Despite the growth of digital marketing, direct mail continues to be an excellent way to engage with your customers and generate sales.
With all the data tools and technology we have at our disposal, savvy marketers can now use direct mail to enhance user experience (UX), add value, and a personal touch that digital marketing can often lack.
At Ruddocks, we create a blend of digital marketing and print marketing to optimise your marketing efforts and generate better ROI. Here’s why we believe direct mail deserves your attention:
Digital advertising fatigue
Each of us is inundated with digital marketing campaigns and adverts every time we go online. According to PPC Performance company, Lunio, we are exposed to between 6,000 to 10,000 ads every single day, including those on YouTube, sponsored posts on social media, promotional newsletters, and banner ads.
However, many of these digital marketing campaigns aren’t having the impact expected because we are all just so overwhelmed with all of the online communications we receive, and this has intensified in recent years due to various global events.
We click the ‘skip ad’ button on YouTube. We just scroll past those sponsored posts on Instagram. We ignore the promotional newsletters that end up in our inboxes or let our spam filters take care of them. Around 25% of people in the UK use ad blocking software or browser extensions that prevent brands from targeting them directly, and together with Apple’s move to personalised settings around privacy and introduction of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) which removes the use of 3rd party cookies, targeting potential customers online has become far more complex.
Connect with your target audience at all stages of the customer journey
By integrating direct mail in your marketing campaigns, you’re more likely to reach your target customers, get them engaged and boost brand recall, as well as drive specific action and in turn sales.
According to recent statistics, approximately 90% of direct mail gets opened, compared to only 20-30% of emails and newsletters so your brand is more likely to be seen by more customers.
Mail campaigns can be personalised using specific criteria and insights, in order to speak directly to your audience in relevant and creative ways. Receiving physical post has also become something that adds an extra personal touch because it happens less often now. Most of us receive our bank statements, bills, and other documents electronically and we don’t send personal letters as we used to.
This means that when something arrives through your customer’s letterbox, they’re more likely to feel excited and engage with the content. In fact, according to the marketing authority on commercial mail, Marketreach, direct mail is engaged with between 3 and 5 times and surprisingly 31% leads to a commercial action – so a purchase, or visiting a website or a physical place.
When it comes to brand recognition, direct mail also offers benefits over digital-only marketing campaigns driving higher recall, and amongst all the misinformation and volume of online content, direct mail is one of the most trusted, particularly for the Gen Z population.
The transition from traditional mail to cross-media marketing
Many customers are concerned about using a direct mail approach as part of their marketing campaigns because they associate it with the junk mail approach of decades gone by.
However, you no longer need to aim for sheer quantity to deliver results. You can combine both digital and traditional approaches to create a highly-targeted marketing blend for optimal results.
Campaigns can be delivered much more effectively using a cross-media marketing strategy. Driven by marketing automation technology, you can identify receptive audiences and deliver personalised content to those engaged audiences across channels at various relevant points. Results can be measured in real-time which means you can be more reactive in driving the next steps on the journey that you want your audience to take.
Reaching a new market using mail as part of a targeted campaign is also easier now, with an increasing amount of intelligence around geo-demographics. You can reach new relevant prospective customers using partially addressed mail which gives you insight into behaviour and customer groups through postcode data rather than specific personal information.
In summary
By harnessing data and insight, utilising the right technology and focusing on adding value and hyper-personalising your direct mail strategy, you can engage and add value to customers at every stage of the sales funnel across different media and drive the actions that give increasingly positive ROI rates – whether it's awareness or directly contributing to sales.
At Ruddocks, we work with you to deliver bespoke, high-quality, results-driven marketing campaigns that blend both digital and print marketing to deliver the results you need.
Contact us today to find out how we can help maximise your next campaign.