Digital marketing vs print marketing: what really works?

When you’re trying to decide where best to allocate your marketing budget, should you be focusing your spend on digital channels or printed materials? Each has its pros and cons, so it’s important to make an informed decision in order to ensure you’re getting the best return for your efforts. In this guide, we’ll look at what each involves, when you should consider using each and why the real answer is that it’s not an either/or question – it’s about getting the right mix.

Why the debate matters

Many professionals’ first thought may be a digital-first campaign, but does this risk missing opportunities? In a time when budgets are stretched and boardrooms demand results and accountability from campaigns, it’s important to show a strong ROI. This is exactly what print marketing can do – provided campaigns are handled effectively.

In many cases, what holds marketers back from fully exploring print is that they underestimate what it’s capable of. Some professionals regard it as slower, less flexible or more expensive than digital, but in reality, print offers a wide range of benefits. With modern tools, brands can use this channel to craft targeted and adaptable materials that have a real, measurable impact. What’s more, when combined with online, the results are even stronger.

Digital marketing vs print marketing: the basics

Before you can fully answer the question of digital or print, however, it pays to understand the fundamentals, such as what options there are within each method, what their pros and cons are and what needs to be done to create an effective campaign. With this in mind, here’s a brief rundown of the basics.

Digital marketing

This refers to any online-based channels and can cover a wide range of activities. Email marketing, social media posting, search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising all fall under the banner of digital marketing – and they all have their own requirements and quirks you’ll need to know about to do them effectively.

Broadly speaking, the main benefits of digital marketing are its reach, speed and scale. Done well, you can either reach very wide audiences or really drill down with data-driven targeting and micropersonalisation, all with minimal ramp-up time. However, the downside of digital is that you’re often a small voice in a very loud and busy marketplace. Issues like oversaturation and ad fatigue can limit the effect of campaigns, as users simply switch off from what you’re saying. This means you have to spend more to stand out from the crowd.

Print marketing

Print marketing, on the other hand, offers a more direct connection with target audiences. You can reach them with a wide range of materials, including letters, flyers, brochures, postcards, catalogues or packages, which can be personalised to each user.

Upfront costs may often be higher than for digital and they take longer to set up (with print, fulfilment and postage all requiring time), but the trade-off is you’re putting something tangible directly into the hands of recipients. This offers higher trust and memorability than digital channels, where a post can easily be scrolled past and forgotten.

Cost comparison: digital vs print

At first glance, it can seem that digital has the advantage when it comes to costs. There are no physical materials or printing to consider, so your costs per campaign will be lower for email than for direct mail, for example. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean digital is always the more budget-friendly option.

If you want online marketing to stand out, you need investment. This may be ongoing SEO costs or paid-for PPC campaigns, which can quickly eat into your budget and harm your ROI. This is particularly true if you’re targeting high-value keywords in competitive industries, where cost-per-click can quickly become unsustainable.

Print, on the other hand, does come with a range of upfront costs, for materials, printing and postage. However, there are a range of steps firms can take to reduce these expenses. For instance, targeting seasonal lulls in the summer and start of the year can minimise print costs, while there are bulk postage discounts available for larger campaigns, cutting the cost per item.

Engagement and response rates

How effectively print and digital marketing engages and connects with consumers is one of the biggest differences between the channels. Digital can often struggle to attract eyes because it’s easy to scroll past a social post or click delete on an email. What’s more, when people are online, they’re usually doing something else, whether that’s browsing online shopping, answering work emails or joining Zoom calls – so marketing messages are inherently disruptive.

Printed materials, on the other hand, are made to interact more directly. People don’t sit down on the sofa with a cup of tea and their emails, but they will flick through the pages of a catalogue. Giving them something tangible to read holds their attention and ensures your brand sticks in their mind after they put it down.

In 2025, figures from JICMAIL suggest the average response rate for a warm direct mail campaign is 7.2 per cent, while Royal Mail notes 76 per cent of physical mail gets read.

When to use digital and when to use print

Because of the differences in immediacy, engagement and visibility, digital and print marketing often have different goals. Knowing when to use each is the key to a successful campaign, whichever medium you’re using.

Digital offers benefits when you need results quickly. For example, if you want instant reactions in response to a sale, online and social advertising are ideal for spreading the word and driving clicks. Elsewhere, it can also benefit from wide reach to test out new ideas or messaging, as it’s easy to track interactions and see at a glance what’s working well and what isn’t.

Personalised direct mail marketing, on the other hand, excels at cutting through and making a lasting impact. These materials boost awareness and recall among consumers and are much harder to ignore than digital channels. It can also be shared among residents and typically remains in an audience’s home for days or even weeks.

Choosing the right mix for your campaign

Knowing the advantages of each option is a great place to start – but it would be a mistake to treat online vs offline marketing as in competition, or view either in isolation. In fact, some of the most successful campaigns combine both digital and traditional marketing.

By starting with print marketing to make an impression and get noticed, then direct them to online channels via a QR code or personalised URLs in the messaging, you can enjoy the best of both worlds.

The evidence is clear that this blended approach works – with MarketReach finding that campaigns combining direct mail with digital advertising see a 40 per cent increase in response rates compared to digital-only campaigns, while 70 per cent of people have been driven to an online activity by mail.

Choosing the right combination of channels is key to success. Smart campaigns use both digital for reach and print for recall, while partnering with an experienced mailing house can help ensure that costs like printing and postage are kept under control.

Get in touch with The Mailing People today to learn more about how we can help manage your next print marketing efforts.