Where Should Direct Mail Fit Into Your Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy?

Are you stuck wondering how to fit direct mail into your multi-channel marketing mix?

You’re not alone – we hear this question from many forward-thinking marketers.

Smart integration of direct mail is the key to increasing brand awareness and making better decisions. At Postalytics, we’re changing the game with our automated platform, positioning direct mail in the marketing mix.

This article will discuss direct mail and its essential role in your marketing strategy. It will illustrate why Postalytics is critical to your customer acquisition process. Let’s dive into the practical insights shaping today’s most successful marketing campaigns.

What is Multi-Channel Marketing?

Multi-channel marketing combines various online and offline communication methods to reach customers at different stages of their journey.

Think about TV channels, websites and emails. Marketers focusing too much on one channel could lose their audience on another. A multi-channel marketing approach brings this together and complements email marketing, generating high response rates with automated campaign tools.

But where exactly does direct mail fit in the grand scheme of multi-channel marketing? It’s a question that calls for some strategic insight – and that’s what we’ll be discussing next.

What are the Benefits of Multi-Channel Marketing?

The tangible benefits of multi-channel marketing, focusing on the vital role of direct mail, isn’t only growth. It’s also about fostering loyalty within your customer base. To drive this growth and loyalty, you need a cohesive multi-channel marketing strategy to power them.

Multiple channels mean multiple advantages. Some are clear right off the bat; others unfold along the way. But rest assured, they all contribute to your marketing success.

The key benefits of multi-channel marketing center around:

1. Boosting Brand Awareness
2. Meeting prospects in their preferred channels
3. Keeping your messaging consistent
4. Gathering Data for Insightful Decision-Making
   

Boosting Brand Awareness

Greater visibility means a broader reach. 

Multi-channel marketing lets your brand engage with clients across varied interfaces. When customers see you everywhere, you’re hard to miss.

Remember Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign? It boosted their sales for the first time in a decade. Even better, it established its omnipresence across channels.

Meeting prospects in their preferred channels

A multi-channel approach allows you to meet your customers on the channel that they prefer, both on an individual basis and as a whole. 

This is especially helpful for companies that have a longer buying cycle, where multiple touch points will be required to convince a customer to make the purchase.

Over time, you’ll learn more about the preferences of your audience and be able to tailor your multi-channel campaigns to them.

Delivering Consistent Messaging

Saying the same thing in the same voice across different channels defines brand consistency. This singularity speaks volumes about your brand’s commitment and reliability.

The #LikeAGirl campaign by Always is a great example. Across several social media channels, the perception associated with the phrase changed.

Gathering Data for Insightful Decision-Making

Data-driven decisions are more intelligent, sharper decisions. Each channel offers insight into your customers’ behavior.

Netflix’s decision to produce “House of Cards” was backed by data from various channels about the viewers’ likes. A diverse array of channels equals diverse data for future strategies.

The State of Multi-Channel Marketing

Here are a few stats that show just how important modern multi-channel marketing is in the eyes of marketers:

• 72% of Postalytics customers have seen higher response rates when automated direct mail is added to email campaigns.
• 73% of marketers say that they have a multi-channel marketing strategy in place.
• 86% of senior-level marketers say that it is important to create a cohesive journey for customers across all touchpoints and channels.
• 52% of marketers use 3 to 4 marketing channels, compared to 44% in 2015.

Despite this, only 14% of organizations are currently running coordinated marketing campaigns across all channels and only 30% of marketers are highly confident in their ability to deliver a multichannel strategy, with 67% characterizing themselves as “somewhat confident.” That means that there is a lot of room for growth.

Why aren’t more organizations executing on the multi-channel vision? Why the lack of confidence?

Because these marketers know that multi-channel isn’t easy. Especially when offline channels are delivered via manual, disconnected workflows.

Offline Multi-Channel Marketing Challenges

Coordinating offline and online channels poses several obstacles. Online integration is generally more straightforward. Offline channels encounter coordination, personalization, and attribution hurdles.

Traditional frameworks often don’t connect to marketing automation tools. The result? It requires increased manual effort for creativity and delivery. Personalization is effective, but synchronizing it across all channels can be challenging due to external data sources. Finally, tracking offline channels proves hard, making attributions difficult.

But with robust solutions like Postalytics, marketers can overcome these challenges. They can enhance their multi-channel marketing strategies, delivering personalized messages that leave a lasting impact.

4 Successful Multi-Channel Marketing Tips

Successful multi-channel marketers test and deploy personalized content across channels that resonate with their target audience. Creating a consistent and thoughtful messaging strategy is key. 

Here are four tips to help you achieve multi-channel marketing success:

1. Build a Multi-Channel Messaging Strategy

Developing a coherent messaging strategy across channels ensures your communications are consistent. To create unified messages that resonate with your audience, follow these steps:

1. Identify your target audience.
2. Define your key message and positioning.
3. Adapt your message to suit each channel while maintaining brand voice.
   

Remember, consistent and relevant messaging is essential for successful multi-channel marketing.

2. Use a Marketing Automation Platform, CRM, or CDP

Marketing automation platforms, CRM systems and Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) streamline multi-channel marketing efforts. They centralize customer information and orchestrate multi-channel campaigns.

When selecting a tool, consider user-friendliness, scalability, and integration with your existing tech stack. Segment, Exponea, and Lytics are among the leaders in the space.

3. Connect Direct Mails Across Various Channels

Integrating direct mail marketing across channels is crucial. Let’s explore how to connect direct mail to different channels.

Social Media Tags

Combine direct mail with social media by targeting the same audience using custom or lookalike audiences. Automation tools can help this process, providing a cohesive marketing experience.

Email

Integrate direct mail with email campaigns by using triggered direct mailings in response to email engagement. Automation streamlines the synchronization of these channels.

IP Targeting

Leverage IP targeting to send personalized direct mail to users who visited your website or engaged with specific content. Automated solutions help achieve a seamless connection between these channels.

Loyalty Programs

Incorporate direct mail into your loyalty program to reward loyal customers or encourage re-engagement. Use automation to deliver timely, targeted rewards and offers.

Abandoned Cart Recovery

Recover abandoned carts by sending personalized direct mail to remind customers of items left in their carts. Automation helps streamline this process, increasing the chances of successful conversion.

4. Offline Channels Need To Work With Digital – No Excuses

Bridging the gap between offline and digital channels is vital for a seamless multi-channel marketing experience. Align offline efforts with digital campaigns through automation and integration with CRM systems, Marketing Automation tools, or CDPs.

To inspire your strategy, explore success stories of brands that integrated offline channels with digital initiatives.

Why is Automated Direct Mail Such a Good Fit?

Automated direct mail is a vital part of a robust multi-channel marketing strategy.

In our experience, 69% of our Postalytics users incorporate automated direct mail alongside emails or digital marketing channels into their marketing mix.

Direct mail has the flexibility to deliver impactful marketing messages at each stage of the sales funnel. It works with your CRM, Marketing Automation tools, and CDPs, making it a natural fit for streamlined multi-channel marketing.

Automated direct mail serves as a unique touchpoint for customers who engage with brands. This cross-channel communication often leads to increased brand recall and deeper customer engagement.

Postalytics’ automated direct mail stands out with its ease of use and efficiency. You can create and execute campaigns faster without sacrificing quality.

And it’s not about dispatching mail. It’s about sending well-crafted, personalized messages that resonate with your audience. Direct mail contributes to better customer experience and engagement.

Automated direct mail is an integral component of any successful multi-channel marketing strategy.

Where Should Direct Mail Fit?

Direct mail can strengthen a multi-channel marketing strategy at various sales funnel stages. Whether capturing new leads or nurturing existing customers, direct mail has the flexibility to adapt to different stages of the customer journey.

Top-Of-Funnel

At the top of the funnel, direct mail captures attention and introduces prospects to the brand. Engaging direct mail pieces, like postcards and giveaways, pique interest and generate leads.

You can integrate direct mail into lead-generation strategies by leveraging Postalytics’ pURL system. This connects customers to personalized URLs and gathers valuable information for future engagement.

Middle-of-Funnel

During the middle-of-funnel stage, direct mail helps nurture leads and build relationships. Providing in-depth information through direct mail, with product sheets or whitepapers, can engage your audience.

For example, sending a postcard to a customer who often connects with your brand on social media and opens your emails can lead to increased engagement. The power of direct mail in B2B lead nurturing strengthens relationships and encourages action. 

Direct mail is an excellent medium for delivering print-based nurturing and educational pieces like white papers and product sheets to all types of customers and prospects.

Bottom-of-Funnel

Direct mail is significant in driving conversions and closing deals at the bottom-of-funnel stage. Personalized offers or incentives can entice prospects to take the final plunge.

Companies often share case studies, testimonials and CTAs to leverage the pattern interrupt strategy that proved successful in earlier stages. Incorporating direct mail campaigns at the bottom of the funnel enhances customer relationships and conversion rates.

A Perfect Fit for Your Strategy

Direct mail is not another marketing channel. It’s a strategic tool that fits into any sales funnel stage and enhances your multi-channel marketing strategy.

With Postalytics, it becomes even more effective. Our platform:

• Combines high personalization, easy tracking and robust integrations.
• Makes direct mail campaigns more powerful and easier to manage.
• Empowers companies to create and send personalized direct mail campaigns. 
• Promotes the sharing of valuable data onto other media with more than 20 different integrations.

Adding direct mail to your multi-channel strategy has never been simpler. With direct mail’s strategic integration, enjoy increased engagement and better, data-backed decision-making.

Ready to explore the full potential of our platform? Be sure to click here to learn more about Postalytics’ services in Direct Mail Automation.

Check out our blog for deeper insights and resources surrounding multi-channel marketing and direct mail strategies.

Be the game-changer in your multi-channel marketing strategies with Postalytics. Start crafting high-impact, personalized direct mail campaigns today – delivered, tracked, and tweaked how you need.