A business owner often overlooks a tried-and-tested marketing strategy that yields results. Email marketing might seem like a strategy of the past, but the statistics will blow your mind. Nearly 41% of Americans start their day by looking at their emails.
Today, we will discuss two elements of email marketing: direct mail and dimensional mail.
What is Direct Mail?
Direct mail is an advertising strategy that involves sending physical promotional material through the postal service or any other courier service. Some receivers consider it to be junk mail because often, these direct mail pieces are unsolicited.
Why is Direct Mail Marketing Still Popular?
As compared to other communication channels, direct mail marketing still has a great response rate. It increases the prospect reach by 5% and also improved the house lists by 9%. Everybody is familiar with online email marketing. There’s nothing new to offer to the audience. Therefore, marketers think of direct mail as a passe to impress the clients.
- It speaks to your audience: Yes, it is dead simple to use social media to interact with and target the audience. Tons of marketing tools are available to interact with clients based on demographics, interests, purchase history, etc. However, direct mail is capable of delivering the right and only message to your customers.
- Your customers remember direct mails: We watch thousands of advertisements every hour on social media. In short, we are bombarded by brands. However, direct mail stands out. It sticks with your audience because it is endlessly interactive, creative, and tangible.
- It targets a larger audience: Direct mail has the potential to stick around for a longer time and you can deliver it across the globe. Imagine. It is definitely worth your time and money because you can send it to different people from all over the world. All you have to do is enter the city name and the postal code.
- It is endlessly creative: The sky is the limit when it comes to creating direct mail. Coming up with creative/flashy ideas to spice up your direct mail marketing is easy. For instance, you can pack some chocolates with the mail and surprise your client.
- It does not have as much competition: Fewer and fewer marketers are now sending direct mails. Therefore, your mail has a higher chance to stand out and do the work that digital marketing could not do.
( Also Read: Email Lead Generation Best Practices in 2021 )
What Are the Benefits and Challenges of Direct Mail Marketing?
As direct mail marketing is something apart from digital marketing, its benefits and challenges are quite different as you commonly see.
- It defines your audience: As it is a highly-targeted marketing campaign, it involves only your prospective customers, existing customers, and leads. In short, it defines the audience that you deal with regularly.
- You have to run some tests firsts: Direct mail is visual and has more impact than digital mail. However, you have to test how it impacts your audience. You could choose a few recipients and determine if it is worth adding to your campaign or not. Their replies or CTA rate will definitely clear things for you.
- You must add a call to action or (CTA): A direct mail is a piece of non-promotional paper if you have not included a CTA at the end. You have to provide your number or email address so that the prospects could contact you after receiving your email.
- You have to recheck the mailers: Direct mail marketing is prone to error. You could replace ‘a’ with an ‘e’ by mistake and the mail would not reach your customer ever. Therefore, it is necessary to recheck the mailers’ names and addresses.
- You have to send follow-up mails: Some follow-ups emails are necessary to acknowledge if your customers have received the message or not. A follow-up mail could be anything- from a survey to a reminder.
- You can improve your social presence: Who says you can’t include your website address or social media page links in the mail? You can always prompt your customers to check out your pages after reading the mail.
What is Dimensional Mail?
Dimensional mail is yet another form of direct mail but more effective. The industry data suggests that dimensional mails have a 100% open rate.
What Are the Benefits of Dimensional Mail?
With a nearly 100% open rate, dimensional mails offer the following benefits:
- It interacts effectively with your prospects: Dimensional mailers make the whole process a lot more interactive through pop-up items.
- It includes pop-ups: According to CRM trends, pop-ups beat conventional flat mails by 40%. Many marketers add QR codes to push user engagement.
- It comes with a package: The package can be anything- from a gift to an oversized envelope. It is the surprise that urges the client to look inside the mail.
- All in the accordion fold: You can add thickness to your dimensional mail by using specialty folds, such as the gate or iron cross roll. It only adds density to increase user engagement.
- Dimensional mails have a unique appeal: Traditional flat mails are not as appealing and eye-catching as dimensional mails. They resonate with the readers and increases the demand generation by 75%.
- High response rate: Dimensional mails have a response rate of 8.5% when compared to direct mail, which on average has a response rate of 3.42%.
- The content of a dimensional mail lives longer: Many recipients do not throw away the contents of the dimensional mails as they are useful. The promotional pieces that come with the mail will be used over and over again.
Conclusion
Although digital marketing is evolving rapidly, we must not forget about traditional marketing methods to target quality leads and prospects. It is the efforts that get us all loyal customers. Direct mail marketing is one way to show your customers that you can go at any length to impress them.