DM News: Telemarketing Tops DMA Response Rate Study Again

A Direct Marketing Association (DMA) study showed that telemarketing led a list of a dozen different direct response media in terms of response rates. With a 5.78 response rate, the medium well out paced the next closest rivals, which tended to average about two percent. Email proved to have a 1.12 percent response rate, coming in fifth and beating magazines, radio, newspapers and television by very wide margins. Online display advertising was not included in the study, although recent DoubleClick study results would have placed it at about the same responsiveness as email.

The results, in order of response rate percentages:

Telemarketing: 5.78
Dimensional mail: 2.3
Catalog: 2.18
Direct mail: 1.88
Coupons: 1.65
Email: 1.12
Inserts: 0.45
Magazine: 0.13
FSI: 0.13
Radio: 0.1
Newspaper: 0.09
DRTV: 0.04