Put yourself in your customer’s shoes, you open your email inbox and you’re bombarded with a swathe of special offers and newsletters. Even after GDPR you’re left wondering how they’re managing to get through. With the amount of messaging they see electronically daily, the majority are deleted and most of the rest are lost amongst the ‘noise’. It’s becoming ever more difficult to breakthrough in the B2B field of promotion.
Whilst electronic messaging can be seen as a ‘cheaper’ way to market, the amount of resource and time spent with little pay-off could be more effectively spent elsewhere.
Physical direct mail can be impactful and have a longer shelf life than an email which could get deleted before being even opened. Good marketing comes down to clear objectives, clever thinking, great planning and execution. If delivered correctly, direct mail leads can be as trackable as emails.
A/B testing isn’t just for digital channels; testing your direct mail campaigns will show what works for you and how successful a paper campaign can be. If you wish to test your creatives, you can send different packs out to randomly selected groups from your contact list. For different segments of customers or non-customers, you can test which segment is the most responsive and which are most valuable for your lead generation.
As we all know, good tracking and the ability to evidence return on investment (ROI) is the key to retaining budget. By testing and measuring your customer response rate, good results can provide detailed measurement and provide a strong business case for budgeting in this area in the next financial year.
In some of our customer’s experience they have found that a good marketing mix with integration is the key to success. If you are currently doing a radio campaign or ambient ads, you can tie the messaging and creatives in with your direct mail piece and follow it up with either an email or telephone call. The “Halo” effect refers to an uplift in response rates generated through the use of other marketing mediums, all supporting one another.
MarketReach (Royal Mail’s research service) looked at the Halo effect and reported the following behaviours as a result of receiving mail:
- 92% have been driven to online or digital activity
- 87% have been influenced to make online purchases
- 86% have connected with a business online
- 54% have engaged in social media
- 43% have downloaded something
This shows that mail works well and compliments other avenues, particularly digital channels. It also appears that direct mail can directly influence digital behaviours, which is key when reviewing your marketing mix.
With over two decades of experience of producing direct mail campaigns for a number of organisations from a range of sectors, we can work with your team not only on getting maximum efficiency through the ISO certified production process but we can also inject your campaign directly in to the mail stream from under one roof meaning you only have to deal with one supplier. If your campaign requires, we can also manage your response handling leaving your team to get on with the important tasks.
If you’d like to learn more or talk through your marketing plans (commitment free!), our friendly team of experts are at the end of the phone and happy to chat.
Give us a call today on 698444 or email us on sales@iompost.com.