The fall meeting of EMA, The Envelope Manufacturers Association had interesting presentations from industry experts and officials including the Post Master General of the United States Postal Service (USPS) and the Inspector General of the USPS.

One of the most interesting presentations was a report on the recent research done on how the brain reacts to printed material versus material you see on a computer screen. The researchers hooked up their subjects in order to track their heart rates, did eye tracking and even used MRI technology to see what was going on in the person’s brain when they were reading printed versus digital material.

The researchers found that direct mail printed material delivers a much stronger emotional response than electronic information. You also remember the information in a printed piece much longer than electronic advertising. In some cases, weeks instead of hours.

Other updated research shows that response rates to direct mail are 30 times the rate for digital advertising. It has also been shown that physical mail drives people to an advertiser’s website much more effectively than digital advertising. The pop up ads you see everywhere on the internet still get the credit for someone going to a website but overwhelmingly it was a direct mail or printed advertising that first got the person interested in the product. They already know where they want to go and it wasn’t the digital ad that sent them to the website.

What does this all mean? Direct mail and print are here to stay. As marketers learn how people react to printed material versus digital, we will see better use of printed material. This means more color, more gimmicks to entice a person to open a mail piece such as our Tear-ific® envelope, and different papers to enhance the tactile experience.

Some people are also wondering what happens to digital advertising once marketers figure out that digital ads aren’t anywhere near as effective as they thought. It will be interesting to see how this develops.