Direct mail is dead…long live direct mail?

How to get more out of direct mail in the digital age

Rumour has it that direct mail is dead. It hasn't died, simply changed tactics and here is a list of five useful tips to use direct mail to support your online strategy and dramatically improve your results. Letter boxes are less cluttered these days as marketers focus their attention on email and other digital strategies.

We have never given up on this medium, preferring to restructure our approach. As a result we have achieved a consistent return of 5%, which in the current climate is leagues better than the DMA's current guideline of approximately 2%. Try the tips below and increase your response rates as a result.

1. Give direction with a landing page
When designing your next direct mail campaign, you need to approach it a little differently. Create a landing page that supports your offer rather than simply directing potential clients to your existing website. The landing page should consist of supporting messages that flow from the mail-out. The most important aspect of this is to direct your responders to carry out an action such as filling out a quotation or enquiry form.

2. Give your targets a more focussed call to action
Once you have created a suitable landing page for your potential clients to visit, make sure you are clear that this is where you want them to go. Don’t give everything away on your mail out, give the target a reason to find out more on your landing page. Always give them a telephone number to call in addition to this as you will see from the results that not everyone will respond via the website.

As an example, a recently developed campaign was sent out using direct mail with the key objective of directing responders to a specially designed landing page. The landing page gave more information about the offering and was designed to encourage potential clients to fill out a quotation request form. The end result was that 5% of the database we mailed to responded via the landing page and just 0.5% responded by telephone.

3. Stand out from the crowd
As more and more marketers are focussing their efforts on email and digital marketing, there is inevitably more opportunity for direct mail to cut through. Firstly the competition won’t be as great. With numerous other marketing emails to sift through the recipient will be more likely to engage with a hard copy message. The direct mail message will have less competition and be more likely to gain the attention of the recipient. Make your message stand out and there will be more likelihood of the recipient keeping the message and responding to it.

4. Measuring success
It has always been necessary to measure the success of each marketing campaign. Email marketing and website activity is very straightforward to measure but direct mail can be a lot harder unless you have the right tools in place.

There are methods to use that can make the process simpler such as call tracking, which will allocate a specific telephone number to a direct mail campaign. Any telephone call made on that number will be logged as an enquiry in direct response to the mail out. In addition to this, driving potential clients to a landing page will also enable visible tracking to take place if analytics are set up to capture your website visitors.

5. Work as a team
Use your direct mail to support other activity such as social networking, email and online marketing campaigns. As we have demonstrated the response rates rise significantly when used in conjunction with digital activity.

A successful direct mail campaign can help to boost your other activity and increase results. This can also work the other way around to support the direct mail and ensure that when your direct mail campaign goes out it is received warmly. Use social networking, PR and email marketing to 'prepare' your targets. Your direct mail will land as a familiar face rather than a cold hit that may end up in the bin.

Find out more about tracking your responses - please call us on 0845 243 5880 or contact us here

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