The Benefits Of Direct Mail Marketing

Love a good letter? Well, so do your consumers! Find out how direct mail marketing can tap into millennial audiences and boost your business’s visibility.

By Shannon Mugford

Feb 11, 2022

You may be wondering… direct mail? Posting letters to your consumers? Yes. To put it into context, in 2020 alone, the overall market size for purchasing was at 834m single cards. And if you’re trying to break into the millennial market, you’ll be happy to know they’re one of the key contributors to the card industry. Baby boomers are especially seen throughout these millennial audiences.

With services such as Moonpig & Funky Pigeon on our radar, digitalised card designing and writing have become popular. However, there is still something so precious about visiting a card shop and finding that perfect one for someone special. This is why direct mail marketing should become a part of your strategy moving forward.

What is direct mail marketing?

Yes, we’re in the 21st century, and yes, print marketing is still a thing. Direct mail marketing, otherwise known as print marketing, is in the form of hard copies, such as catalogues or magazines. Buying behaviours prove that a high percentage of people prefer to shop using a catalogue, for instance.

Sending cheerful and meaningful messaging in shiny envelopes to your consumers sets you apart from email databases, making for a much more personalised campaign structure.

The Benefits of Direct Mail Marketing

NURTURE YOUR CUSTOMERS

Direct mail marketing services can be one of the most effective ways to entice and nurture your customers. Let’s compare an email with a four-page newsletter, for instance. For an email, you may glimpse at it, or it may end up in your junk folder. A newsletter sent to your home, on the other hand, is in your hands, and if the cover page offers an engaging headline or imagery, you’ll instantly grasp the reader’s attention.

This way of marketing opens up opportunities for connecting to your buyer differently. If we compare to sending a greeting card to a loved one, it reinforces relationships. Not to mention, the personalisation can be as tailored as you desire. If you own a gifting business, why not send a reminder or an offer code to a customer who inputted their birthday upon signing up to your post?

The novelty of opening a letter to reveal exclusive offers or recipes that compliment your products can be a lot more engaging than an email for many individuals. This physical means of marketing is also permanent. Unless the recipient goes out of their way to recycle said hard copy, it’ll live somewhere in their home and has the potential to be found again in future. Allowing for thought provocation for your business.

LESS COMPETITION

We’re not necessarily talking about other companies in your industry, but more along the lines of clutter. Look, you can’t deny that your email inbox isn’t overflowing with some relevant mail, and some not so much. And for your customer’s, it’s probably even worse. You’ll have customers who forget to unsubscribe from mailing lists, as well as some that sign up to lists that won’t offer data protection, which result in the dreaded spam.

Because of this, your email campaigns can sometimes get lost and forgotten about. But a direct mail marketing campaign won’t be amongst other cluttering letters. Yes, it might turn up with a local newsletter, but that’s a hell of a lot less to deal with for your consumer.

EXTENDING YOUR BRAND’S PERSONA

Direct mail marketing is also a fantastic way to extend your business’s tone of voice and overall presence. As with other successfully established companies in their sectors, such as Hello Fresh. This food subscription service embodies convenience and creativity within cooking. Offering a way to build a one-of-a-kind cookbook to inspire at-home chef’s to push boundaries with their everyday meals, Hello Fresh’s image is set in stone.

That’s why it’s essential to know your ‘why’ before you begin your direct mail marketing campaign. This way, you can infiltrate emotional connections with your recipients. Meaning that a customer-focused attitude should always be at the forefront. 90% of millennials said they favoured brands that showed authenticity. So, when creating your print material, you’ll want to highlight your brand’s goals but what the recipients want to see too.

As a top tip, offering complete honesty to your consumers is the way to gain their trust. For instance, a vegan food manufacturer may warn its customers to steer away from a particular product due to its origins. The mighty fig, as an example, is derived from the fermentation of a wasp after pollination. Although it is a natural process, this may not sit well with some vegans. By offering this level of transparency, your consumer will trust you.

Direct Mail Marketing Material From Soshell

While the digital world is ever-evolving, direct mail marketing companies are still reaping the benefits of using print materials to grasp millennials. While these campaigns may go hand in hand by using QR codes on envelopes or finishing a story on your website to gain traffic, it all starts with the physical act of posting to homes.

Like all marketing strategies, the success rate should always be measured and monitored to identify what works and what doesn’t. Did you get less traction from a discount code in comparison to the week before? Find out why.

If you’d like assistance with your direct mail marketing, get in touch with our experts here at Soshell today. With expert graphic designers in our team, we can offer you a direct mail marketing service that ticks all boxes, initiating growth and conversions in a still-successful traditional marketing concept. Call us today on 01482 697190 for further information on our graphic design services.