The Surprising Way Apple is Driving Direct Mail’s Popularity

Direct mail is more popular than ever, easily competing with digital marketing. Direct mail sees 30 times the response rate for email, and recent studies have found Gen Z are more likely to engage with direct mail. And recent changes by Apple have caused direct mail’s popularity to go through the roof – but why?

In 2021 Apple made big changes to its privacy controls. These changes limited how digital ads can track iPhone users across apps and websites owned by other companies – and allowed iPhone users to opt out of data sharing. Without crucial browsing data to target ads more efficiently, digital advertising for iPhone users became less effective.

Meta’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg told Markets Insider that, “Apple created two challenges for advertisers: one is that the accuracy of our ads targeting decreased, which increased the cost of driving outcomes; the other is that measuring those outcomes became more difficult.” She predicted that the fallout would only increase in 2022.

Just over half of all web traffic comes from mobile devices, with 60% of digital advertising’s worldwide spend used on mobile. And just under half of the world’s Smartphone users currently own an iPhone. Apple’s changes are devastating for digital advertising.

However, direct mail is a form of marketing free from the changes to iOS. As digital advertising becomes trickier, direct mail is pulling ahead of the competition – according to the DMA, direct mail campaigns garner five to nine times the response rates of digital campaigns.

Read more about why direct mail is so effective – including how marketers say direct mail delivers the highest ROI.