As we wrap up our Ultimate Guide to Direct Mail Marketing, it’s important to understand ways you can use other channels to enhance your campaign. As you’ve learned, Direct Mail is effective in and of itself. However, many studies have indicated that response rates lift when you combine digital channels with Direct Mail Marketing.
New technologies are making it easier than ever to utilize digital channels alongside Direct Mail for success. In this final chapter of our guide, we will explore the game-changing concept of Direct Mail Retargeting and how to integrate Direct Mail with various digital marketing channels.
Those digital channels can be used to fuel the data used for launching Direct Mail, or run alongside a mailing program to reach the same audience via email, display, social, text, and more.
The most powerful and ubiquitous digital channel for any business is its website. The lifeblood of engagement, communication, lead generation, and even commerce runs through the website. Consumer behavior has changed to where people will always review a website – oftentimes now as a mobile-first experience – before they take any further steps of consideration for decisions or purchases.
Now with new technologies, you can use the website to fuel highly targeted Direct Mail Campaigns.
New Innovations in Direct Mail Retargeting
One of the more innovative Direct Mail Marketing ideas, Direct Mail Retargeting is a simple and powerful concept: Direct Mail Retargeting is a way to reconnect with your lost website visitors and entice them to come back to revisit what your business has to offer. It’s similar to digital retargeting, but rather than having ads follow website visitors around the web after they leave your site, Direct Mail Retargeting sends postcards in the mail, reminding consumers about their online visits to your site.
Retargeting with Direct Mail has a stronger impact on consumers because it’s a tactile reminder of the initial interest, and the long-lasting shelf life of Direct Mail is invaluable compared to online ads that tend to go unnoticed.
Direct Mail Retargeting works by using a “tag” on a website, allowing the business to identify website visitors, and match up to 50% of those visitors to postal addresses. Then by using an automated platform, Direct Mail postcards are mailed to those matched names and addresses the following business days. Since the cards are mailed First Class, they arrive within days of the user visiting the website. The relevance and recall are strong because this marketing strategy combines the urgency of retargeting with the powerful response of Direct Mail.
Integration of Digital Marketing with Direct Mail
One of our favorite things about integrating Digital Marketing with Direct Mail is that it can be as simple or complex as you’d like to make it, and based on what data is available.
By choosing different kinds of digital marketing for your Direct Mail integration, you can link data, plan the message, image, and Call-To-Action, and deploy it as a full omnichannel, integrated campaign. Before you start, we recommend speaking with a Direct Marketing Expert to see what approach would work best.
Integrating Email
A simple example of email integration is when you have an address and emails in your house file. Send Direct Mail plus emails to those opted-in contacts, timing emails before, during, and after the mailing lands. This gives your brand multiple touches to the prospects and is especially powerful around events like seasonal sales, galas, open houses, etc.
Another email and Direct Mail Marketing example is in acquisition marketing campaigns, where you would need a 3rd party deployment platform to send to an email list that matches up to a mailing list. You’ll need that 3rd party because Email Service Platforms (ESPs) like MailChimp or Klaviyo require your list to be a verified opt-in list before sending it to your target audience.
A last example is using an integrated program like Modern MAX, where emails are sent to those mailing addresses signed up for USPS® Informed Delivery. This email goes to the recipient right before the mailing lands, with the image of the mailpiece in their email inbox.
Integrating Display Ads
Using the mailing addresses, you can geo-fence those households to target Display Ads that run on websites as banner ads. The Display Ads create additional impressions and brand presence while Direct Mail has the value of shelf life, clear calls to action, and more storytelling content.
When you combine Digital Ads and Direct Mail going to the same households, you’re creating an omnichannel marketing program, meaning multi-touch campaigns using offline and online marketing channels.
Integrating Social Media:
Facebook and Instagram are the preeminent channels for direct social marketing, whereas TikTok is performing well for broadcast and video. Integrating social requires you to match audiences or do other kinds of append services to access Hash emails for audience building on those platforms.
With a program like Modern MAX, you’re able to integrate display, social, and Direct Mail all in a single system to make the deployment, timing, and tracking timing easier and more efficient.
Again, it’s important to connect with a Direct Marketing Expert to find which kinds of digital marketing best integrate with your Direct Mail Campaign.
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By Chris Foster, VP New Business Development