Are You Leveraging Direct Mail in Your Marketing Hourglass? 

Your company’s customer journey hourglass capitalizes on digital tactics no doubt. Maybe you are active on social media, dabble in SEO, send emails, etc. Want to know a way to reach your prospects and clients with a higher Return on Investment (ROI)? Do you have direct mail in your marketing hourglass?

You can reach out to a prospect sending them a direct mail reminder or value-add piece at every stage in the customer journey. Guarantee that your brand will be seen more effectively than sending them another email on top of the 100+ they already received from other brands that day. Direct mail in your marketing hourglass is proven to generate better results.

Here are specific ways you can incorporate direct mail into your marketing hourglass to gain better results starting today. 

Stage 1: Know 

Getting potential customers’ attention and sharing your brand’s value with them is the first stage of any marketing hourglass. With direct mail, there are several ways you can achieve this in a way that builds stronger brand awareness from the very beginning. 

Reach Your Ideal Customers with Direct Mail 

At the top of your marketing hourglass is acquisition and awareness. You need to implement marketing efforts that reach the kind of audience you have identified as ideal clients to attract and increase traffic. This can be done in multiple ways using direct mail, including using a targeted mailing list to reach an audience based on certain demographics and locations. 

Here are two ways you can reach your ideal audience through direct mail: 

1. If you don’t know who your ideal customers are: Identify them and create a mailing list of potential, unknown customers who are just like your current customers using Look-Alike Mailing, Neighbourhood Mail or Postal Code Targeting. 

2. If you know who your ideal customers are: Create a mailing list of potential customers who are interested in what your company has to offer by taking advantage of Personalized Mail. This direct mail solution uses data to analyze consumers’ behaviors, buying activity, attitudes, and more to create a list of interested individuals. 

Focus on Certain Locations 

For many businesses, location is everything. No one is going to visit your brick and mortar location if it’s 4 hours away. On the other hand, saturating an radius around your building’s location with your brand has proved to be effective and very cost-friendly at getting your leads to begin the buyer’s journey. 

So, no matter what industry you’re in, consider building brand awareness by reaching certain locations with these direct mail strategies: 

• Neighbourhood Mail: Choose a Zip code or mailing route and send a direct mailer to every household on your chosen route. 
• Precision Targeting: Reach individuals who with similar demographics to build brand awareness and to let your customer’s neighbors know you can help them too. 

• Drive Time Mailing: Target consumers who are interested in what your company has to offer and who live only a short drive away. 

Click for updated 2022 Canada Post postage rates and blog on which Canada Post postage service is best for your needs): 

Note: Make sure your direct mail package includes a unique call-to-action (CTA) such as URL, call tracking number (aka as promo code) or QR code to track results. You want to be able to easily track who is the most inclined to purchase and begin collecting more personalized data. 

Stage 2: Like and Trust 

You can’t just reach out once and expect a prospect to become a loyal customer. With any form of marketing, the first email, the first social media ad, the first postcard, you will always get the worst results. The second outreach message you will get the 2nd best results and the 3rd (which we will go into more details soon) will generate the best results. Your second direct mail message needs to inform your prospects that your company can fulfill their wants and needs to give them an extra push to make their final decision. 

Choose the most affordable strategy: Although direct mail is the #1 most cost-effective marketing strategy, it can become expensive to reach out to your audience multiple times. So, choose a postage optimized size and weight. Can you get by with a postcard to covey your message? If so, you can likely get your mailer in the hands you want for less than $0.50 per recipient (postage included). 

Certain Canada Post direct mail services allow you affordable follow up triggered direct mail in your marketing hourglass as prospects move from stage 1 to Stage 2.

Bring them back to your website: Onboarding new customers requires a strategically planned process. Often, companies send a welcome email, or a few follow-ups, to bring a prospect back to their website. 

Stage 3: Try and Buy 

Now that you have built brand awareness and have gotten your potential customer’s attention, it’s time to send them the perfect call-to-action to get them to buy or sign up. This is where direct mail in your marketing hourglass can separate you from your competitors. If you’re the only one mailing prospects – that is a “Wow” moment! 

The best way you can do this is through direct mail while including an irresistible and exclusive offer. 

Consider a discount code or coupon along with an intriguing call-to-action that your recipients can’t pass up on. 

We discussed the 3-advertisement rule above, and the 3rd direct mail piece you send has the perfect timing to convert your prospect into a customer. And when you give your audience an exclusive offer, they have even more of an incentive to make a purchase. 

Stage 4: Repeat and Refer 

You made a sale and gained a new customer, but there is still work to be done. The next step in the marketing hourglass is to engage with your customers in the hopes that they become loyal customers. After all, most of a business’s sales are from repeat buyers. Did you know that it can cost up to 5X more to acquire a new client than to retain an existing one? 

Here are a few ways you can use direct mail in your marketing hourglass to engage with your customers and create stronger customer relationships: 

• Send them a thank you card: A simple thank you goes a long way. If you send a post-purchase thank you email, try sending your customers a personalized thank you postcard as well. Sending this type of customer appreciation message will help turn your new customers into loyal and repeat customers. Personalizing your thank you message is just icing on the cake and is extremely affordable with Variable Data Printing. 
• You can even integrate your direct mail into your CRM so that your thank you message is automatically sent to your customer once they make a purchase, approach or surpass a threshold, hit an anniversary date, etc. You can even include a discount code to encourage them to purchase again. 
• Wish your customer a happy birthday: What better way to gain a customer’s trust and loyalty than wishing them a happy birthday? With a birthday mailer you can include a personalized offer or incentive to visit your store or order something online.  

There are several ways you can achieve a successful triggered marketing campaign to build lasting relationships. The simplest way Is to automate it. You can achieve this by integrating direct mail into your CRM and then setting up a trigger so each month an automated postcard is sent to customers in each of your automated campaign categories.  

Conclusion

Direct mail is a powerful medium. In fact, it has a 90% open rate compared to 23% for emails. On top of that 70% of consumers simply prefer receiving direct mail advertisements over digital ads. That’s why incorporating direct mail in your marketing hourglass is so important. 

With the tips and strategies, we’ve included above, you can start turning more prospects into loyal customers in no time. 

For more information on direct mail strategies, you can incorporate into your marketing hourglass today, Book a Wingman today. You don’t have to fly solo!