Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

In an interesting study with some surprising results, a new survey by International Communications Research reveals that people still feel receiving mail in their mailbox is better in some cases than any other medium - including email.

When receiving junk mail through their physical mailbox, people are much more receptive to it than when through email. Consumers find it much less disruptive to their everyday life than they do being solicited through email or phone contacts.

The results of the study show 73 percent of customers would rather receive new-product announcements through the physical mail box than they would by email. Only 18 percent said they'd prefer it via email. Surprisingly, 70 percent preferred physical mail delivery from companies they haven't worked with. I say surprisingly, because I wouldn't think it would be that high. I guess it depends on how the question was asked.

In the biggest difference in preferences, 86 percent of respondents said they would rather receive private information like bills and bank statement in the mail, against only 10 percent for emails. Again, this is a surprise to me. It seems after this much time has passed, online banking and bill paying would be much more preferred.

Of course this doesn't necessarily mean that it is practiced at these levels, it only says they're preferred at these levels. Even so, it's pretty surprising.

Consumers also tend to hold on to their physical mail much longer than their emails, as 31 percent said they toss their print mail, whereas 53.2 percent get rid of their emails.

It could be that we need to think about sending snail mail in cases where we're reaching out to new customers. The statistics seem to speak pretty strongly to it being a better way of getting noticed for the first time.