4 Tips to Make Sure Your Direct Mail Campaign isn't a Snoozefest
Direct mail may have more history than email and social media combined, but that doesn’t mean it’s antiquated– It certainly doesn’t have to be. Despite perceptions, direct mail can be at the forefront of technological advancement, bringing interactivity and excitement you may not have considered.
Creating exciting, engaging marketing is all about finding ways to stand out, no matter the medium. And with direct mail, you can integrate your materials with your online efforts to keep leads engaged.
If you’re wondering how you can make your direct mail more exciting, we have several tips and tools you should consider.
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1. Hyper-Personalization: The Ultimate Method of Engagement
Marketing has made giant leaps over the years, engaging prospects like never before by adopting hyper-personalization. And it’s no accident. Personalized content drives stronger connections. When you speak directly to prospects’ needs, it helps them feel like you’re building a one-to-one relationship with them.
If you send a single, uniform mailer to every one of your contacts, your message will be too general to create such a personal connection. If you want to make the most out of your mailers, you need to address pains and interests specific to each prospect. This won’t take as much time as you think, either.
Naturally, your prospects’ interests and needs will overlap. So first and foremost, find the common threads and segments within you contact list and build your content around these similarities. With content that speaks to specific prospect segments, you can then personalize each direct mail piece by including:
- Names – Including your prospects’ names and company help grab their attention
- Images – Your prospects’ photo, company logo or any relevant image will stand out to your recipient
- Offers – Tailor offers to your prospect’s pain points and needs
The beauty of modern direct mail is that these seemingly manual efforts are perfectly scalable. Direct mail automation software makes your offline efforts both simple and effective.
2. Lead Your Prospects Back to the Screen
While direct mail cuts through the noise of the digital world, you won’t know how effective those efforts are if you don’t bring your prospects back online. Your direct mail pieces need to drive your leads online, where you should further excite and engage them.
For starters, you should drive prospects to a personalized landing page. When you create landing pages, you can’t create a univeral page for direct mail pieces, however. Break up your audience into segments and create landing pages for each of them so that you are touching upon their individual and unique pain points and interests.
On that landing page, a video (especially a personal one) is a great tool to keep your prospects engaged. Remember, you have a small window of time to keep your leads interested. Really, any interactive media is a great bet to hold your prospects’ attention. Your videos or other tools should be tailored to the unique individual on their landing page. These elements can be the same or similar the those you can use in the direct mail itself.
Lastly, provide another conversion opportunity, either through call-to-action in your video itself or on the landing page. You want to drive prospects to the next step in their journey, whether that’s to a checklist, eBook, quiz or other offer.
3. Augmented Reality: A New Marketing Reality
AR, as it’s also known, is a technology that adds graphics, sounds, and touch feedback to your real, physical environment. Augmented reality simply overlays virtual information on top of the real world captured by your smartphone or other device, creating a harmonious, augmented version of reality.
Pokémon GO may be the most famous use case of augmented reality. The game uses your smartphone camera to capture your environment, and simply overlays its characters within that environment.
AR has many different uses however, and Pikachu doesn’t have to a part of your direct mail. Using a graphic similar to QR codes, you recipients simply scan their code from your mailer and can gain access to additional AR content, from 3D images to videos and beyond. And importantly, you can track your campaign effectiveness by seeing downloads and video views.
Check out these examples of AR in marketing.
4. Near Field Communication: Another Digital Interaction
Like AR, near field communication allows you to embed information into print materials to provide additional interactive experiences. A more flexible variation of what QR codes tried to establish, NFC chips play or present content a user’s phone when they tap the chip. Speaking of its flexibility, NFC allows you change the content that the chip is linked to.
Whether a promotion or information about your product or prospects’ pains, your marketing campaign can be far more engaging with NFC-embedded direct mail. And NFC codes aren’t expensive – they cost under $1 for each chip, plus programming costs.
Stand out and Engage Your Prospects with Direct Mail
If you’re still holding on to dated perceptions of direct mail, you’re severely limiting what you can accomplish with the offline marketing channel. Direct mail doesn’t have to be stale – and it sure shouldn’t.
Bring excitement and personality to you direct mail efforts by sending your audience pieces that are personalized, drive them online, and truly speak to their needs and interests. Direct mail can be a form of entertainment and interactivity – You simply need to understand and incorporate the technological tools at your disposal.
But make no mistake: technology itself is not the crux of successful campaigns. Thoughtful, strategic and personalized content makes an effective campaign. Your success is all about how you connect with your audience. Start capturing their attention with out-of-the-box strategies.
Curious what your cost per lead would be with direct mail? Check out our interactive calculator to find out!