In a world that is digital-first, marketers are dealing with inflating ad budgets, declining engagement rates, and consumer fatigue from relentless online advertising. However, beyond these challenges, direct mail is seen as a respite to connect with customers offline. Delivering thoughtful, tangible campaigns allows businesses to stand out and engage with their audience in a meaningful way. This blog post will discuss the potential of direct mail to change the way businesses across the UK and beyond engage with customers offline. A tangible, measurable and multi-faceted marketing vehicle that drives results.
The Resurgence of Direct Mail
With global brand-restorers like Restoration Hardware, Amazon, and high-end retailers once again proactively investing in direct mail for offline customer engagement, it seems its importance is on the rise. Unlike digital ads that often disappear in a mindless scroll, a direct mail campaign provides a personalised tangible experience that performs better in response rates, brand recall, and emotional connection. Physical stickers, postcards, and other direct mail with a tactile dimension provides an experience that is unprecedented; nothing in the digital channel can deliver the same engagement.
When brands execute direct mail campaigns strategically, they can add real differentiation in a sea of consumer noise as the brilliant application of offline customer engagement experience beats the fast and furious world of web clicks, likes, and swipes. From stunningly beautiful look books, to personalized hand addressed postcards, it captures your attention, creates desire for an action, provides a fun experience, and motivates that tangible experience that builds loyalty and ongoing recycled engagement. As more consumers begin to feel burned out from digital screen time, the added equity of the tactile experience of the tangible form of direct mail delivered on your doorstep provides a refreshing way to connect on the personal level.
Why Direct Mail Drives Customer Engagement
Research integrating neuroscience, consumer surveys, executive interviews, and extensive campaign data highlights why direct mail is a cornerstone of customer engagement:
1. The Power of Touch
Neuroscience indicates that physical direct mail activates your brain more deeply than online ads, improves memory retention and emotional connection. The “endowment effect” is particularly important.When consumers receive mail and can physically touch it, it feels like it belongs to them, and they will likely relate to the brand at a much deeper level. A piece of mail does not get lost in the ether like an online ad and becomes a tangible content piece in your home (counter, coffee table, pinned to a bulletin board) that prompts continued offline engagement with the client for days or even weeks.
The tactile aspect of direct mail gives it a distinctive dimension, making it an extraordinarily powerful medium for creating impactful impressions. For example, a brochure that has been designed nicely or a handwritten letter can create emotions that many digital adverts cannot, building a deeper connection to the customer and as a result engagement and action is easier to facilitate because of this connection.
2. Consumers Trust Direct Mail
In a survey of 260 consumers, 70% said direct mail was “very useful” for making purchase decisions (50% for digital ads) and 75% said they kept them for future reference. Additionally, 60% took action on a postcard the same day—going into a store, or redeeming an offer or checking it online. Eighty percent were using direct mail to research brands further online.
Why is this? Because direct mail has tangible, personal delivery and consumers are less likely to lose or ignore a piece of direct mail compared to email, which may go into the spam folder. Unlike email, where there is a chance the message ends up in the spam folder, a piece of direct mail arrives directly in consumers’ hands. Also, direct mail has a realness that establishes trust between the company and customer and creates opportunities for customer engagement.
3. Proven Campaign Performance
Reviewing more than 50 campaigns across different industries like apparel, furniture and outdoor brands has provided evidence that more direct mail volume correlates with more orders and revenue. A thoughtful direct mail campaign always provides measurable results to support brand performance, whether in immediate sales, in continued brand loyalty and sales over time. With data-backed strategies and creative design, direct mail can increase customer engagement and is a steadfast platform for businesses looking for real marketing action.
Overcoming Barriers to Direct Mail
Even though direct mail marketing is effective, some marketers still resist getting on board due to misconceptions about potential roadblocks. With today’s improved processes, many challenges traditionally associated with it are eliminated, empowering marketers to consider it as an effective and powerful medium for offline interactions with customers!
- Measurement & Attribution: Historically, measuring the performance of direct mail has been challenging, mainly due to the fact that measuring direct mail ROI can be so much more difficult than giving a report on digital ads. Now, there are so many ways to create tracking systems to measure the response of direct mail campaigns such as QR codes, PURLs, Informed Delivery are just a few examples, that we feel confident in the response and are preparing it to be as measurable as digital marketing.
- Cost Implications: The cost may raise eyebrows at first in direct mail because printing and postage costs can cause concern, but, if optimised, the return will be strong. Participants understand using list selection tactics to know their audience, and refine their message with data, which helps to ensure that direct mail maximises customer engagement for every pound of the campaign budget spent. Participants of this study also suggested that they often spend the same amount on digital activities and do not receive nearly the greater long-term benefits of direct mail.
- Modernity: The previous generation of marketers may view direct mail (non-residential) as outdated, but the modern versions of direct mail can design and work with data to provide direct mail that can disrupt the thinking of target customers. In addition, the aesthetic of the modern direct mail pieces, with their design, clever use of tone of voice, taking customer segments into digestible and memorable mail pieces, are popular appeal to everyone from millennials to older generations. Furthermore, customers are responding to thousands of pieces of digital marketing in an even more transitory moment than they are digital.
By addressing these barriers, direct mail becomes a versatile and effective tool for modern marketing strategies.
Benefits of Direct Mail
The importance of direct mail lies in its unique ability to deliver tangible, measurable benefits that enhance customer engagement:
High Conversion Rates
As 98% of consumers handle their mail each and every day and 77% will look it over right away, it is simply impossible to overlook the visibility of direct mail. Emails can get stuck in junk folders or lost in a sea of emails, but direct mail delivers your message direct to consumers. Even if you are promoting a sale, event, or just an online landing page, direct mail creates instant opportunities for customers to engage, take action, and visit the store or website.
Flexible Solutions
Direct mail is a hybrid tool that can accomplish a number of marketing objectives. Short-term tactics, such as coupons or event invites grab quick sales while long-term relationship-building tools such as birthday, acknowledgement cards and newsletters build loyalty. This versatility allows for the opportunity for businesses to be creative in targeting specific audiences, while driving an offline connection with customers as they pursue multiple goals.
Measurable and Targeted
Direct mail can be personally tracked using vouchers, discount codes, or QR codes, which allows organisations to gauge their response rates. Further, data-driven targeting ensures the organization sends mail to the intended geographical, demographic, or psychographic audience to optimise engagement. Because of this ability for precision, direct mail can be one of the most effective marketing channels.
Tangible Impact
It’s the tactile nature of direct mail that makes it so special! Unique mail pieces such as branded postcards, elegant brochures, or whimsical envelopes are memorable to their recipients. That’s because the recipients can touch and hold mail pieces, creating a sensory experience that digital ads simply cannot deliver. That tactile experience drives offline customer engagement, and is why direct mail is the ultimate way to market.
Integrating Direct Mail with Digital Campaigns
Direct mail provides the benefit of integrating into an overall marketing strategy, and provides value to the tactile experience of mail and the online experience as a qualified lead or a customer. As an example of how direct mail can be integrated with online, a piece of direct mail could contain a QR code that transports consumers to a landing page.
In this so called “omni-channel” example, there is the benefit of the tangible mail experience, and action is created in the online experience. This enhanced experience increases consumer engagement and success of embedding the brand into consumers’ minds as they “touch” brand touchpoints like the direct mail piece and the landing page, enhancing their full experience with the brand.
Elevate Your Marketing with Blue Market Media’s Direct Mail
In a world saturated by digital information and content, direct mail truly stands out. Blue Market Media’s direct mail services allow for easy, tested methods to engage customers offline, generate loyalty, and create conversions. With our tested methodologies in strategies, businesses will have access to successfully tapping into the tactile nature of direct mail campaigns to enhance their marketing strategies and their long-term success. Interested in revamping your marketing?
Get in touch with Blue Market Media today, and let us create direct mail campaigns that achieve your goals and truly connect with your audience.