A Guide to Programmatic Direct Mail Marketing

If you’re a marketer, you’re always looking to improve your lead generation, nurturing, retargeting, bottom-of-the-funnel, and retention campaigns.

Savvy marketers are deploying an old-school channel combined with a modern twist to bolster their email and digital efforts. 

This new approach is “programmatic direct mail marketing.”

Programmatic direct mail marketing leverages modern marketing automation software, allowing even non-technical teams to inject direct mail marketing into their existing email and digital marketing campaigns.

Programmatic direct mail makes the channel a fluid part of your overarching strategy. It’s no longer a standalone direct response channel in the way that so many companies have traditionally used it.

Table of Contents

• What is Programmatic Direct Mail Marketing?
• Differences Between Programmatic Direct Mail Marketing and Traditional Direct Mail
• Why Use Programmatic Direct Mail Marketing?
• Direct Mail Automation Brings Programmatic Direct Mail Marketing to Companies of All Sizes
• Programmatic Direct Mail Marketing Automation – A Logical Choice

What is Programmatic Direct Mail Marketing?

Programmatic direct mail marketing is bringing aspects of digital and direct mail marketing together through automation. Depending on the level of sophistication of your system, programmatic direct mail may only include parts or all of the process of launching a campaign.

Using programmatic advertising, companies can leverage online and offline data to deliver better experiences to prospects and customers. They can also improve the return on ad spend (ROAS) for the company employing it.

When the Internet was first launched, the prospect of receiving an email was new and exciting. Receiving printed marketing collateral in the mail was mundane and typical.

Now, more than twenty-five years later, the opposite is true. Direct mail is getting more recognition nowadays, with 71% of consumers feeling that direct mail is more personal than online digital communication. Better yet, new data tells us that consumers trust direct mail far more than digital channels when making a purchase decision.

With programmatic direct mail, you can bring the same level of automation you would expect from your digital campaigns to the physical mailbox. Adding a new channel or expanding your use allows you to deepen your connection with existing customers and make better connections with prospects.

Differences Between Programmatic Direct Mail Marketing and Traditional Direct Mail

Programmatic direct mail marketing automates most of the processes associated with traditional direct mail campaigns. This involves activities like

• Building your mailing list
• Designing the direct mail piece
• Sending and tracking

Programmatic direct mail marketing automates most of the processes associated with traditional direct mail campaigns. With programmatic advertising platforms, you can integrate your direct mail campaigns with other marketing activities.

So, for instance, you could set up a triggered direct mail campaign that will run after an email marketing sequence ends. Let’s say an abandoned cart sequence for an eCommerce company. You know — the emails you receive after adding an item to your cart and failing to complete the purchase.

Adding a direct mail step to a campaign like this will achieve two things. It will grab the attention of a customer who may be more likely to ignore emails and put you in a position to improve your ROAS.

This allows you to set up multiple touchpoints with your marketing strategies. With multiple direct mail touchpoints, you can push your customers to complete a purchase or subscribe to your offer, improving engagement and conversions.

Why Use Programmatic Direct Mail Marketing?

Programmatic direct mail allows you to send personalized mail without putting in a lot of additional effort. Here are five main reasons why you should adopt it.

Personalized Targeting

Programmatic direct mail allows businesses to send highly personalized messages based on customer behavior. For example, a previous customer can receive personalized product recommendations based on their purchase history. You can easily set this up by integrating your tech stack with a direct automation tool like Postalytics.

Automated Campaigns

With programmatic direct mail, companies can automate the sending process based on specific triggers, such as a customer’s birthday or recent purchase. This reduces manual efforts and ensures timely outreach. You can set this up easily with the triggered campaigns feature in Postalytics.

Increased Engagement

Direct mail has a higher open rate compared to digital advertising. A physical mail piece, like a postcard or brochure, captures attention and leaves a lasting impression, which can drive higher engagement. Moreover, you can use variable data and logic to personalize your campaigns at scale. Whether you’re sending 10 direct mail pieces or 1000, these features allow you to get higher conversions without added effort.

Multi-Channel Integration

Programmatic direct mail can be integrated with digital channels, creating a cohesive marketing strategy. For example, an email campaign can be followed by a printed mail piece, reinforcing the message and encouraging conversion.

One of our clients, Fresh City, a meal delivery and catering company, used Postalytics to connect with email non-responders. Within 72 hours of their pieces reaching customers, they saw orders rolling in. Much to their surprise, this integrated campaign generated a boost in ROI of 113%.

Tracking and Analytics

Programmatic direct mail provides tracking tools, allowing businesses to measure response rates, ROI, and customer engagement. For example, businesses now use pURLs and QR codes in their campaigns to get conversion data. This data helps companies refine their strategies for future campaigns, ensuring better results.

Direct Mail Automation Brings Programmatic Direct Mail Marketing to Companies of All Sizes

Direct mail has benefited from the growth of the B2B software industry, making the channel viable for companies of all sizes.

The B2B SaaS industry has grown rapidly in the last decade. Solutions are sprouting up for every channel and in even the most niche markets:

In previous years, companies would have had to invest in developing their solutions for programmatic direct mail campaigns.

Now, there are many options to automate your direct mail, including Postalytics.

Modern direct mail automation platforms deliver features far surpassing the experience of working with full-service direct mail vendors from previous decades. Even today, many companies still lean on these outdated vendor relationships and have yet to make the jump into more modern solutions. If these companies can be successful using “old school” methods, imagine what is possible with modern automation.

Some of the features you can expect when using direct mail programmatic ad platforms include:

Integrations With CRM and Marketing Automation Software 

Most direct mail automation platforms allow you to automate portions of your direct mail workflow. That is powerful enough on its own. 

But imagine how powerful it could be to integrate your existing tech with other top marketing and sales automation platforms. Postalytics offers integrations with all the best tools like Salesforce, HubSpot and ActiveCampaign. You can also use platforms like Zapier to connect to Postalytics or tap into the powerful direct mail API.

How do these integrations help? 

• When you inject direct mail into campaigns that are already producing an excellent ROI, the additional touchpoint will increase conversion rates. They can augment your messaging and engage with them in a new, more tangible way.
• It saves your team time by eliminating manual activities like physically creating mailing lists or collecting customer data on different platforms.
• Set up triggered campaigns by laying down certain conditions in your CRM or sales tools. For example, you could build a single or several direct mail steps into an existing email marketing campaign. Maybe each subscriber will receive a series of emails. If they don’t engage, they receive direct mail.

• Use customer data in CRM to create more personalized and relevant campaigns. For example, if you have segmented lists, you can use features like variable data and logic to display different content to different audiences.

Compared to adopting other channels, direct mail campaigns are affordable. Even with larger lists, your cost-per-recipient shrinks with higher volumes. The value of direct mail is undeniable for the level of engagement it delivers.  

This gives your marketing teams a brand new channel to play in and a variety of new approaches they can test. 

Triggered Direct Mail Campaign

Triggered direct mail is where the ROI in direct mail automation rises. Why? It allows your business to send the right message at the right time to the right audience. 

Triggered direct mail refers to using user actions as a “trigger” to affect the next steps that a customer will go through. It removes any manual work from your team. You can set specific sequences in Postalytics, so you don’t have to get involved in day-to-day promotions or marketing.   

Here’s an example to get you inspired. A retargeting campaign can be triggered when a prospect adds a product to their shopping cart but never finishes the purchase. Typically, the eCommerce company will send 2-3 emails. However, adding a direct mail sequence can be an attention-grabber that causes the customer to take action.

Design and Delivery Information

One of the most significant objections many marketers face when pitching an expansion into direct mail to management is the time factor. Traditionally, direct mail campaigns could become a big time sink, particularly when they need approval from several stakeholders.

This process could stretch for weeks on end, with a lot of back-and-forth communication and rounds of revisions. By the time your campaign is finally ready, it might be too late. Add to that the costs incurred, and you might want to give up on direct mail altogether. 

But gone are these problems with the advent of direct mail programmatic advertising solutions like Postalytics. 

For example, Postalytics offers several professional templates you can edit through a drag-and-drop editor—no more expensive design costs. You can quickly decide on a design and roll out your campaign for testing.

The platform can automate packaging and shipping. All you have to do is make the relevant connections with integrated software and watch the numbers roll in. You can also quickly design, launch, and evaluate direct mail campaigns.

In a case study we published about the company’s marketing program, Mr. Sullivan said, “Sending out a stream of emails, just like every other company in our space, didn’t set us apart enough, at least to our standards.” The solution? They sent personalized direct letters that came from the CEO. With this integrated approach, they saw a significant boost in their funnel.

Tracking and Analytics

One common obstacle marketers often quote when it comes to direct marketing is, “It’s so difficult to track and analyze direct mail campaigns. It’s not as easy as managing email campaigns.” 

That’s not true. Recent technological advances leverage software to track detailed campaign metrics at the individual recipient level. Today’s programmatic direct mail marketing tools use the USPS’s powerful Intelligent Mail Barcode system to track mail delivery. They can even track when the USPS determines an address is invalid. 

Response tracking has also improved. Marketers have started using savvy features like pURLs and QR codes to track response rates and conversions as quickly as you can follow in email campaigns. 

When the recipient scans this code or uses the URL, you can track their online activity and see who’s clicking on your CTAs. The best part? You don’t need any third-party tools to set this up. Postalytics provides in-built pURLs and QR code features that are easy to use for your campaigns.

Viewability and Ad Blocking

With so many companies resorting to digital ads like PPC and social media ads, consumers increasingly use ad blockers to escape the marketing noise. 

These numbers will only rise in the coming years. This means marketers need to find alternative mediums to ensure their message reaches the target audience.

Another concern comes from bots. Competition levels are high, and nefarious actors often use bots to click ads and drive up CPC costs. It’s estimated that eCommerce companies lose up to almost $4 billion annually through click fraud. 

Programmatic direct mail marketing takes these worries away. Bots don’t have mailing addresses. The only “adblocker” for direct mail is the recipient throwing the mailer away without looking at it. 

The best part? The automation capabilities of tools like Postalytics are no longer limited to large-scale organizations. Even small businesses and startups can easily subscribe to these platforms and use all the above features.

Programmatic Direct Mail Marketing Automation – A Logical Choice

If your company isn’t already leveraging programmatic direct mail marketing, you should ask yourself, “why?”

With the ability to connect direct mail as a channel to your digital campaigns and generate deep analytics about the campaigns you send, the common misconceptions that keep companies from using direct mail aren’t all that relevant anymore.

With the different features and functions in Postalytics, you can quickly ideate, design, and launch highly effective triggered direct mail campaigns without the back-and-forth hassle and miscommunication.  

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