The digital era we live in has completely changed the means of marketing, replacing direct mail with email campaigns and online marketing strategies. Even though direct mail gets neglected nowadays, it can still be beneficial for marketing campaigns worldwide. Some people simply prefer the old school direct mail over emails, which they rarely ever check. In fact, direct mail can often bring better results than emails because it is a physical piece of marketing content.
Therefore, direct mail can be used to make your marketing campaign more effective. However, you must be able to recognize the right time to send direct mail and the right people to send it to. Your goal with including direct mail into your marketing strategies should be to lead your audience back to the online funnel. For those who rarely check their email inbox, a direct mail reminder can be a call for taking action.
In order to effectively execute this marketing strategy, you need to identify the audience who is going to be interested in direct mail content. Those people who subscribe to your mailing list but don’t respond to your email campaigns are the ones you should consider for your direct mail strategy. However, keep in mind that just because they subscribed to your list, they aren’t ready for content that is too pushy towards making sales. Make sure to keep the tone casual and relaxed to avoid your content looking like spam.
For the best results, separate your direct mailing list into segments to more effectively tailor your content to the needs and preferences of your audience. In order to be able to include direct marketing into your campaign at the right time, you must be aware of your prospects position within the buyer’s cycle. To better understand your audience’s needs, track their activities related to your marketing campaign through analyzing the success of your email content. Those who rarely ever open your emails could use some encouragement through a more powerful, physical piece of content, that is, direct mail.
Five things to focus on when using direct mail
#1 Always track the success of your campaigns
A crucial part of running an email campaign is tracking its results. Use automation tools to analyze how your emails perform in order to get a better picture regarding where the direct mail strategy would fit most effectively. However, besides tracking your online marketing success, it is important to track your direct mail. To do so, you need to encourage the reader to take action online, by providing a QR link to your website or another relevant page. This way you will be able to track how many people responded to your direct mail content and whether they found it interesting enough to look you up online. We will discuss the importance of QR codes in direct mail in a few moments, but for now, keep in mind that sending out mail without tracking it is basically shooting for the target in dark.
#2 It’s all about the visuals
It is obvious that you need to put effort into your direct mail content in order to make it stand out among all other pieces of mail the readers receive. However, what’s important to remember is that visuals always bring better results than text blocks. Therefore, make sure your direct mail content is visually compelling and contains more engaging images and designs than text. A few informative sentences here and there are acceptable but avoid plain chunks of text and instead use images because they are definitely more responsive.
#3 Keep it simple and clear
One thing that can ruin the success of your direct mail is making the reader feel overwhelmed with information. Asking them to do several tasks, such as for example join you on Facebook, read your article and check out your e-book, is going to make them feel overwhelmed and less likely to actually follow up with you. Therefore, restrict yourself to 1 CTA per piece of direct mail. That way, the reader is going to have one clear objective after reading your content and they are going to be more likely to take action, as it doesn’t require too much time on their side.
#4 Send direct mail to the right audience
Some people prefer receiving direct mail while others like to keep it digital. It is your job to determine which readers are more likely to enjoy receiving direct mail. However, you cannot purely guess this. Instead, you can use the data you collect by tracking your online campaigns and see which prospects don’t check their digital inbox. Those people are more likely to read their direct mail. Another way is to simply ask your audience whether they would like to receive direct mail content. You can do so by asking the question through your social media pages, your website or an email.
#5 Use QR Codes
We’ve already mentioned that QR codes are very important in direct mailing and here is why. If you don’t encourage your readers to take action online after reading your direct mail content, you won’t be able to track their activities and they won’t become a part of your sales funnel. In order to get the readers to take action and visit your site, make a purchase or join you on one of your social media pages, you need to use a QR code that leads them to that online location. Always take them to a site or a landing page that is going to lead them towards the next step in your sales funnel.
In conclusion, direct mail is not dead, as many people think. It is actually very much alive and ready to boost your marketing campaigns whenever you decide to use it. As long as you use direct mail efficiently and follow the steps we explained, you will be seeing your prospects coming back to you online and taking actions you want them to take. If you have any questions about how direct mail can positively affect your marketing strategy, feel free to contact the experts at www.bethesda-list.com.
