I was interviewed the other day on an Australian television business show, Lateline Business, and I made a brash prediction. You can see the six-minute clip or read a transcript of it here. The question I was asked was: "What about the industry [direct marketing] generally: how important today is going digital, the whole online space to direct marketing?"
And my unequivocal answer was as follows: "It's indispensible. There's going to be no non-electronic direct marketing within 10 years - none."
Now what I meant by "non-electronic direct marketing" was not "offline" (obviously, I would have just said "offline"). What I did mean, however, is that even offline direct marketing would only be viable if it were supplemented and buttressed by electronic tools, such as Web sites, email, and other communications channels. In my own view of the future, there will still be occasions to send out letters, including glossy brochures and samples, and there will be reasons even for sending out "broadcast" mailings. Nevertheless, I don't think any sophisticated direct marketing campaigns will continue to operate solely by post within about ten years, maybe 15.
Of course I could fudge this controversial prediction bit, and say that there will still be "computer assisted" database marketing being conducted via postal mail, because after all a computer is "electronic," but for the purpose of this blog post, let's just play devil's advocate, and take the extreme view. Already, within my own admittedly biased circle of acquaintances, I don't know ANYONE who would rather have postal mail than email. However, I do see an uneven adoption rate in electronic message processing on the part of consumers, with relatively new or not so sophisticated users of email worrying about the burden of a cluttered inbox, while more skilled users have better spam filters and sometimes get their inbound email automatically sorted into folders. Others use multiple addresses to ensure personal and business remain separate.
The cause for this trend toward the electronic is not just the decreased cost of it, relative to postal documents, but also the increased consumer demand for it. No one wants irrelevant, interruptive marketing messages in any venue. Relevance will always win out in the end, and I predict that within a few years nearly everyone will want all their truly relevant messaging in e-form, and will consider physical documents to be more of a nuisance than a help.
Go ahead, tell me I'm nuts. I've been called worse.