Working in offline marketing can often give us harrowing flashbacks to school, standing there seeing the other kids get picked one by one until we are eventually, reluctantly picked last for the different sports teams. Too many marketing plans treat Direct Mail the same way, only really throwing it into the marketing mix if there’s enough budget left over at the end. This leads to a lazy approach to the execution, which then leads to poor results which reinforces the misconceptions and the whole cycle goes on again.
So, if this sounds like the way you treat direct mail, we are here to help. Because direct mail isn’t just a nice to have, when done right it’s a really effective channel for customer acquisition.
Here’s a brief overview of some of the areas you can explore to make your direct mail drive customer acquisition.
Audience Profiling
It’s a common misconception that direct mail isn’t targeted, but it is. Campaigns are heavily informed by data, with many different fully GDPR compliant options available. You can identify people who have bought similar products to yours, find people who have a particular interest or behaviours, and use profiled data like Mosaic and Acorn to target specific demographics.
Creative
When some people think of direct mail they often think of garish junk mail, but the reality is very different. OK so we might be biased here, but there’s nothing quite like something beautifully designed and printed. Offline marketing gives you a chance to show rather than tell about your brand. The textures, the feel, the look, it all helps reinforce your positioning and quality.
A piece of direct mail has more space to play with, giving you the opportunity to tell your brand and product story in a more compelling way. Its format means you can immediately present the premium quality of your brand in the print design and finish. This all provides a platform for real engagement and creating a lasting impression. Marketreach studies have shown that physical mail has a powerful impact on long-term memory encoding, +49% stronger than email, +35% stronger than social media advertising.
By putting more thought specifically into how your campaign is executed on direct mail, you can see big impacts.
End of campaign reporting
Key to driving optimisation is making sure you’re capturing data from your campaigns that give you valuable insights into what’s working and what’s not. It may come as a surprise to learn that offline marketing provides a whole host of tracking data to assess the effectiveness of your campaign. Using unique tracking codes, phone numbers and specific landing pages, we can track when, how and even who acted on your direct mail campaign. Doing this gives you pinpoint accuracy for tracking offline marketing campaigns – from viewing and response rates, through to conversion rates and cost per acquisition – basically you can easily see what’s going on with a direct mail campaign, you just have to do it right.
Matchback reporting can demonstrate where sales have been generated from a campaign even when a customer hasn’t used an offer code. This is done by matching your customer transaction report for an agreed period of time, usually 28 days and 60 days after the mailing date, with the send file and clearly reporting back exactly how each campaign performed. Giving you an accurate performance report for your campaign.
Accurate end of campaign reporting provides the data and insights needed to make the next campaign even better. You’ll be able to decipher actions you can take to either reduce your costs or increase response rates. Every key decision you make should be backed up by evidence.
This is just a taste of how good direct mail can be, and why it should be firmly in your marketing mix. If you want to start driving customer acquisition through direct mail, speak to our team today about how our approach can help you.
