Your marketing efforts, online or offline, need to demonstrate a strong benefit for your customer, promote a solution, and persuade them to take clearly defined action.
The pandemic has changed everyone’s priorities. As we head towards a new normalcy, you may want to rethink your marketing strategy. Any plans you made pre-pandemic are likely off the table. Take time now to evaluate your method, your messaging and your medium.
Direct mail (DM) or direct mail marketing is a promising avenue for the current state of things. Marketing 101 tells you to share your message where your customers are. With so many people staying at home, the mailbox is a direct line to your prospects. The World Health Organization (WHO) and Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) have stated that it is safe to handle mail, including international mail.
Direct mail marketing is a good way to:
- Reach the right people, with the right message at the right time
- Increase sales
- Build and re-establish relationships with customers
- A/B test different offers, different segments and different creative
In addition, the average return of direct mail is up to 27X better than email and paid search.
A good direct mail campaign requires careful planning and a firm grasp of the specific tactics and techniques unique to this medium. Knowing how and when to use direct marketing can help you achieve your business goals.
Before you get started, there are 7 key things to keep in mind to ensure you truly have a silver bullet in your holster:
1. Settle on a Budget and Goals
A targeted direct marketing campaign can help you establish your sales goals and improve sales results—even if you are on a scaled-back budget. Most companies can run DM campaigns at a fraction of the cost of broadcast or brand awareness advertising. Plus, DM has predictable results and forecasting capabilities.
List, Offer, and Creative are the trifecta of success for any Direct Mail campaign. You need all three to succeed or nothing succeeds.
2. Your Offer: Direct Mail is a message with intent
A direct mail marketing campaign is unique. Know going in what you want to achieve. Then, position your products and services to your prospects in a way that entices them to act. Your promotion needs to be good but the problem you solve needs to be even greater. Delivering meaningful, useful benefits will help your campaign get read, get considered, and get traction.
3. Your List: Targeting is key
Direct mail lets you target specific segments of your audience. That means you can customize your message and speak to individuals, not generic groups. Research your list. Once you know who you’re talking to, you can focus on their needs and pain points.
4. Your Creative: Get inside your customers’ head
Direct Mail, unlike digital marketing, can leverage all 5 senses—even taste. Try mailing out boxes of Kraft Dinner or samples of chocolate or gum. This gives your mail the ability to use more strong emotional triggers. Engage and delight by pinpointing how your product or service can make the recipient feel, but don’t lose sight of the main goal: taking action. Your mail needs to be clear, concise, and convey the gap your product or service fills, ultimately meeting and exceeding your business objective.
Once you have established your list, offer and creative concepts, you can move on to enhancing the overall mail process to maximize reach and response:
5. When possible, include both current and lapsed customers
Including customers in your campaign gives you an opportunity to boost sales. You understand their needs better than those you have not yet sold to. You can also build campaigns around look-alikes of your best customers and win back customers who have lapsed. Ensure your list is accurate and up to date, though.
6. Appreciate your existing customers
Direct mail helps solidify or re-establish your customer relationships. Personalized letters and offers help create a bond with your customer and creates a personal connection with you and your business. Many companies build customer relationships through trigger campaigns and by sending birthday cards, customer-only discount offers, invites to pre-sale events and more. This shows them that they are special to you.
7. Test, test, test
One of the best things about direct mail is the feedback loop. Response rates can tell you about your customers’ interest in your products/services so you can offer new ones. Direct marketing also lets you test new markets, track responses, measure the effectiveness of your tactics, and make necessary adjustments. Each time you run a direct marketing campaign, you need to thoroughly review the results. That information will be your guide and help you improve the success of your next campaign.
Whether you need an entirely new campaign, fresh creative, or data targeting and analytics, Wingman Direct Marketing can help you prepare for this new normal. As a full service online and offline agency, the Wingman crew is experienced in motivating customers to act. With new customer behaviors and consumer patterns developing, direct response channels and tactics should be built into your re-evaluated marketing strategies.
We are helping several clients just like you navigate these tough times. We can be your Wingman also. Book a Wingman today and we can show you how to reach your ideal customers with the perfect message, where they are and when they want.