.3% for catalogs and 3.4% for a direct mail letter.

The 2012 Small Business Marketing Survey released by Pitney Bowes found 80 percent [of small business marketers] did not measure direct mail and 73 percent did not measure email.

Research recently conducted by Triton Digital found that while subscribers find social media fun to read and converse in, 20 percent of people said they trusted printed media much more.

According to the DMA, direct marketing spend in the U.S. is will grow 3.4% in 2012 to $168.5 billion.

$46.9 billion: The expected amount of direct mail expenditures in 2012.

Of the 21.9 million UK adults to respond to direct mail, 6.2 million went online to order something, and 7.3m went to a store to order something in person.

While telemarketing dominates response rates among existing customers with a 12.95 percent rate, direct mail is one of the main players with a 3.40 percent response rate. Compared to emails sent to existing customers (just a 0.12 percent response rate), direct mail has 30 times the chance of receiving a response from the customer.

Prospect response rates across direct marketing channels: Telephone (8.21%), oversized mail (1.44%), letter-sized direct mail (1.28%), postcard (1.12%) and catalog (0.94%).

Cost per order or lead for acquisition campaigns stood at $51.40 for direct mail, slightly less than for paid search ($52.58), post card ($54.10), and email ($55.24).

According to the DMA report, telephone marketing may have the highest response rates, but it also has the highest costs, at nearly $78 per order or lead for a house list, and $190 for a prospect list.

The transactional data finds financial services emails have email open rates of more than 30%, highest among the verticals studied. Retail (apparel) emails have open rates averaging 14.7%, slightly less than for publishing and media (14.9%). Publishing and media leads with the highest action rates per impression (0.13%).

For letter-sized mailings, B2C outperformed B2B in response rates, 4.01% to 3.12%.

36% of responding U.S. consumers in a recent marketing study said they prefer receiving financial information in their traditional mail box.

57% of the respondents in HubSpot's State of Inbound Marketing study reported that they have acquired a customer through their company blog, 62% through LinkedIn, 53% through Facebook, and 44% through Twitter.

In general, for 2012, an investment of $1 in direct marketing ad expenditures is up -- it is predicted to return, on average, $12.18 in incremental revenue across all industries. In comparison, non-DM ROI is expected to be $5.26 in 2012.

The effect of this near-constant switching is that digital natives are less likely to experience wide ranges of emotional responses. In fact, they were also more likely to than digital immigrants to be easily bored (47% vs. 36%), easily distracted (43% vs. 34%), and get nervous easily (47% vs. 33%).

57% of marketing and advertising executives in organizations with revenues of $10 million or more said that most of their spending in 2011 went to traditional efforts.

Direct mail has the highest rate of success in new customer acquisition at 34% compared with other marketing channels.

A study cited in the Ballantine white paper uncovered promising trends in consumer behavior for direct mailers: 85% of consumers sort through and read selected mailpieces each day, 75% of consumers are examining mail more closely, 40% have tried a new business after receiving direct mail

Magazine media spending declined 1.2% for Q3, but rose 1.5% for the year-to-date. The top 10 magazine advertisers invested $2.7 billion in the medium for the year-to-date, a decrease of 2.8%. As a proportion of total magazine ad spending by all advertisers, the top 10 accounted for 17.1%.

According to December figures from eMarketer, although newspapers accounted for 15% of all US ad spending in 2011, they held just a 4% share of adults’ daily media time. Magazines also held a much larger share of ad spending than daily media time, at 9.7% and 2.8%, respectively.

In 2011, the pace of spending in radio media was more muted, but remained steady, up a modest 1.1% in Q3 and 1.2% for the year-to-date, driven by over 2% growth in local radio and network radio advertising.

75% of consumers are saying that they are examining their mail more closely in the recent months to search for coupons and discounts.

49 percent of email marketers find that a mid-day (10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.) email blast produces the highest ROI.

Consumers indicate that mailed flyers are their least preferred update method (15%), ......audio/podcasts (25%) and traditional offline ads (23%) among the least-favored methods.

Eighty-six percent (86%) of adults say that TV advertising has the most impact on their buying decisions.

18 percent of young people between the ages of 22 and 24 say they will respond to direct mail.

Marketers will spend $163 billion on direct marketing in 2011, a 5.6% increase compared with last year, according to a report released by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA).

Internet marketing is expected to drive $576 billion in sales this year compared to direct mail’s $630.5 billion.

According to a report from RIS News and business consultant Cognizant, "2011 Shopper Experience Study, Taking the Store to the Shopper," the Internet is "the source most shoppers access for product information, but this is not true for all retail verticals."  Newspaper ads remain the top choice for grocery shoppers (chosen by 40%) and relatively strong with those shopping for home goods (16%), as well as apparel shoppers (11%).

Radio’s top five Q1 2011 revenue categories based on [ad] spot spending are: * Communications/Cellular: $338M * Auto Dealers/Dealer Groups/Manufacturers: $333M * Television/Networks/Cable Providers: $295M * Restaurants: $262M * Financial Services : $212M

Out of home advertising revenue rose 4.2 percent in the first quarter of 2011 compared to the same period in 2010, accounting for nearly $1.4 billion in total revenue, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA).

Data from the “Internet Radio Advertising & Impact Study” indicates 49% of internet radio users spend 22 or more hours online per week, compared to 43% of non-internet radio users.

Looking at offline channels used for marketing [in the Middle East and North Africa], printed media comes out on top, with over two-thirds of companies (69%) using newspapers and magazines for marketing.

SocialMedia Examiner's 2011 survey [found] that only press releases have a high rate of planned usage, with a combined 80% of social marketers planning on increasing their press release usage or keeping it the same. This contrasts with combined increased/sustained usage rates for media including sponsorships (58%), direct mail (47%), print ads (45%), radio ads (27%), and TV ads (21%).

The largest difference in the breakdown of non-FSI coupon media was an 11.5% higher percentage distributed via in-store handouts (5.8%).

Almost a third (30 percent) of marketers claim that video advertising will be their single biggest investment for the year.

Earlier this summer, Forrester Research said it expected b2b mobile marketing spend to increase from $26 million in 2009 to $106 million in 2014�not a big number, especially compared to Forrester's estimates of $4.8 billion in overall b2b interactive marketing spend in 2014, but it does represent a quadrupling in mobile marketing activity over the next five years, said Forrester analyst Michael Greene.

Some 30 percent of budgets are now allocated to online and email, while catalogues and direct mail account for 28 percent and 26 percent respectively.

The finance sector is leading the resurgence in direct marketing, with investment in the channel up 14.2% to $12.5m during March to May compared to a year earlier, new Nielsen research has shown.

Print continues to witness a decline; 58% say they are less focused on print advertising than a year ago.

Response rates for Direct Mail have held steady over the past four years.� Letter-sized envelopes, for instance, had a response rate this year of 3.42 percent for a house list and 1.38 percent for a prospect list.�

According to the recent Face of the New Marketer study, 81 percent of marketers want to improve the quality of their content, while 41 percent have trouble interpreting the related data and 62 percent say they may not be tracking the right metrics for online performance.

Two-thirds of online consumers surveyed (age 18+) are active on top social networking sites. Those sites used by consumers at least once a week are the following: Facebook: 53%, Youtube: 33%, Myspace: 18%, Twitter: 10%

57% of mobile email consumers age 30-39 access their personal email account at least four times daily using their Internet-enabled phone, compared with 42% of online adults.

Overall, younger email users check their personal email accounts more frequently. However, the time they spend with email skews lower compared with older age groups: 60% of online adults age 18-29 spend over 20 minutes weekly with personal email, compared with 87% of those age 65+.

92% of online consumers read online reviews at least occasionally for products and services they are interested in, with little variation by age, gender, or ethnicity. The majority of activity in this space is consumption rather than creation: 49% have posted an online review, with just 10% posting more than two.

A quarter (25%) of those surveyed by Callcredit Marketing Solutions, using its CAMEO with Attitude online panel, stated that they would get back in touch with retailers who had used email to reach them, with 19% saying they would respond to direct mail.

In the US, the direct buying power of kids is more than $40 billion annually.