Monthly Archives

August 2024

The Top 10 Advantages of Direct Mail Marketing

By | Direct Mail

Why Direct Mail Remains Effective

  1. Greater Memorability

Direct mail materials offer a tangible experience that digital ads can’t replicate, making them more memorable and enhancing brand recall for recipients.

  1. Precise Audience Targeting

Direct mail enables businesses to target specific demographics, interests, or geographic regions, ensuring that their messages reach the most relevant audience segments.

  1. Personalized Messaging

Direct mail allows for highly customized communication, where businesses can address recipients by name and tailor content to individual preferences and behaviors through precise targeted distribution strategies.

  1. Higher Response Rates

Direct mail consistently outperforms digital marketing channels in terms of response rates, leading to increased customer engagement, lead generation, and conversions.

  1. Physical Brand Representation

Printed mail materials provide a physical embodiment of your brand, helping to establish trust, credibility, and emotional connections with recipients.

  1. Trackable Results

Direct mail campaigns can be easily monitored and measured using unique identifiers or response mechanisms, allowing businesses to evaluate the success of their marketing efforts and make necessary adjustments.

  1. Creative Versatility

Direct mail offers creative freedom, enabling businesses to design visually appealing and innovative mailers that capture attention and stand out in the mailbox.

  1. Extended Shelf Life

Unlike digital ads that quickly fade away, direct mail materials have a longer shelf life, remaining visible to recipients for an extended period and increasing the chances of a response over time.

  1. Integration with Digital Marketing

Direct mail can work in tandem with digital marketing strategies, offering an integrated approach that enhances brand visibility and engagement across multiple channels, both online and offline.

  1. Cost-Efficiency

Contrary to popular belief, direct mail can be a cost-effective marketing option, providing a competitive ROI and value for businesses of all sizes, particularly when combined with targeted and personalized messaging.

By taking advantage of these benefits, businesses can effectively use direct mail marketing to reach and engage their target audience, driving measurable outcomes and achieving their marketing goals.

How to Adapt Your Direct Mail Marketing to an Uncertain Market

By | Direct Mail

As an unpredictable market continues to impact brands around the world, companies must adapt while preparing for the future. See how direct mail marketing can create better stability and higher ROI.

Today’s businesses are facing an unpredictable market. With a shifting economy, tighter regulations and changing customer preferences all affecting the industry in recent years, businesses are looking for ways to adapt. Focusing more on direct mail marketing can help maintain a consistent return on investment (ROI) during times of uncertainty.

In fact, direct mail campaigns incorporating standard letter-sized mail had a 112% average ROI when sent out to prospects—higher than SMS texts (at 102%), email (at 93%) and paid search (at 88%).

There’s no way to fully avoid the inherent uncertainty of the modern-day marketing and supply chain spheres. But with careful planning and innovative use of direct mail, companies can mitigate risks, ease costs, and create successful campaigns that not only maintain but improve ROI.

5 Tips for Long-Term Success with Direct Mail Marketing

The cost of digital marketing is on the rise, with businesses facing higher prices and increased pressure to convert.

But direct mail can still provide a reliable return on investment while offering customers a uniquely tangible experience—a welcome novelty in the age of digital. Following a few best practices can help ensure success:

  1. Plan Ahead

Rising costs, inventory scarcity and various supply chain issues can all contribute to delays in campaign launches. To help ensure your direct mail marketing efforts are released on schedule, it’s important to plan ahead. Let vendors know well in advance what products you require, and keep a detailed schedule of upcoming campaigns and major milestones. If you’re looking to save on paper costs, explore options for lighter-weight materials that still meet USPS requirements

Pro Tip: Maintain close communication with colleagues and partners to keep things moving, and be sure to build delays into your schedule to create more realistic timelines.

  1. Reduce Waste

Increasing efficiencies can help ensure your campaigns reach the right people and your mailpieces don’t go to waste. Even simple steps like regularly updating your mailing lists can go a long way. With approximately one in six families moving every year, ensuring address accuracy is imperative. You can double-check ZIP Code™ information using the USPS® ZIP Code lookup tool.

Pro Tip: No matter how much you prepare, some undeliverable mail is inevitable. The free USPS BlueEarth® Secure Destruction service can intercept any of your brand’s undeliverable.

First-Class® mailpieces, then securely destroy them and recycle them—saving you both time and money.

  1. Automate Campaigns

Automated marketing can streamline campaigns, helping you connect with the customers most likely to convert while keeping your marketing costs down. Retargeted direct mail, for example, allows you to send out mail automatically after a customer takes a specific action on one of your digital channels. Many brands use this to follow up with customers who left items in their online shopping carts, helping to move them closer toward a purchase.

Pro Tip: Make it easy for customers to act on your mail pieces using omnichannel innovations. If you’re sending postcards reminding customers of the items in their abandoned online carts, for instance, a smartphone-scannable QR Code can lead them right back to those specific products.

  1. Dig Into the Data

Take advantage of the data at your disposal to create highly targeted, cost-efficient marketing. By analyzing customer data, you can better determine which demographics are responding to your campaigns, then use this information to shape future marketing, make the most of your budget and increase the chances of customers making a purchase.

Pro Tip: Gather data from all channels—social media, websites, emails, direct mail, reviews, and more. How do customers discuss your brand on social? What questions come up most often? Which promotions have been successful? All of this information can help you create mail that grabs customers’ attention and spurs engagement.

  1. Remain Flexible

During times of disruption, flexibility is key. Ordering inventory and campaign materials weeks ahead of time and mapping out key campaigns in advance can help avoid major issues. But you may still need to be ready with other options if things don’t go according to plan. Always be prepared to work with your carriers and vendors to find an alternative that makes sense for your needs.

Pro Tip: When adapting campaigns to a shifting environment, always adjust according to customer needs. Remaining rigid in the type of campaign or product you’re offering can hold you back, but defining your brand based on customer needs allows you to adapt quickly, remain relevant and maintain loyalty—all while improving ROI.

Key Takeaway

With the supply chain in a constant state of flux and marketing costs on the rise, businesses are making changes—big and small—to create more efficient, streamlined campaigns.

Even amid uncertainty and disruption, direct mail remains a reliable, cost-effective marketing medium—allowing marketers to create integrated, easily trackable omnichannel campaigns that encourage customers to act. Taking a few simple steps to prepare for the future, from automating marketing to reducing waste, can help protect your bottom line—for today, tomorrow and beyond.

 

 

Footnotes
[1]According to the Association of National Advertisers’ “Response Rate Report 2021: Performance and Cost Metrics.”
[2]Brad Rosenfeld, “How Marketers Are Fighting Rising Ad Costs,” Forbes, Nov. 14, 2022.
[3]“Checking the Accuracy of Your Address List,” Postal Explorer, USPS.
[4]QR Code is a registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORATED.
Reprinted with permission of USPSDelivers.com, an expert resource for future-thinking shippers and marketers.

Discover Innovative Methods of Tracking Direct Mail

By | Direct Mail

With tighter marketing budgets, the ability to identify a quantifiable return is more important than ever. See effective ways to track and measure the performance of a direct mail campaign.

For today’s marketers, analytics is the name of the game. The shift to digital has provided a wealth of trackable insights, with many campaign decisions relying on performance data to prove each channel’s worth. Unsure of how to measure its ROI, marketers often leave direct mail off the table.

But is that leaving a valuable opportunity behind?

Seasoned marketers know the unique role direct mail can play in the  customer journey — it has long had the power to precisely target and engage consumers. In discussions with key decision-makers at several retail, B2B and agency organizations, however, we hear that many struggle to support mail’s place in their modern-day campaigns.

Direct mail attribution is possible. The key is tying direct mail into a larger digital campaign using the right technical innovations. Read on to see how advertisers are measuring the ability of direct mail to amplify their message and drive action.

How to Track Direct Mail ROI

See how various methods of attribution can help direct mail work with digital to provide measurable results.

Retargeted Direct Mail

Retargeted direct mail is a valuable component of an omnichannel campaign. In synch with your digital channels, this tactic automates much of the direct mail journey, including sending direct mail to your online visitors after they’ve reached specific triggers.

This allows for highly personalized messaging, as well as the gathering of additional data and insights into their behaviors. For example, if a customer visits your website but doesn’t purchase, you can send out an incentive—tying their IP address to a home address—and track whether it converts.

Similarly, you can automatically retarget those who abandon carts. This happens via email all the time, but retargeting emails can get lost in the mix when consumers receive nearly 90 email solicitations a day, compared to just 2.5 pieces of mail.[5]

QR Codes

More popular than ever, the small square barcode known as a QR Code®

is the perfect merge of offline and on. With a unique scannable code added directly to a mail piece, your audience can easily take the next step toward a sale, whether that’s visiting your site, finding your store, redeeming a coupon or other actions. And you’ll know exactly what and when they do it.

What can customers do with a QR Code?

  • Go directly to an order page to purchase instantly
  • Watch a video to learn more about your product
  • Download an exclusive coupon
  • Pinpoint your location on their map application
  • Add an event directly to their calendar
  • Easily contact your sales team or customer service
  • QR Codes are great for an immediate action, and they encourage it by being so simple. Consumers don’t have to go to a computer and enter a URL. They’re engaged right on their phone, which means you are able to gather a wealth of data that can be used to nurture the relationship—and to plan future promotions.

Match-Backs

Match-back reporting is the process of matching untracked sales with your mailing list. By matching conversions during a promotion with the customers on your list, you’ll be able to attribute at least some level of credit to direct mail for the sale.

It’s important to utilize a match-back to determine campaign performance more fully. Not all users will take advantage of a QR Code or other specific URL, but they will be driven to act, and therefore direct mail merits attribution for the sale. Matching your list with a sale also gives you information about the list, offer and creative, which enables you to optimize going forward.

Two things to note: A match-back process is not instant, so you will have to be patient with results. Mail’s lifespan in a home is longer than an email’s, for example—it may sit or be shared with others in the household before being used—so a period of match-back analysis could be from 30 to 90 days.

Second, you may want to consider a holdout strategy to further validate your match-back findings. This involves intentionally withholding your mailing from a determined group to serve as a control to compare with the sales results from the mailed group. While not totally foolproof in a multichannel campaign, this can help attribute lift to direct mail.

Promo Codes and Coupons

Consumers expect and look for special offers with direct mail, with 77% saying a discount is the most effective element of a marketing mail piece.

Coupons can introduce new customers to your business and encourage existing customers to come back to your store. Used strategically, coupons can even help drive sales of a profitable item or service.

Coupons can also help you track your campaign’s performance, particularly when your mail piece contains a unique offer code. Any time the promo code is used for a sale, whether online, over the phone or in person, it will be attributed to your direct mail. In some cases, sending out a promo code will also help you build your online database by requiring an email address in order for it to be used.

Vanity URLs

Similar to how QR Codes function, a vanity URL in your direct mail makes it easier to drive users online to complete a specific action. Meant to be short and memorable, these unique web addresses not only help the shift to your digital channel happen quickly, they also track the encounter to measure specific tactics.

Let’s say you are running TV, out-of-home and direct mail ads. If each promotion features a different URL, you’ll be able to see how each converted, just as you would with online ads. For the best memorability and metrics, give each tactic a clever domain name that works with your campaign theme and drives to a landing page.

Vanity URL Do’s

  • Short
  • Memorable
  • Relevant
  • For Example: GimmeFreeHotdogs.com

Vanity URL Don’ts

  • Complicated abbreviations
  • Long names with backslashes
  • No specific call to action (for awareness campaigns, stick to your domain name)
  • You can also go further to create personalized URLs (PURLs), which are unique to each customer and lead to custom landing page, a powerful way to bridge the gap to digital.

Post-Purchase Surveys

The value of sending your customers a post-purchase survey is twofold: First, you can ask how they came to your business, and therefore attribute the sale to that tactic. Second, following up can help maintain customer satisfaction.

41% of sales are generated by repeat purchases from satisfied customers.

A post-purchase survey can be as simple as a question on the checkout confirmation page, or it can be sent out later as a check-in to see how they feel about your product and experience. Ideally you can pinpoint how they heard about you and gain insights that can be used to nurture the relationship going forward.

Business Reply Cards

The familiar prepaid business reply card is a popular method for gathering responses to direct mail. These postcards are attached to or included in your mailer and are easy for prospects to fill out and send back.

With a few simple questions, they enable you to gather valuable information about your audience that you might not receive with other response methods. You might even offer an incentive for returning the card, which can boost replies. Just remember, there are format guidelines, and you will need a BRM permit to receive Business Reply Mail.

Key Takeaway

Direct mail is a proven performer. However, with an array of internal teams and media tactics vying for a piece of the budget, it’s no wonder the aspect of a clear and real-time ROI often wins.

Today’s smarter direct mail can help justify the spend. With a comprehensive attribution model, merging direct mail with digital, you can not only engage with consumers across numerous channels, but can also have the power to measure the impact more definitively.

 

 

Footnotes

[1]USPS, Direct Mail Decision Making Report, Jan. 6, 2022.
[2]Ibid.
[3]Ibid.
[4]Ibid.
[5]Michael Peach, “Mastering Direct Mail Attribution,” Lob, March 23, 2020.
[6]QR Code is a registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORATED.
[7]USPSDelivers.com Research — Full Report, Qualitative and Quantitative Results, Summit Research, February 2021.
[8]Ash Maynor, “Why merchants should have a post-purchase survey,” MESA, March 15, 2022.
Reprinted with permission of USPSDelivers.com, an expert resource for future-thinking shippers and marketers.

 

 

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