Culture and Leadership
Direct mail has evolved into a highly refined, data-driven tool.
Digital to direct mail is getting more recognition as more brands started to invest in this channel as a part of their omnichannel marketingiOmnichannel marketing is delivering a targeted, consistent and often personalized message to your consumer that is the same across all channels and devices. Unlike multi-channel marketing which delivers unique cross-channel messages, omnichannel marketing aims at making a purchase seamless for the consumer thanks to consistent messaging. An omnichannel marketing strategy s... Read More strategy.
A recent survey by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) revealed that Direct to Consumer (DTC) brands are moving beyond traditional digital advertising and investing more of their marketing budget in offline marketing channels such as digital to direct mail.
Is Digital to Direct Mail Making a Comeback?
While DTC brands allot most of their budget to digital marketingiDigital marketing is the two-way conversation that takes place between a brand and consumer through online marketing methods including websites, social media, mobile devices, blogs, video and email. Traditional marketing, which might have utilized a billboard or magazine ad, is considered one-way communication since the consumer can’t interact. Digital marketing gives th... Read More efforts, they still allot a portion to traditional marketing efforts – the most popular being is direct mail.
According to IAB’s study, customer satisfaction is one of the top objectives for DTC brands’ paid media advertising. With offline marketing efforts like direct mail, customer experience is less disruptive and, in a way, more respectful. It also extends brand awareness beyond the digital world into something more tangible. It is a sensible move as the competition online tightens and customer acquisition costs rise.
Adding Respectful “Personalization”
If direct mail, on its own, drives customers with high lifetime valueiThe lifetime customer value (or customer lifetime value/CLTV) is a metric that represents the worth of a customer to a business across the span of the business relationship. The longer a customer remains a customer to a company, the the greater their lifetime value becomes. This is an important metric because it costs less to retain an existing customer than it does to acq... Read More (LTV), adding personalization on top of that through interest and intent data empowers digital to direct mail to drive higher LTV.
With digital brands being programmatic by design, data-driven decision-making is a key competitive advantage versus big brands. Learning about user interest and intent has helped many brands in creating and delivering relevant messages in their online efforts.
Once marketers find their target customers online, the next step is to find effective ways to reach them offline. Since most purchasing decisions are made at home, direct mail makes the perfect tool for marketers. Targeting the right audience at the right time and place equals sales.
Multi-Touch Attribution
Multi-touch attributioniSimply put, marketing attribution is identifying how a customer became familiar with and/or purchased your product or service. The goal of attribution is to enable marketers to understand which messages and channels had the greatest impact on the consumer's next step. A good example is a consumer gets information about a product in an email blast, but doesn't make a purcha... Read More is key to understanding the one-to-one connections between consumers and brands. To achieve this, there should be a true one-to-one connection made across devices.
However, for DTC brands operating in an omnichannel world, it’s a different case. There are various different touch-points across digital and physical making it a bit impossible to connect online to the physical world. Marketers need to find an attribution model that works across both.
Our solutions connect conversions with direct mail sends regardless of where the conversion happened to allow our DTC brand partners to attribute clear value across channels. It allows them to measure gradual lift to attribute specific direct mail contributions to profit.
Conclusion
Direct mail is where it all began for us. We continue to believe in its effectiveness as direct mail evolves into a highly refined, data-driven tool. Direct mail’s effectiveness above new media channels is foreseen to dominate the marketing landscape in the years to come.
