Marketers as a breed are renowned for making some pretty wild-eyed predictions. Take the Internet, for example. A few years back, it wasn’t enough to quoth the cliché that the Web changes everything. In the view of our more opinionated brethren, it was going to be the killer app that, well, killed marketing as we know it.

Well, hmm … a funny thing happened on the way to digital nirvana. Marketers (gasp) actually started to spend more on traditional forms like direct mail. Sounds like a bona fide killer app to us.

Now, we can see why some people might mistakenly believe the Internet is essentially an electronic replacement for mail. After all, they share many traits: They’re highly personal, segmentation and targeting are a snap, and ROI transparency a given.

But as anyone who has tried to touch or hold an e-mail will tell you, they’re also a little different and, dare we say, highly complementary.

Essentially, they work at the same purpose, but from different angles and with different benefits and drawbacks. Smart marketers utilize both Internet and mail to communicate their message.

As for those ivory tower types who feel compelled to keep tolling the death knell for direct, we say stick to something you’re qualified to predict, like whether the groundhog will see his shadow.