These days, everyone is investing their dollars in digital marketing. Seeing as Facebook and Google account for about 73% of all digital advertising, straying from these mainstream platforms can make marketers nervous.
However, what many marketers don’t realize is that while digital marketing is an essential part of any marketing strategy, it shouldn’t be the only part. In fact, implementing a direct mail marketing strategy can make your overall marketing approach much more effective. Here’s how.
How Direct Mail Can Benefit Your Digital Marketing Campaigns
Every great marketing strategy involves multiple channels and touchpoints, so rather than relying on social media alone, you can increase the success of your marketing efforts across the board by adding direct mail campaigns.
Direct mail can be a great lead-generation source for your business because it’s highly targeted and cost-effective, resulting in a greater ROI than many other channels. In fact, businesses that combine direct mail with digital efforts see an average conversion rate of 40%, and 68% see a website traffic boost.
3 Ways To Supplement Your Digital Ads With Direct Mail
1. Variable Data Printing
It’s important to be data-driven and strategic about your marketing campaigns to get the highest ROI, which is why more companies are leveraging the data they gather to increase personalization in their marketing materials. This isn’t just a fad — it’s proven to be effective.
- 91% of customers prefer to shop with brands that send them relevant offers and product recommendations.
- 80% of shoppers are more likely to buy from brands that deliver personalized experiences over those that do not.
Variable data printing, known as VDP, is a form of digital printing that enables you to drive personalization by easily changing elements such as text and graphics on each printed piece based on data gathered from various digital platforms, such as email, social media and your website. For example, you can use information from your e-commerce platform to send a direct mail coupon for a product that complements what a customer just bought from your website, seamlessly merging physical and digital marketing.
Valvoline, an industry leader in branded automotive and industrial products and services, did this by using direct mail’s VDP services to merge its digital and direct mail strategies by leveraging personalized URLs (PURLs) and VDP technologies to yield an in-store coupon redemption rate of 7.9%.
2. Print-on-Demand
When you’re sending direct mail marketing materials such as a flyer or brochure, the process typically involves a literature fulfillment component that includes producing and distributing printed materials. In the past, companies would print large quantities of these items to take advantage of bulk rates, but in today’s business world, printed materials can quickly become obsolete.
Print-on-demand (POD) is a digital printing technology that makes it possible to produce materials on an as-needed basis, reducing overhead costs and increasing agility and personalization in your marketing strategy. How? Let’s say a Florida real estate agent used to print 1,000 general postcards to send to all their contacts in the state with the same content and images.
With POD technology, that real estate agent could use data from their customer relationship management (CRM) software to segment their client list into regions. This way, they can print personalized batches of 10 or 50 postcards for specific communities based on the client’s precise location — without slowing down the printing process or drastically increasing the cost of printing.
3. Presorting Direct Mail
USPS Presort is a discount the U.S. Postal Service provides to customers when they sort their mail themselves before bringing it to the post office. This allows businesses to lower their postage costs and can also strengthen your direct mail marketing strategy by speeding up processing in the post office and therefore reducing delivery timelines.
This can help your digital marketing efforts because digital moves fast. When processing and delivery time is reduced, your target audience can get your marketing materials faster. This gives your customers more time to take advantage of offers like, for example, a direct mailer with a coupon code for your website that’s only valid for a certain period of time.
Businesses with large mailing lists that frequently send direct mail typically see the most benefits from presorting. At United Mail, our commingling service helps businesses save an average of 10-20% on direct mail — leaving additional room in the budget to enhance your marketing strategy even further.
Add Direct Mail to Your Marketing Mix
Want to do more with direct mail? United Mail makes it possible with services that put your business in the palm of your target audience’s hand — literally. We offer a variety of solutions to help your business make the most of direct mail, web-to-print solutions, billing and document management, and much more! Contact us today to see how we can help you with your marketing plans.
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