Direct mail marketing involves physically delivering promotional materials such as postcards, flyers, and brochures to a potential customer’s mailbox.
By placing marketing materials directly into the hands of your brand’s target audience, direct mail campaigns successfully capture attention, engage potential customers, and boost sales.
Businesses can use postal direct mail campaigns to accomplish a whole range of objectives, including:
- Customer retention & loyalty
- New customer acquisition
- Advertising offers and discounts
- Advertising products and services
- Generating interest
- Building brand awareness
- Asking for information/feedback
- Promoting upcoming events
- Getting key messages out to residents
- And more!
What is direct mail?
Direct mail marketing involves physically delivering materials such as postcards, flyers, and brochures to potential and existing customer’s mailboxes.
The main goal of direct mail is to generate a response from the recipient, which may be acquisition, requesting more information or visiting a website.
The effectiveness of direct mail campaigns depends heavily on the quality of the content, the level of targeting, and the overall marketing strategy. As such, savvy businesses are honing their campaigns with a combination of exceptional design, on-point messaging and intelligent demographics.
In this helpful guide, we explain more about direct mail marketing and how it can help your business. Taking a look at the benefits of direct mail, the stats that show how well it works, and what it takes to create successful direct mail campaigns, we give you everything you need to succeed.
Advantages of direct mail
Advertising mail delivers £14 ROI for every £1 spent (PostGrid).
79% of consumers will act on direct mail immediately (DMA)
30% of mail prompted commercial actions from consumers (JICMAIL)
95% of mail was engaged with and had some form of physical interaction (JICMAIL)
Mail has a 35% higher brand recall than social media (Royal Mail)
The benefits of direct mail
Direct mail is an excellent way to communicate with potential customers – not least because it helps businesses to foster person-to-person connections. Providing a uniquely physical marketing experience, by placing printed material directly into the intended recipients’ hands, direct mail captures our natural inclination to read and engage with physical mail. In short, it commands attention.
But that’s not the only benefit of direct mail. It can also be highly cost-effective compared to digital marketing and offers impressive engagement rates. This blend of affordability and ROI makes direct mail an extremely compelling option for businesses that want to keep a tight rein on spending.
What’s more, when you do direct mail marketing well, and use data to inform your campaign and appeal directly to your target market, you can boost ROI even further. So, to succeed, it pays to spend your money where it is likely to deliver the best results.
Of course, as direct mail specialists, you would expect us to shout about how great this marketing tool is. But you don’t have to take our word for it. The stats show that direct mail packs a powerful punch. And the stats don’t lie.
- In Q1 2023, a whopping 95% of mail was engaged with and had some form of physical interaction from
consumers.(JICMAIL) - Over the same period, 30% of mail prompted commercial actions from consumers such as purchases, voucher
redemption, website visits and store footfall.(JICMAIL) - 79% of consumers will act on direct mail immediately, compared to only 45% who say they deal with emails
immediately.(Direct Marketing Association) - 90% of campaigns that included physical mail saw an increase in new customers, compared to 59% of those
without.(Royal Mail Group) - On average, advertising mail delivers £14 ROI for every £1 spent.(PostGrid)
When you take all this into account, it should come as no surprise that even tech giants like Google send out direct-mail campaigns!
Types of direct mail marketing
Leaflets
Postcards
Letters
Brochures
Gifts
Catalogues
Businesses of all sizes, and across all sectors, are using direct mail campaigns to communicate with their target audiences. And they are using it to support a whole range of marketing strategies. For example, direct mail campaigns are a tried and tested way to generate excitement and interest when launching a new product or service.
Mail marketing cost considerations
As with any marketing activity, it can be easy to overspend. So, establish your intended budget early on in your campaign. How much does mail marketing cost? Well, prices will vary by campaign. As well as design and print, you also need to factor postage costs into your budget.
And, despite the affordability of direct mail campaigns, costs can mount up. A trusted direct mail marketing agency will advise you on price and offer some simple ways to make the process more cost-effective.
Direct mail complements an integrated marketing strategy
Direct mail campaigns don’t have to stand alone. This exceptionally potent marketing tool becomes even more formidable when integrated into a more comprehensive marketing strategy. Indeed, according to the Royal Mail Group, integrated campaigns that included door drops achieved +18% more frequency, and +7% more reach. And the proportion of direct mail that is driving web visits is growing 50% year-on-year (DMA).
10 steps to creating a successful direct mail campaign
1 Define your messaging
2 Define your target audience
3 Offer something of value
4 Set your budget
5 Update your mailing list
6 Create eye-catching designs
7 Include a call-to-action
8 Test your campaigns
9 Analyse your results
10 Final results
Use an experienced direct mail agency
At Blue Market Media, we are a veteran direct mail agency. And we have everything it takes to ensure a successful campaign that delivers results for your business. Providing a complete turnkey service, we can help with the strategy, design, copy, print and distribution of your direct mail campaigns.
Whether you want to send out 10k or 500k+ leaflets, our comprehensive, all-in-one service is backed by experience and expertise that our competitors can’t match.
Conclusion: Is direct mail dead?
While direct mail is still being used as a marketing strategy by many businesses, its effectiveness has been challenged due to the rise of digital advertising channels, paid social and email marketing. But, despite its critics, a well-executed direct mail campaign can still yield impressive results.
Nevertheless, to cement direct mail’s status in the marketing landscape, it has to be done correctly. And the effectiveness of direct mail campaigns depends on various factors, including the target audience, the relevance of the content, the quality of the print, the timing of the campaign, and the integration with other marketing channels.
When you do get it right, direct mail campaigns can generate real marketing magic.