Quite often when it comes to marketing, businesses tend to be focussed on either online or offline marketing and see it as a sort of ‘one or the other’ solution to their marketing needs.
However, things like direct mailing can actually work together to complement your digital marketing strategy in order to boost your reach to even more consumers, rather than limiting it.
As direct mail is one of the most long-reigning marketing platforms available, there is still some life to be had in this old dog yet. It still proves to offer a higher response rate (3.4%) than email marketing (0.12%). Here are a few of our tips to help you make the most of this tried and tested marketing method alongside new trends and campaigns:
1. Be on the same page
If you have different teams of people working on your digital marketing and your traditional or offline marketing, make sure everyone is on the same page. The overall goal should be communicated to everyone in the marketing department and each team should be working together to ensure all the cogs such as content, social media, reputation management and advertising are all pointing towards the same goal. Keep everyone in the loop at various stages throughout the campaign and you’ll find you achieve the most effective results.
2. Personalise your message
Don’t simply mail merge names onto a standard template – personalise your message to make it stand out from the rest of the direct marketing campaigns out there. Thanks to all the data we can harness from online marketing efforts we are now in a position to know much more about our customers in order to target them more directly and effectively when conducting campaigns. Keep track of purchase patterns by region, age group, interests and more in order to help you plan an engaging and appealing marketing campaign which will offer an impressive ROI.
3. Make it Exclusive
The main reason consumers join mailing lists is to be kept abreast of the trends, find out the latest products and innovations first, and also to be privy to any special discounts or offers that the average customer would not receive. In other words, make them feel like they are part of an exclusive club. Do this by mailing about special offers regularly, so customers will eagerly await your mail.
4. Digitalise the print strategy
Although this might seem contrary to the point of offering direct mailing alongside digital marketing, there’s actually no reason that you can’t create a digital tie-in with your print campaign. Whilst simply copying your mailer over to email format isn’t the best idea for a successful campaign, there are plenty of other things you can do to aid your marketing efforts and boost the engagement and reach of your mailer even further. Incorporate things like QR codes onto your mailer, pointing users to a landing page, video or social media page where you can engage with them further and track their movements and interests online.
These are just a few of the things you can do to help integrate direct mailing and digital marketing to ensure you get the most reach, response and overall conversions from your marketing efforts.
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