Does direct mail make sense in a web 2.0 world?
Yes, it does! In addition to email marketing, sending postcards to your clients is a tactic proven by your peers to deliver results including building your prospect list and strengthening client relationships. Obviously, you can’t email contacts who have not opted in to your list, but you can send a postcard or direct mail piece to them!
Here’s how you do it:
1. Identify prospects and clients on your list whose records do not include an email addresses. And/ or grab a purchased or rented postal list. It might be a good idea to segment these by industry, business size or location.
2. Create an offer in exchange for the person’s email address. Examples of a compelling offers include a free financial check up for a CPA or financial consultant, a discounted service for a service company, or maybe a free appetizer for a new restaurant announcing a grand opening or change in menu.
3. Design a postcard with your offer and direct the recipient to sign-up for your email communications. Landing pages are great for this or you can ask them to call and give you their email.
4. If you use a landing page, make it simple. State the offer and collect only Full Name and Email Address in exchange for what was offered. Use a free opt-in form with your email marketing service provider to do this!
5. Then add these email addresses to your email marketing list and expand your email campaigns and client lists in a big way!
Be smart, make the right offer, keep it simple and you’ll continue to build your marketing lists over time! You can easily create and send postcards from your browser with companies like VerticalResponse.
May 21st, 2009 at 9:12 am
I agree with many points in this post. I have also noticed that when a company can combine offers, the redemption rate for their direct mail piece increases dramatically. What I mean by this is that companies offer an incentive now with their direct mailer (on option is a discount of $10 off of a restaurant purchase)then an incentive for later(maybe a free dessert on the customer’s birthday) if the customer registers online. One of the main points from this post that I found particularly important to remember is “you can’t email contacts who have not opted in to your list, but you can send a postcard or direct mail piece to them!”
May 21st, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Direct mail kills all the meaning of web 2.0. New age marketing must be permission-, not interruption-based.
Better focus on your product and help people to find it.
May 22nd, 2009 at 1:50 am
the quality of the list is the key. Most of the times businesses have lame list they do try it out and when it doesn’t work for obvious reasons they say that snail marketing doesn’t work. For example you can sell Surplus Stock just by letting the right people know via Snail Mail.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Erin your points are well made. The comment above by Mike implies to me that he sees traditional marketing methods and web2.0 methods as mutually exclusive, I dont.
I like the approach you take as it is practical and highly usable.
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:32 am
You want to convert as many prospects and customers to email marketing subscribers in the long run because it’s much cheaper and you will have the ability to report on what they are interested in receiving from you. With the reports and simple list segmentation features that come with an email marketing tool like VerticalResponse (disclosure: I work there) you can continue to improve the quality of communications you are sending out.
However, when you need to build a list or grow your list to support a new market or segment that you want to go after, you have to use offline tactics to ask permission for their email, this is where direct mail, telemarketing, and event marketing tactics come in to play. Of the three I just mentioned, direct mail is cheapest and simplest way to reach a larger group.
Bottom line, find them with direct mail and keep them engaged with email marketing.
May 25th, 2009 at 1:20 am
We discussed your response internally, and there was general agreement that direct mail is the best way to go to seek permission to send an email.
Sending email without permission is illegal in many jurisdications. Aside from which you run the risk of being blocked by a spam filter anyway.
Tele-marketing to seek permission is considered intrusive by many clients/ prospects.
Which really leaves on direct mail or direct sales calls, and the latter is just too expensive to consider.
So thanks for your post and taking the time to reply to my comments.
May 25th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Direct mail works great for Professionals too
Dentists, Optometrists, Accountants, etc.
Send out reminders for check ups and when they arrive, get their e mail addresses. Very soon though, we will be so jammed with e mail offers(if not already) that we just press the delete button more than the open button
mrfranchiseman.com
June 10th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Yes, we are in the Digital marketing world, but don’t forget “Integrated Marketing” works well today as well.
And it depends upon the target audience, if your product service is more for traditionalists then Direct Marketing may work and even if it’s other generation, if your direct marketing message can drive audience to online landing page with a compelling offer, it can really help acheive te goals, which can be building a database, download, sign up to and event or newsletter, becoming a member etc. So, when done right and in conjunction with other marketing campaigns it still works!
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:51 pm
I really liked your opinion! I look forward to more insightful info.
November 4th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Great information and great site, I have added this to my favorites, do you have an rss feed I can subscribe too?