DIRECT MAIL GUIDE

What Is Direct Mail?

Direct mail marketing is a form of direct-to-consumer marketing in which you provide physical promotional material to your potential customer’s door. You’ve likely had direct mail marketing come through your own letterbox at some point or another.

Usually, direct mail marketing will involve the distribution of a leaflet, pamphlet, coupon, letter, postcard, booklet, or catalogue that promotes your services. The promotional material that you choose is dependent on your business and what you think will work best for your brand.

For example, a local takeaway shop may opt to distribute menus to the geographical region that they deliver to. In stark contrast, huge retail chains may have a national direct mail campaign to distribute a leaflet featuring their recent deals in an effort to drive more customers to local stores.
 

Why Should I Use Direct Mail?

Direct mail is a great way to connect with customers from all backgrounds. There’s a sentiment that old-school marketing techniques such as direct mail are no longer effective, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Direct mail marketing has the advantage of distributing tangible promotional material that will stay in the hands of your customers for quite some time. Contrast this against a social media advertisement that may only hold your customer’s attention for a few brief seconds.

Research has shown that advertisement recall and brand recognition were 70% higher in customers exposed to physical direct mail in comparison to a digital ad.

What Can Direct Mail Be Used For?

When it comes to direct mail, it can be used in a whole host of applications. It can be used for restaurants to get new menus out to their customer base, for event invitations, political messaging, coupon or discount offers, promotion of new products and services, and so much more.
 

What Are The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Direct Mail?

For every type of marketing, there will be natural advantages and disadvantages. That is why it is always best practice to diversify your marketing strategy to incorporate a range of different marketing techniques.
 

Advantages Of Direct Mail

For direct mail, there are many advantages, such as:

• Being able to target specific social demographics with your direct mail. For example, you could target based upon age, income level and gender to name a few.


• You can expand your brand or business’s sphere of influence in local areas to improve your exposure to certain demographics or areas of interest.


• You can target specific geographic regions that are of interest to your services or products.


• Direct mail offers a huge selection of personalisation options, allowing you to tailor your message to a particular group of people. This also allows for things such as birthdays, events, or even customer information such as past order history and first names to be used. Doing this can create a more memorable customer experience.


• Help you reach potentially digitally unreachable audiences. Not everyone likes to use Facebook, social media, or the internet. Direct mail can tap into this niche audience base.


• You may face less competition with your direct mail advertising campaign in comparison to other forms of marketing. Companies are more likely to use digital marketing nowadays as opposed to traditional marketing methods – this creates more of an opportunity to capitalise on the decrease in competitive advertising space for direct mail. Take advantage of a desaturated market.


• Direct mail, statistically, has a better response rate than digital marketing ads. A study recently found that direct mail can generate up to a 4.4% response rate, compared to the average email response rate of 0.12%.

Disadvantages Of Direct Mail

But every form of marketing will have disadvantages too. The most notable downsides to using direct mail are:

• Direct mail requires access to address information. Not every company will have access to customer address information, which could prove to be a significant roadblock in the development of a direct mail campaign.


• It can take time to deliver a full direct mail marketing campaign. Unlike other marketing techniques such as email marketing campaigns, direct mail requires a lot of forward thinking, budgeting, and planning to execute effectively. Not only does the promotional material itself need to be developed, but the materials also need to be printed and the distribution of the materials arranged.


• It can be perceived differently from other marketing techniques. As direct mail marketing needs to be delivered directly to the home of the customer, it can seem direct and sometimes intrusive. Some people may view direct mail as ‘junk’ or unwanted, which obviously isn’t good! Carefully planning the materials to engage the customer is a great way to combat this. You’ll want them to feel pleased with your materials, not annoyed.