As a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), it is essential to determine when to incorporate direct mail into your marketing strategy in order to maximize the success of your campaigns. Elizabeth Vempala, Senior Director of Content Marketing at SproutLoud, is an award-winning journalist with a degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a degree in Sacred Theology (STL) from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. She has worked for newspapers and magazines in the United States, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Italy.
Elizabeth has also served as Managing Editor of Special Sections at the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and has marketing experience in media, higher education, healthcare, and technology. Despite the ever-growing digital marketing landscape and an audience that prefers online communication, direct mail remains an essential part of marketing campaigns around the world. According to Shopify, direct mail is a form of marketing that involves sending a physical piece of promotional material across the U. S.
Postal Service or other courier service to a home or business. What's more, 70% of consumers say that direct mail is more personal than online interactions, providing them with a positive and impactful experience. However, a direct mail campaign is only as good as the outreach plan behind it. An outdated, underperforming, or poorly segmented plan can ruin even the best campaign, resulting in significant loss of income and expenses with a low return on investment (ROI).With a limited budget and time constraints, it's a challenge to find the most effective ways to grow a direct mail program. Here are six tricks CMOs can use to improve their approach:
- Utilize data from your company's website.
Your company generates tons of information about how users behave on the website; from what pages are visited to how much time a user spends on each page. This data provides digital body language that you can use to help understand the buyer's intent.
- Identify new leads. Intent data can show that a person is a serious potential customer or that they may need a little more time before considering buying from your company.
- Gather feedback. If a significant number of recipients visit your website after receiving your article by direct mail, it's another indicator that your campaign was successful and that you're reaching the right audience.
- Personalize emails.
Today's printing technology has made personalization and personalization a breeze, giving you the opportunity to achieve your goals on an individualized level.
- Meet consumer expectations. Buyers have come to see personalized marketing as the norm; 91% of consumers say they are more likely to buy from brands that offer relevant offers and recommendations.
- Include compelling calls to action. Direct response marketing has always been defined by its ability to compel consumers to take immediate action based on an offer. A call to action involves more than just being persuasive; it must also be clear in its communication.
Personalizing emails and meeting consumer expectations are also important for creating an effective strategy. Finally, including compelling calls to action will help ensure that your direct mail campaign reaches its intended audience and achieves its desired results.
