Magic & Memories: How to Make Lasting Customer Connections by Integrating Direct Mail into Your Marketing Plan

Direct mail is a form of marketing where businesses send different promotional materials such as catalogs, brochures, flyers, and postcards to their prospects via snail mail. It’s been around for decades but it has never lost its effectiveness. In fact, in addition to open rates that can reach up to 90%, Forbes estimates that 42% of customers actually read – or at least scan – advertising mailers. 

A key component of any business advertising campaign, Direct Mail generates better response rates, higher visibility, and creates more innovative marketing opportunities as compared to other digital advertising efforts.

Why Mail Makes A Difference

Even with the fiercely competitive digital marketing landscape, direct mail allows you to cut through the competition and stand apart by reaching customers directly. Apart from offering a printed, physical connection with your target customers, one of the best reasons that direct mail works well is because you can easily measure and use these analytics to perfect your overall process.

Opening direct mail also creates an emotional response from your audience and they are more likely to remember your brand. Personalization is another factor that is seamless to implement in direct mail. A communication addressed by name with personalized details is a great way to help your business stand out.

Referral Program Touchpoints

Having a strong referral program is one of the most effective ways to draw more customers to your products. Word-of-mouth acts as a powerful tool to help you accelerate your customer acquisition process. Therefore, it is important for businesses to work on launching different referral programs and offer various incentives to existing customers to promote their brand within their networks.

Another advantage of referred customers is that they have a very positive perception of your brand since it is promoted by their peers. 93% of consumers read online reviews before purchasing and 56% are influenced by their peers. As a result, they are likely to spend more and make further referrals within their network. Another benefit of customers acquired through referral programs is that they typically have much more lifetime value in comparison to customers acquired through other usual advertising methods.

An Unforgettable Online Order

Despite its traditional approach, the benefit of direct mail is that it can encourage customers who would not usually shop online to do otherwise. While seasonal changes and new product or service rollouts vary from business to business, making sure that your direct mailings and online offerings are in sync makes a great deal of difference.

Although direct mail is an incredibly useful tool for businesses, similar to other advertising channels, it works best when a range of services all work in sync with each other. To get an unforgettable online order with direct mail, which focuses on creating printed pieces that enhance customer experience, it is important to pay attention to details. 

Keep Track of Customers With CRMs

CRM is an excellent tool to grow your business when it comes to improving customer relationships. It allows you to track your customers and stay connected to them, streamline processes, and improve overall profitability. What makes CRM software truly useful for businesses is the amount of data that the system collects. Everything from the recent client activity to success rates can be tracked without necessarily relying on a sales executive to constantly enter data manually.  

Apart from serving as a robust tracking solution for customers, a dedicated CRM is also quite flexible when monitoring customer interactions. For example, a CRM will let you know the stage at which a particular deal is or if the purchase was a result of online advertising, referrals, or direct mail.

Promote Upcoming Sales

Most customers appreciate contact from known business people who make genuine efforts to understand/assess their needs and develop a personal relationship. Direct mail promotes your upcoming sales of specific products or services to your existing and prospective customers alike.

What you need to remember, however, is that direct mail campaigns require detailed and careful planning along with a clear understanding of responsible practices. Once you are fully aware of the benefits and challenges of direct mail campaigns, you are more equipped to use the medium more effectively.

If adopted and implemented correctly, direct mail marketing works extremely well. In general, it is useful for overall business’ advertising. It is more memorable, has a better response rate, and offers multiple ways to be creative and has much with less competition.