Europe and South America are the regions most direct marketers are interested in reaching with international business mail, according to a random survey conducted at the 85th Annual DMA Conference & Exhibition in San Francisco last month by Deutsche Post Global Mail, Herndon, VA.
All respondents currently send mail to Europe and 40 percent mail to South America. In addition, 28 percent send business mail to Asia and 9 percent send mail to Africa. When asked which new countries they intend to target in 2003, Italy was the most popular response, ahead of Germany and France. Argentina and Brazil followed.
“The results of this survey show that in a business world that is putting more and more emphasis on reaching international markets using Internet initiatives, many companies still see the value of using business mail,” said Rainer Hengst, vice president of public affairs at Deutsche Post Global Mail USA. “Clearly, international mail is an important tool for American companies looking to communicate to audiences abroad.”
Fifty people were randomly polled at the conference, asked to complete a questionnaire with questions such as:
· How many years has your organization been marketing your products/services to prospective customers internationally?
· Which continents do you send business mail to outside the U.S.? Please check all that apply.
· What three new countries do you intend to begin mailing to this coming year?
· Over the next two years do you expect to increase or decrease the number of countries you mail to?
An overwhelming majority of attendee companies that send business mail internationally also said that they intended to increase their volume in 2002 and planned more increases in the next two years.
For volume of international mail in 2002, 91 percent said theirs had increased. Eighty-two percent increased international mail shipments at least 4 percent, and 37 percent saw them rise more than 8 percent.
Ninety-four percent expected to increase their volume over the next two years. DPGM said 85 percent expected volume to rise at least 4 percent, and 41 percent expect volume to increase at least 8 percent. Also, 21 percent expect their international mail volume to rise more than 10 percent over the next two years.
According to DPGM, the survey indicates that the anticipated growth of international mail would continue a trend that emerged in the late 1990s. For example, when asked how long their companies had been mailing internationally, 71 percent said five years or fewer, including 15 percent who had started in the past 12 months.
