According to a Direct Marketing Association economic-impact study e-mail’s return on investment far outshines the ROI of other marketing channels, but is slowly slipping.
Commercial e-mail returned a whopping $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009, according to the DMA’s just-released Power of Direct economic-impact study—an effort the trade organization publishes every year at its annual fall conference.
For comparison’s sake, the second highest marketing ROI came from Internet search advertising, which returned a healthy $21.85 for every dollar spent on it in 2009, according to the study, done by financial-analysis-and-forecasting firm Global Insight on behalf of the DMA.
Meanwhile, non-catalog direct mail returned $15.22 for every dollar spent in 2009 while catalogs returned $7.32, according to the study.