A survey gauging public reaction to the Federal Trade Commission’s national no-call list found people preferred mail to other direct marketing tactics for a company’s products and services.
Released yesterday by Vertis, the Customer Focus survey found 31 percent of respondents chose mail, 24 percent newspaper inserts, 18 percent catalogs and 11 percent newspaper advertisements. Only 10 percent preferred e-mail and 6 percent answered “None of the above.”
“It should be reassuring for the direct mail industry to know that consumers indicated they prefer this method of contact to telemarketing and many other alternatives,” said Therese Mulvey, vice president of marketing research at Vertis, in a statement.
The Vertis data were pulled from a poll last month of 250 adults over 18-years-old.
Since it opened June 27, the national no-call registry has received more than 30 million consumer registrations. Four out of five were made on the FTC-run site at www.donotcall.gov. The rest were made by telephone.
In this latest survey, 80 percent of the respondents said they were aware of the no-call registry. However, only 30 percent registered their households to prevent telephone sales calls.
That lethargy will not last long, according to the survey results. Sixty-eight percent of those polled said they expect to register with the no-call list in the future.
The no-call list goes live Oct. 1.
Vertis, Baltimore, offers research, media planning and placement, creative, digital media production, circulation products, insert marketing and direct marketing programs.
