No one likes disruptive technology when it’s their business being disrupted. Back in the early 1990s, new technology threatened postal mail. Mail service providers genuinely worried about what it would do to their mail volume.
The disruptive technology we feared?
Not the Internet… Broadcast FAX.
Seriously.
Why would letter carriers need to visit every home when every home would have a printer sitting right there? Fortunately, direct mail survived the FAX apocalypse. It turned out consumers were not especially excited about printing advertising in their own homes.
Then came the actual disruption.
The Internet has changed everything. Some mail categories — especially First-Class remittance mail — were devastated. Marketing Mail declined too, though less dramatically. Email was cheaper and easier to deploy, and as ecommerce, Google ads, SEO, and retargeting matured, marketers shifted dollars toward digital channels.
But the world keeps turning. And now the disruptors are being disrupted.
Artificial Intelligence is reshaping how search works. There is less value in winning the top search result if consumers read the AI summary and move on. The rules are changing again. Now marketers need to figure out how to get AI interested in their solution. At the same time, AI is flooding digital channels with nearly effortless content. There’s simply too much stuff competing for attention.
Which brings us back to real mail. Not email. Real mail.
Today, it’s a mistake to think of mail as just another channel in an omnichannel campaign. Mail is often the trigger.
Commerce may happen online — that’s where people complete transactions — but mail is increasingly what gets them there. A consumer scans a QR code, visits a landing page, or enters a PURL. The mail piece becomes the bridge between physical attention and digital action.
And unlike digital advertising, real mail still feels exclusive. It arrives alone. It gets handled. It gets noticed.
That’s why digital marketing and direct mail no longer compete with one another. They strengthen one another. Mail creates attention and credibility. Digital makes response immediate and convenient.
Today, with personalized QR codes and PURLs, attribution is easy and precise. Mail tracking adds another layer of control, helping marketers coordinate campaigns and understand exactly what’s happening while mail is still moving through the system.
Then there’s Informed Delivery — one of the most underappreciated tools in marketing.
Yes, it’s technically email. But it’s an email that people actually open. The Informed Delivery digest generates open rates north of 60% and reaches an opt-in audience representing more than a third of the country. And unlike traditional email marketing, you don’t have to persuade people to open it. They’re already looking. Your job is to persuade them to click — or at least notice the offer before the physical mail piece arrives later that day.
Informed Delivery isn’t exactly email, and it isn’t exactly direct mail. It’s really its own channel — one that only exists because of mail.
So, the question is not “Direct Mail or Digital?”
That’s the wrong question.
The real opportunity is understanding how each channel strengthens the others — and how real mail can act as the trigger that unlocks them all.
Learn how SnailWorks helps marketers connect direct mail and digital strategy with smarter tracking and visibility tools.