Why Direct Mail Should Be in Your Marketing Mix

Posted on October 1, 2020

With direct mail services, your West Palm Beach business can reach more customers while making your brand and message more memorable. Although more businesses are turning to digital marketing than ever before, there’s still a place for print mail in the Internet-age. In fact, it offers several unique benefits and can enhance the effectiveness of a multi-channel marketing campaign. Learn more about direct mail and why it should be in your business’s marketing mix.

What is Direct Mail Marketing?

Direct mail is an effective communications medium that includes printed postcards, flyers, letters, brochures, newsletters, and more. As part of a multi-channel marketing campaign, it can drive prospects to your website or inbound sales funnel, helping your West Palm Beach business reach more customers without your message getting lost in the digital noise of mobile, email, and social media marketing.

Personalization

Additionally, mailings can be personalized through variable data printing to increase open and response rates and improve brand/message memorability. Variable data printing is ideal for printing names, addresses, serialized barcodes, consecutive numbers, and other variable data on direct mail. Not only does it add a personal touch to messages, but it can also help you keep track of promotions with barcodes.

Targeting Capabilities

Another way to increase your mail’s effectiveness is with Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM), which is a targeted mail marketing service from the United States Postal Service. EDDM allows your business to reach every address on a mailing route or zip code(s) at a discounted postage rate.

EDDM is used in a variety of industries:

Restaurants
Dry cleaners
Moving/storage
Retail and grocery stores
Churches
Non-profits
Salons and spas
Dentist offices
Gyms
Auto repair

While some direct mail marketing campaigns see better results with variable data mailing lists, other campaigns have more success by blanketing an area with EDDM. It’s important to select the right approach for your campaign to maximize ROI.

Commingling for Lower Postage

An easy way to lower your mail cost is through commingling, a service that allows you to save up to 40% on postage with no additional charges. How it works is a service provider, like Bulldog Marketing, collects the mail daily from local clients and presorts it all together for a postage discount that’s passed on to clients. Your business doesn’t even need to Cass certify, move, update, sort, or barcode the mail. Commingling also makes the mail process faster by using barcodes and pre-sorting the mail before it reaches the Post Office.

Noteworthy Statistics

Still not convinced? We’ve compiled statistics from multiple sources that demonstrate the power of direct mail and its importance in a multi-channel marketing campaign.

Over 60% of direct mail recipients were influenced to visit the promoted website – the greatest influence on first-time shoppers. (Source: USPS)
Up to 90% of direct mail gets opened, compared to only 20-30% of emails. (Source: Data & Marketing Association)
The household list response rate was 9% in 2018, up from 5.1% in 2017, and the prospect list response rate was 4.9%, an increase from 2.9% the year prior. (Source: 2018 ANA-DMA Response Rate Report)
A 2018 study identified several benefits that direct mail has over email marketing, such as a longer lifespan of 17 days versus two seconds, improved branding and message retention, and less likely to be viewed as spam. (Source: Go Inspire Group)
Direct mail outperforms email in terms of incremental revenue after campaign costs. However, a combination of both outperformed either medium in isolation. (Source: Go Inspire Group)

Whether you want to target a specific audience or blanket a geographical area, print mail is one of the most effective mediums for getting your promotion noticed by prospects.

Promote Your West Palm Business

By adding direct mail to your marketing mix, you’ll have stronger campaigns because they’ll reach the right audience, thereby driving more business. Bulldog Marketing can take care of all your direct mail needs – design, mailing lists, complete postal automation, and assembly & delivery under our established USPS permit accounts.