Direct mail marketing strategies may seem overwhelming. Choosing where, when, and what to send to customers and new prospects can be daunting if you don’t know how to begin.
The best place to start is by mapping out the customer journey. Whether you are looking for new prospects, retargeting current clients, or renewing a relationship with former customers, a customer journey map guides you when designing your campaign. Segmentation, personalization, and a multi-channel approach helps you create the right campaigns for the right audience.
Mapping the customer journey is the first step in building lasting connections with prospects and customers.
Mapping the Customer Journey
What exactly is the customer journey? It is the experience that takes a person from brand awareness through to becoming loyal fans, including each stage in between. It starts with a prospect understanding that they need the solution you provide.
One way to map out the journey is to make a flowchart so you can visualize the steps the customer must take to achieve an objective, including overcoming potential roadblocks. You must first set a goal for their journey. Is it to purchase a product? Visit a landing page? Subscribe to your email list? Each call to action will have a unique path.
Now, start plotting their journey with the flowchart. You can create customer journey maps for prospects, existing customers, and loyal fans. Use different shapes and colors for related steps and conditional data for “If, then” scenarios. The journey a customer takes with your brand includes:
- Awareness of needing the solution.
- Learning about your brand’s solution for that challenge.
- The decision-making process towards attaining the solution.
- Remaining engaged with your brand.
- Becoming a loyal fan who shares your brand.
Being able to see and walk through these steps with a flowchart helps you uncover potential drawbacks and bottlenecks in the marketing process. When you understand these challenges, you are better equipped to create a successful direct mail marketing campaign.
How to Create an Engaging Direct Mail Campaign
Armed with your customer journey map, you’re ready to create a direct mail campaign. There are a few crucial elements that ensure the best results. By integrating targeted segmentation, mailer personalization, and omnichannel delivery, your campaign can improve connections with new prospects and existing customers.
Using Segmentation Successfully
We may think that segmentation is primarily useful for email marketing. However, there are several ways to develop effective direct mail segmentation to help deliver the right marketing pieces to the right target audience. Based on the data you’ve already collected from clients, you can use these segments to organize your direct mailers:
- Demographic data, such as age, gender, income, or occupation. Example: marketing a product that women primarily use.
- Location, including regional differences. Example: promotions specific to warm locations.
- Buying behaviors of loyal customers. Example: rewarding clients with special perks or discounts.
- Psychographics like lifestyle, interests, or activities like hobbies. Example: a sale on sporting goods.
Segmenting your audience helps you to create pieces that interest and engage recipients. This means you must personalize your mailers.
The Value of Personalization
Personalization means customizing your direct mail campaign for the client you are seeking. Sending promotions to a particular group that speaks to them personally, like addressing their name or buying preferences, is worth the effort. Studies show that personalizing your marketing efforts increase engagement and ROI.
Nearly 90% of big name brands, like Coca-Cola and Netflix, have benefitted from investing in personalized marketing, and for good reason. Customers long to be seen and heard. They are even willing to share their information to gain a more customized experience.
Normally, personalization is better suited to email marketing. And that’s why it’s smart to combine direct mail with other types of marketing.
Omnichannel Integration
Despite the ease of segmentation and personalization in email marketing, it does have numerous drawbacks today that direct mail can remedy. For example, even loyal customers don’t always read emails. And spam filters can block emails they want to see.
Direct mail marketing helps you bypass these challenges. Direct mailers provide an interesting way to access people you won’t reach by email. An interesting, personalized mailbox offer can spur engagement. However, this does not mean you should reduce your digital marketing efforts. Instead, integrate social media marketing, email marketing, and website promotion into your direct mail marketing efforts.
Incorporate digital resources into your mailers. QR codes are the most obvious, providing an easy way for participants to access your social media or a landing page. Some readers may not know how to use these, so include memorable URLs, too.
Direct mailers can be used to promote online events such as webinars or summits. These help you invite a larger audience to your event than online efforts. Drive potential attendees to a registration page to collect their info.
Another way to combine direct mail and digital promotions is by advertising a new app or a loyalty program. Direct mailers educate your customers about these exciting developments, helping them recognize that your brand is customer-centric. This goes a long way to building lasting customer relationships.
Building Connections to Build Customer Relationships
Today’s buyers are selective. They don’t have patience for sales techniques; they want connection. One of the most important business lessons is that keeping your customers happy for the long haul means building relationships before they even sign up.
Your prospective customers expect quality service, ethical business practices, and a commitment to your company’s mission. For marketers, this means creating customer touchpoints no matter where they are in their journey with your company. Prospects need answers about who you are and what you are offering. Existing customers desire personalized offers and speedy customer service. And loyal fans also deserve perks and rewards. Make sure your team’s internal communication is rock solid so you can deliver a superior customer experience throughout their journey with your brand.
Your direct mail marketing campaign should pull all these elements together to create a cohesive narrative about your brand. This gives you the best possible marketing return on investment.
Effective direct mail strategies rely on mapping out your customer’s journey with your brand. Segmentation, personalization, and omnichannel integration improve the odds of reaching and engaging your target audience. This builds successful connections that can turn leads into enthusiastic fans.
Author Bio
Indiana Lee is a business journalist with expertise in marketing and operational strategies. As a regular contributor to leading business publications, she offers analyses and perspectives on customer engagement and data-driven marketing solutions. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
