If you have an established marketing strategy, you might be hesitant to add new tactics to the mix. Many marketers hesitate to stray from tactics they've seen success with, even if there's a chance that they'll see dramatic improvements in results. Direct mail is a tactic that, when used well, can help you see as much as a 200% ROI and dramatically improve conversion rates.
When your marketing program is already well established, how do you introduce a new tactic like direct mail to the mix without jarring your prospects, existing customers, and key decision-makers in your own company? Here are our top tips to make the transition seamless—and maximize the results in the process.
By looking holistically at your marketing strategy, you can determine which tactics will work best at each stage of the customer journey. Generally speaking, a customer takes a considerable amount of time and multiple touchpoints to go from awareness to purchase, and direct mail can complement other tactics for different purposes.
While bulk deployments have their uses for time-sensitive messages that benefit an extensive list of people, that type of direct mail can't possibly account for where each recipient is in their own customer journey with your brand. That's why, much like with digital tactics, it's easier to carefully consider this journey upfront, map out your marketing touchpoints across channels, automate your campaigns, and optimize as you go.
Using direct mail automation, you can send a deployment at programmatic triggers relevant to a specific customer journey rather than sending a batch of direct mail to your entire list. This is particularly useful for well-qualified leads, reactivation of past customers, and more. With more rapid and timely automated deployments, Lob helps direct mail become an effective means to get the right message, to the right prospect, at precisely the right moment.
Personalization is an essential factor in consumer decision-making across channels, both print and digital. In fact, 90% of consumers find marketing personalization appealing and are twice as likely to view personalized messages as necessary compared to other marketing messages.
Personalization doesn't have to be extreme. In many cases, it can be as simple as engaging a lead who has already qualified, with their name and a product they've expressed interest in from your brand, with an offer specific to that product. You can even go so far as a personalized promo code that helps the recipient make a purchase with a promotion or offer tailored directly to their needs.
We all know that it's impossible to market effectively using a single channel. Print and digital have to work hand-in-hand to create a genuinely compelling, conversion-oriented marketing campaign that converts leads to loyal customers.
That's why we have direct mail programs designed to integrate with a range of marketing technologies, making it simple to capture leads, drive digital traffic, automate direct mail deployments at key moments, and measure the results of your individual tactics and your entire marketing mix as a whole.
In addition to integrating with your existing technologies, Lob offers customizable HTML templates that dovetail into our library of print templates. These ensure that each stage of your customer journey, whether print or digital, is seamless and thoroughly tailored to your brand and your customer's expectations for personalizations.
Many marketers have switched their strategies to be fully digital for one key reason: data. There's a fairly common misconception that tactics like direct mail don't offer targetability or trackability. The key to making direct mail trackable comes directly from the same personalization that your audiences crave. Using a customized promotional code, URL, or QR code is a simple way to get your customer from your direct mail piece to your website to make a purchase.
However, there are occasions when a customer will forget to use your promo code or come to your website directly or through search results after looking at your direct mail piece. When this happens, how do you adequately attribute those conversions to direct mail? Through two key elements: data and attribution.
With attribution methods, including matchback analysis and multitouch attribution, the ROI of direct mail becomes as evident as any digital channel. Deploying with Lob gives you access to our team of experts, who specialize in helping shed outdated ideas about direct mail, track effectiveness, and optimize for the best possible results.
When it comes to data, it's essential to understand that your deployments are getting produced and delivered precisely as you intend them to. Few direct mail companies give you access to real-time reporting on this information, even when it's critical to have for compliance and reporting needs.
Whether you need help with a few bulk deployments for timely marketing messages or want to explore full direct mail automation, Lob makes it simple to turn your brand's marketing mix to maximum volume. Schedule a demo to see Lob in action and learn precisely how you can put it to use.
