Direct Mail Spending Grew 7.5 Percent in 2006

Direct mail spending rose 7.5 percent to $60.6 billion in 2006, according to an estimate in a recent whitepaper released by marketing consultancy Winterberry Group. This follows 7.4 percent growth from 2004 to 2005. Winterberry Group further estimates that total direct mail spending will reach $73.6 billion by 2009, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of 6.8 percent per year between 2005 and 2009.

Overall catalog spending for the same period is expected to be slightly lower, at 5.7 percent.

In addition to these stats, Winterberry Group identifies several trends it anticipates over the next 12 months:

* Complex, high-volume multichannel campaigns will become the industry standard, Winterberry officials note, driven by enhanced marketing database segmentation tools and widespread CRM adoption.

* The whitepaper makes clear the need for advanced data hygiene and postal optimization services in response to the forthcoming postal rate increase and new delivery point validation requirements.

* Catalogers will likely need to increase or maintain circulation while accelerating the reduction in average page count per book, Winterberry notes. These trends will be motivated by both rising postal and printing costs, as well as the fact that catalogs continue to drive consumers to the Web. According to a previous Winterberry Group survey, 63 percent of marketing and production providers anticipate catalog page count reductions going forward.

Source: Winterberry Group’s “Vertical Market Trends in Direct Mail and the Impact on Production Service Providers,” http://www.winterberrygroup.com/research/wp/