Direct marketing media expenditures totaled 37 billion deutsche marks in 1998 and should hit 40 billion this year, according to a new study from Deutsche Post, the German post office.
Of the money spent last year, 12 billion went to addressed direct mail, the largest category, which rose from 11.7 billion, said Deutsche Post’s Susanne Meier at the DIMA conference in Wiesbaden yesterday.
However, the fastest growing medium was Interactive, which went from one billion the year before to 1.4 billion deutsche marks. Meier added that the use of online media also went up by the greatest percentage – from 13% of all companies using it in 1997 to 21% in 1998.
In contrast, spending on telephone marketing rose while use unchanged from 1997 to 1998. Some 4.6 billion deutsche marks were spent on telephone marketing in 1998, compared with 4.3 billion the year before, but use remained at 39%.
Addressed direct mail usage declined from 38% to 37% for all companies during the same years, as did spending on direct response magazine ads, Meier said. Among “classic media with response elements,” 11.9 billion deutsche marks were spent on magazine ads, compared with 11 billion in 1997. She added that 3.8 billion deutsche marks were spend on unaddressed mail in 1998.
DRTV spending rose to 2 billion deutsche marks from 1.6 billion the year before, while outdoor billboard advertising slipped from 600 million to 300 million deutsche marks.
Deutsche Post surveyed 3,000 companies, representing all types of German businesses. Meier explained that the sample is projectable on the entire universe of 822,000 German companies.
Of all those firms, 64% were active in direct marketing in 1998, up from 29% in 1988 and 62% in 1997. The most active were medium sized businesses, 74% of which used direct marketing. Despite those firms showing the greatest growth in direct marketing spending when categorized by size, the very largest companies still produced the greatest volume.
Network
