Direct mail has always had to live with the "junk mail" moniker. But over the past year, you would think it's also a part of the Madoff family considering how quickly people want to see it put away for life.

Yes, email is cheaper, but that doesn't mean it's always better. Email is particularly effective when the recipient knows the sender. When emails are sent unsolicited, though, their open rate drops dramatically. As it is, the open rate for email is only 17.5% according to Constant Contact's analysis of more than 200 million customer emails. That means 8 out of 10 people aren't even looking at emails they receive.

As more people send unsolicited email, fewer are being opened. A survey published in DM Bulletin indicated that open rates are dropping - upwards of 25% a year. This is less a symptom of ineffectiveness as it is of overuse. As more marketers buy email lists and use them for prospecting, more people choose to hit delete since they don't know the sender.

A 2009 benchmarking survey by DMA showed that 70% of marketers plan to increase the use of email in the next year. To support that kind of growth, email is replacing direct mail and advertising at a startling rate. Fifty-three percent of marketers said an increase in the budget for email will come at the expense of direct mail and 35% said it would come out of print advertising budgets. Two years ago, those numbers were only 33% and 21% respectively.

Some of the shift has to be attributed to the economy. With marketers needing to cut budgets, more expensive media like direct mail and advertising are easy targets. Email also has advantages that the other media can't offer, like the opportunity to achieve far more frequent contact with customers.

But savvy marketers are using the explosion of email at the expense of other media as an opportunity. With fewer direct mailers crossing prospects' desks or thresholds and fewer ads appearing in shrinking magazines and newspapers, those that are created can really stand out.

The key, of course, is to integrate email with appropriate print, electronic, digital and face-to-face marketing channels. As noted in the same DMA study, more marketers are integrating other tactics into their campaigns to support their email efforts. And which are the two channels they are integrating the most? Direct mail and print advertising.

"Although some resources are switching to email at the expense of other channels, this should not imply that email marketing is best used as a standalone channel. Many marketers are conducting (or experimenting with) integrated campaigns, as the following chart shows."

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