Direct mail and email still work better than people think. Physical pieces get opened because they look important. Email hits a 6% click-through rate according to HighLevel data.
These are some boring channels in marketing that still win in 2026. I'll start with number 1 over here. Direct mail, meaning mail that you— physical mail that you get. If I mail you, Neil, if I give you a UPS, if I FedEx something to you, you're damn right you're going to open that thing, right? It doesn't matter what it is. You're going to open it because it seems like it's important to you.
So direct mail, what's old is now new again. Yes. Number 2, email and SMS. I'll combine them because some people just do SMS, some people just do email, some people do both. It works. You know, emails are still getting opened. They're still getting clicked. It's a very effective channel. I don't know why people wouldn't be leveraging email and SMS. They'll be like, oh, AI is going to just summarize the emails. We're still seeing it work. I saw an interesting stat published by HighLevel. Out of the emails they send, their emails get a click rate of roughly 6%, extremely high.
