Digital marketing glossary
In marketing circles direct mail is sometimes spoken of with a bit of snigger, almost like it’s a guilty confession – the fear that it will be considered “so very 90s”.
Yet even in the digital marketing age, there are some good reasons to use direct mail, and I believe it has every right to be in today’s communications mix.
- Less is more. There’s certainly less post being sent overall – thus the opportunity to grab attention and ‘share of voice’ through the medium is probably higher than ever.
- It’s versatile. You can mail all sorts of things, with a few exceptions (the Royal Mail website has a list of prohibited items). B2B direct mail doesn’t have to be bland. Be creative; think about all five senses, and appeal to as many as possible.
- It’s engaging. Putting the product into your customer’s hands is a classic sales approach – touch brings reality and engagement. That’s what a physical mailing can do too – whether you’re actually sending a product sample or swatch pack, or conveying your service quality in another way.
- It’s not an interruption. E-mails can nag, tempt and interrupt, with their pop-up message on arrival. But direct mail brings no such pressure. It can be opened when the recipient chooses – which means they are more receptive to whatever has been sent.
- It’s visible. If nothing else, the recipient is likely to open and scan it – so at least your message will have been seen. Or the recipient may pass it to another colleague or department, extending its reach. Whereas probably 70% of e-mails are deleted unopened.
- It has longevity. If the mailing is informative, useful, well targeted, interesting, quirky and good quality (and those are the challenges, marketers!) – the chances are it will be kept, to re-appear months later.
- It’s cost-effective. Postal prices aren’t a reason to stop direct mail. Are you really balking at spending perhaps £1.00, when the recipient could have a key influence on sales? Put it in perspective against exhibition or advertising costs for example. And remember, digital marketing isn’t free…
- It supports other communications. This is the important one. Digital marketing doesn’t spell the end of ‘traditional’ marketing communications methods – it just gives more options for campaign integration: blending e-mail, direct mail, advertising, video and web, for example. With QR codes or dedicated URLs to measure actions, measurement is better now than it has been since the days of response postcards and fax-backs.
Here’s a perfect example of how direct mail and digital media can work together, to brilliant effect: video brochures. These are printed brochures into which small screens are inserted, so the recipient can not only read the message, but watch it too.
As you’d expect, there’s a price tag – but for companies targeting a smaller number of clients with a high lifetime value, the ROI could make sense. An architectural practice who used the approach secured 18 appointments out of 30 mailings, an impressive statistic.
One thing’s for sure – a mailing like that won’t quickly end up in the bin.
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