In the debate over whether to use traditional direct mail or e-mail for marketing your company’s product or service, beware of using your personal experience or preferences to determine the marketing campaign strategy. To be blunt: your personal preferences are not a representative sample of the target audience, and so are irrelevant.

In the debate between direct mail and e-mail, each individual in your target audience gets the final say-so as to which method is better. You can make some educated guesses based on demographics such as age or whether the individual is a consumer or buying for a business, but ultimately you won’t know until you ask. Since that may be impractical or even impossible, the safest course is to use both direct mail and e-mail. In addition, response rates go up when more than one communication method is used.

Avoid the problems that can arise by assuming that your personal experience or preferences for being contacted can be generalized to the target audience. Base your marketing strategy on actual research and proven facts.