Why Should Direct Mail Campaigns be a Part of Your Marketing Strategy?

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Marketing your business does not necessarily mean focusing on online tools or mobile strategies. Although direct mail might seem old-fashioned, it is an effective way to reach your target audience. The benefits of direct mail campaigns make it worth considering when you are looking for ways to reach out and attract new customers to your business.

Limiting the Location

A key reason that direct mail campaigns are a useful way to reach your target audience is the limitation on the area. Local businesses can reach potential customers in the specific location rather than wasting advertisements on individuals who are not likely to visit the store. It limits the location so that only the target group is receiving the advertisement.

Reaching the Right Demographic

Not every individual is able to access the Internet or has an interest in using online tools. That is particularly true of older men and women, who may or may not enjoy using the Internet. Reaching a specific demographic is a key reason to consider using direct mail marketing. It ensures that the advertisement reaches the appropriate demographic audience.

Likelihood of Looking at the Ad

It is easy to ignore banners and advertisements online. Individuals simply do not look at them. Individuals are less likely to overlook direct mail because it is found in their mail box. Even if the products or services are not necessary at the time an individual sees the ad, they are still likely to look at it and remember it when they do need that product or service.

Direct mail campaigns may seem old-fashioned at first glance, but ultimately it can help you reach your target audience. By sending the advertisement through the mail, your target audience is more likely to look at and notice your advertisement.

Connections Between the Printing and Mailing Industries

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Printing and mailing often go hand in hand. Why? When you print something, think about what you are going to do with it. If it is some kind of marketing campaign, it needs to be distributed – and this usually means mailing it.

The printing industry often supports the mailing industry. While many people have gone to electronic statements for their credit cards and receive a lot of other things electronically, businesses are still able to market inside of a person’s physical mailbox. They will work with a printing company and then seek a company that offers mailing services to get it all done.

When you can find a company that works within the printing and mailing industries, you get the best of both worlds.

It can be extremely easy to create a direct mail campaign when your print company will do all of the work for you. Think about all of it – designing a flyer, printing a flyer, and distributing the flyer – all provided by one company so you can save time as well as money.

The mailing industry is much more than simply helping things get mailed to different locations. The mailing industry is also responsible for managing mailing lists. If you want to print something and have it distributed, you will want access to a mailing list so that your marketing campaign gets into the hands of people who actually care about the product or service that you are trying to promote.

It works to your advantage for the printing and mailing industries to have a very strong connection. When the print industry partners with the mailing industry, you benefit because they are able to offer you better services.

Direct mail is the outcome of the relationship – and you can market your business effectively because people still like seeing things in their mailbox.

Why You Should Incorporate QR Codes into Direct Mail Campaigns

Direct mail campaigns need to be effective beyond anything else. While it’s also a good idea to make sure they are colorful and informative, they need to be effective. This means that you have to use all of the latest tips and tricks to make sure that readers see the benefit in what you are putting in their mail box.

The QR code is a great way to make sure people are able to benefit from your direct mail campaign. If you have a hard-to-type web address, you can simply place a QR code on your flyer so that people can scan it with their mobile device. They will then be taken to the website where they will learn more about your business.

More and more people are learning about QR codes. Not exactly sure what this code is all about? It stands for quick response and is designed to carry a lot of information inside of it. Mobile devices often have an app that will scan the QR code and decipher it. Depending upon how the QR code was created, it may provide an image, bring you to a website, or send off an email for you.

It’s very easy to incorporate a QR code into a direct mail campaign. It’s not going to cost you anything to create.

There are lots of websites that make it easy to create a QR code to your website or anything else for free. Then you simply add it onto your catalog, post card or anything else that you want to mail to your mailing list.

QR codes make it easier for people to take action. They can go to your website.

Direct Mail: Why Do You Still Need It?

Direct mail is still an important part of a comprehensive advertising campaign. While some people may view direct mail as old-fashioned, there is still a significant demographic that can be reached via this tactic. Everyone in the world gets, and opens, their mail, and using direct mail advertising is one of the most effective ways to reach a specific geographical demographic. Online advertising is extremely valuable, but it’s also extremely variable: the people that you reach can be demographically and geographically spread out. For companies that need to reach a core demographic in a specific area, direct mail can be the best way to target advertising and get a higher return on their advertising dollar.

Direct mail can be effective in many ways that online advertising simply cannot. Direct mail has more substance, and can be delivered in many eye-catching and interesting ways. Many consumers have a tendency to become blind to online advertisements over time, which can make direct mail an easier way to catch their attention. Direct mail can also reach certain demographics of consumers more easily than online advertisements, such as older consumers or consumers that just aren’t as likely to go online.

Advertising in direct mail can be fairly cost-effective as long as discounts are used for the postage and the mailers themselves are kept simple. There are many methods of cutting costs for direct mail advertising, and experienced marketing companies will be able to make suggestions to a company about ways they can reduce the overall expense. There are also direct mail companies that specialize in mailing out vast quantities of advertisements for a low per unit price. Direct mail can also be used to bring traffic into a website that the website would have otherwise been unable to reach.

Make the Most Out of Your Direct Mail Marketing

For companies that run direct mail campaigns, the ability to effectively measure the highs and lows of those campaigns is vital to the success of their advertising as a whole. The following tips will have you well on your way toward making the most out of your company’s direct mail marketing:

  1. Utilize a tracking software system that will measure the statistics of your campaign easily and efficiently: Yes, there is no denying that it may cost less money to send emails than it does to send direct mail. However, if the act of sending direct mail to your audience could bring you better results, wouldn’t you want to do that? Of course! However, we must put forth the effort to prove that is true. This may primarily mean that we set up our campaigns and landing pages in a way so that direct mail responses are measured differently than responses to your emails, social media posts, or activities on another channel. Response mechanisms such as QR Codes and personalized URLs can help us measure direct mail effectiveness as well!
  1. Select a focused audience versus conducting a blind mailing effort, thus increasing the potential for successful contacts: The days of spray-and-pray must be a thing of the past. This is certainly true from a budgetary perspective. But it also should be true from the fact that technology makes it easier than ever to create targeted, personalized materials and by doing so, we can increase our response rates. By segmenting our audiences, we can deliver direct mail pieces that may have text, images,and offers that are relevant to each individual.
  2. Ensure that your direct mail pieces are both informative and aesthetically pleasing: We must never forget marketing fundamentals. Sure, it can be fun to get excited about new marketing channels; however, we must not neglect putting forth an effort to ensure our direct mail pieces look good and tell a compelling story.

These are just a few of the ways that companies can successfully incorporate direct mail into their marketing mix.

3 Best Practices for Direct Mail

As a marketer, you may not know that there are many tools and technologies available to help your company execute successful direct mail efforts. Using tools such as variable data printing, personalized URLs, and personalized QR Codes can easily create measurable campaigns.

If you are looking to personalize direct mail pieces for your customers, here are three ideas worth considering.

Consider the location of the recipient and design the materials accordingly.

By taking a look at the recipient’s location, you should be able to identify a data element that could be converted to personalized content. For example, if you are sending direct mail to promote your retail store, gym, or another physical location, you could personalize the piece to show just how close the person is to that spot. This could be represented graphically, via a map, or simply in text (i.e. “you are less than 2 miles away!”)

If you are targeting previous customers, appeal to that and possibly reference the product or service they purchased.

If we are sending direct mail pieces to our existing customers, we truly have no excuse not to personalize our materials. Take the time to look at their purchase history. With that data, you should be able to ensure that the promotions and offers on your direct mail piece are truly relevant to them.

Based on demographics, select color(s) that may appeal to each group.

This one may take a bit more research and creativity. But there certainly are studies out there regarding the effect that certain colors may have on different groups of people. If you can find a way to use the right ones for the segments inside of your target audience, you should be able to increase your response rates.

Integrate Your Direct Mail and Social Media Efforts

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There is no doubt that social networks are continuing to grow in popularity among all age groups. Recent statistics from Pew Internet & American Life Project indicated that 65% of online adults use social networking sites.  Marketers should continue to devote resources into using that channel to reach customers and prospects. However, this can also create an opportunity for your mail and print channels.

Direct mail and social networking efforts can both be improved when they are integrated together. Here are 5 ideas to make that integration happen:

Put the Social Media Badge on your Direct Mailer
Alright, this one is probably the easiest and most obvious of the bunch. If you’ve invested the time in creating and managing social media profiles for your company, you need to make sure that people know about them. Sure, some might find about them via links that you’ve added to your corporate website or via their own searches.

But to ensure that everyone knows, try adding the “badge” of social media icons to your direct mail pieces.

Simply seeing the “Facebook” or “Twitter” logo on your postcard may help your target audience become aware that your company is sharing information via those channels too.

Post Links to Your Landing Page on Social Media Sites
Let’s say that you’ve created a landing page that is filled with compelling information and a form that asks the perfect amount of questions. Will people only get to that page if they receive a direct mailer that contains a personalized URL?

Give this a try – in addition to the personalized landing pages, create versions that will be available to the general public. Then, post links to the general version of the landing page on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media sites that your audience uses.

Throughout the campaign, measure how people are getting to your page. Is it via the PURL on the direct mailer? Or via Twitter or Facebook? These types of reports may help you to better invest your resources in future campaigns when it comes to segments of your audience.

Make the Mailer Interactive with a QR Code
Companies of all sizes and varieties are creating videos with their Flip cameras and smart phones and uploading them to YouTube. Those videos can certainly help to spread your company’s message and to increase your SEO efforts.

But online video can also be re-purposed to make a direct mail piece interactive.

Simply create a QR Code that points directly to the YouTube video or to a mobile-optimized site that provides a link to the video. Place the QR Code on the direct mailer with a call-to-action, and then watch how your growing mobile audience responds.

Enable Landing Page Visitors to Easily Share the Link with Others
This might be the one idea where you can truly start to see growth in the overall success of your campaigns. When someone visits your landing page, make it easy for them to share a link to your content on their social media profiles.

This could be via a simple “Tweet This” button for Twitter, a “Like” button for Facebook, or some other sort of social media plug-in.

If your content is truly helpful and you make it easy for people to share it, your audience will grow with the help of others.

Drive People to Your Social Media Sites from the Thank You page
Let’s say that someone responds to the call-to-action on your direct mailer, types in their PURL, and fills out your response form. What do you then? Do you simply say Thank You?

Well, you could do that and then follow-up with them later. Or, you could try to further the engagement at that moment.

Try integrating your social media profiles into your Thank You page. This could mean simply putting icons that link to your social media pages. It could also mean embedding a YouTube video onto the page as well. Since the person has already shown interest in your company, perhaps they’d be more than willing to take a few minutes and learn a bit more about who you are and what you can do for them.

These are just a few ideas for integrating direct mail with social media. I hope that they help improve the success of your marketing and educational efforts.

3 Ways to Utilize Direct Mail

We all recognize that companies no longer rely solely on direct mail and print to try to reach their customers and prospects. But as long as it remains an effective channel, businesses will use it.

Here are three ways that you can use effective direct mail efforts for your business:

Personalization and Segmentation: Data was meant to do more than simply be imported and exported. Find creative ways to segment lists by the criteria that you may have. Then, tailor the message, content, and/or graphics to appeal specifically to each group.

Complement the Effort with Other Channels: How many touches does it take to make a sale? If there really is a magic number, the bottom line is this: the answer is not typically 1! Rather, it may take multiple efforts through multiple channels to truly make an impression on a prospect. Use channels such as email, social media, and mobile marketing in addition to the direct mail piece to truly deliver an integrated, cross-channel campaign.

Test Multiple Designs & Offers: Testing multiple offers does not indicate that you are not sure of what you’re doing. Rather, it proves that you are truly supporting your marketing efforts and that you’re determined to ensure that your marketing & educational campaigns are the best they can be. Try testing multiple mailers with different wording and graphics. Then, present the reports to your team to show them what’s working the best.

If you need help with your campaigns, let us know!