Direct mail (DM) marketing has proven its effectiveness time and time again, with recent studies showing that the Covid-19 lockdowns have only enhanced people’s desire for something tangible through their letterbox over receiving endless emails.
With an increasing amount of marketers already focusing on traditional DM, we want to take a look into how programmatic mail can elevate this already effective communication method to enhance your marketing campaigns.
What is it? Programmatic direct mail marketing is an automated technique that can send a mailing to any anonymous online visitors to your company’s website after that visitor reaches a specified trigger or behaviour. This is completed by reverse appending the visitor’s IP address to a household address which then allows physical mail to be sent directly to their door. This super-efficient marketing method is a great way to develop brand trust and authenticity, as well as building rapport with actively interested prospective customers.
Research into the effectiveness of traditional DM already shows us that it is the most trusted form of marketing with 87% of consumers stating that they view mail as ‘believable’, this is especially true amongst Gen-Z who rated it the most trusted channel, second only to search. Programmatic mail marketing would be combining the highly trusted DM channel with potential consumers who are specifically targeted due to their online behaviour and active interest – It catches the lead whilst it’s warm and should be the perfect accompaniment to close the sale loop.
How does it work in practise? By installing a simple tracking code to your website, you can monitor and set certain behavioural triggers. For example, let’s say that your business is fashion retail, perhaps a customer has added a dress to their basket but hasn’t completed the purchase yet – the system responds and can send a personalised direct mail to land on their doorstep the next day, perhaps with an image of the specific dress that customer was looking at, along with their name, and perhaps a discount code… This level of personalisation and care will not only improve customer engagement and ROI, but also give your business an edge over your competition.
Why choose programmatic direct mail? If you weren’t already convinced, it is worth considering why traditional direct mail has seen such a resurgence over recent years… Thanks to the often-uninspiring results of online adverts due to ad-blockers, as well as fraudulent web traffic driven by bots, ad impressions just aren’t generating the ROI that marketers might have hoped for. Marketing emails are easily ignored as customers receive so many that the impact is massively depleted. With this in mind, it is no surprise that marketers have sought the reassurance and tangibility of sending physical mail, after-all – bots don’t have mailing addresses! The addition of using programmatic software to trigger said mail just adds an extra layer of effectiveness as it is guaranteed to send to the right people at exactly the right time – guaranteed warm leads – as a marketer, what more could you want!
Research source: Market Reach
