Culture and Leadership
It’s the go-to strategy for customer engagement, but is it still effective?
Email marketing is a primary go-to strategy for customer engagement for a simple reason: it’s cheap and fast. But through the years, with the constant use of this service, is it still effective?
Think about your own inbox. How many emails have you actually opened and read? How many times have you deleted messages from your inbox without even reading the subject line? With the consumers’ inboxes being saturated, most marketers are suffering from email fatigue, which means lower open rates and lower click rates.
In a recent email perception study by Fluent, it reveals that half of their respondents feel like they receive too many emails. About 51 percent also claimed that they rarely open marketing emails. Edison reports also revealed that 75 percent of the respondents feel overwhelmed by the number of emails received and only 15 percent consider such emails useful.
Data privacy is another concern that most consumers are wary about. Many have become more cautious in subscribing to mailing lists and many are actively opting out as well. These factors make digital outreach risky for many marketers.
The best way to counteract the situation is to find other ways you can reach out to customers. Not using emails as your sole marketing strategyiA company's marketing mix refers to the multiple channels, vehicles and venues it will use to distribute its marketing message to drive sales. For example, a company probably wouldn't only put its message on a billboard along the interstate. A good marketing mix might include a billboard, but also some digital advertising, maybe an in-person event, a public relations strat... Read More can significantly lessen the risk of being flagged as spam, which can damage your reputation and decrease your customer lifetime value. A good strategy to complement your 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 is to reinvest in direct mail marketing.
Reviving your direct mail marketing strategy provides marketers the opportunity to deliver a real, personalized message to their customers without the risk of getting flagged. When done right, a highly personalized direct mail piece can evoke emotional responses that email won’t be able to ever replicate.
Does Direct Mail Marketing Still Work?
The answer is a resounding yes. Apparently, loyal customers enjoy receiving direct mail offers. A recent survey revealed that 51 percent of shoppers admitted to liking getting mail from their favorite brands. About 56 percent of consumers also find print marketing more trustworthy and 70 percent think direct mail shows a more personal touch compared to its electronic counterpart.
Direct mail is a great solution for marketers missing a customer’s email address. It also covers deliverability issues, which are often caused by bad data, over-sending, or failure to use best email practices.
How to Launch a Personalized Direct Mail Marketing Campaign
If you’re new in the game or are planning to relaunch your direct mail marketing campaign this year, here are a few ways you can do to get started:
Should I Hire A Direct Mail Company?
Direct mail is one of the oldest marketing strategies. If you’ve decided to give it a try, there are plenty of high-quality vendors who can help you with your campaign. Hiring a company like Amsive can help you in both designing and printing your mailers along with selecting targeted data.
Balance Cost and ROIs
Direct mail does cost much more compared to digital marketing, which almost always feels like a free resource. Fact is, direct mail delivers strong ROIiReturn on investment (ROI) is simply the measure of what was spent on a marketing campaign compared to the sales that were a result of that marketing campaign. More simply put, for every dollar a company spends on marketing, how much money is that effort generating in sales. On a larger scale, ROI is a key metric used to not only determine success of markteing efforts, but... Read More. Many marketers attest that a direct mail campaign has a lot higher return compared to email marketing campaigns.
A direct mail campaign can generate 18 to 20 percent ROI on average. B2CiBusiness-to-consumer, or B2C marketing, focuses solely on a consumer or target audience of potential customers, versus a business or organization that is making purchasing decisions based on a different set of criteria than a consumer. A retailer such as Target would do business-to-consumer marketing to drive shoppers to their stores and websites. B2C marketing is often mo... Read More marketers found that about 56 percent of their customers who are actively engaging with their print materials are more likely to visit their website or drop by their stores. Also, 62 percent of customers who responded to their first direct mail ended up making a purchase within three months.
Stick to the Best Practices
Many of the best practices in email marketing are applicable to direct mail, such as personalizing messages with customer names and giving it a local touch (addressing the message from a local store representative).
Personalized direct mail marketing may not be a new strategy but it’s a strategy worth revisiting.
