Your post "Mistrust Research" does a nice job of describing these problems, and I've posted on it on the Small Biz Labs blog (will be published friday).

I too was surprised by the traditional mail versus email numbers in the ICR survey. But after thinking about it for a bit, I didn't find them totally out of line.

According to Pew Internet (the most unbiased source I know), about 70% of Americans have Internet access in their homes, and 91% of those with Internet access use email. Of those using email, 56% use email more or less on a daily basis. This means only 40% of Americans use email at home on a daily basis, and roughly 36% of all American adults don't use email at home at all.

Couple these numbers with the impact of spam on regular email users, and it is believable that a substantial majority of adult survey respondents would say they prefer receiving marketing communications via traditional mail.

I haven't seen any other studies on this. I'll do a little more digging – email versus traditional mail is an active topic of debate in the direct marketing industry so I would think there would be more research on this topic.

I happen to like trees and try to act in ways that will keep them around. Were I not so inclined, though, I would probably prefer my promotions by mail too, since I experience unsolicited email as a productivity hit but only occasionally get around to even checking my real-world mailbox.