Imagine you’re in a clothing store you’ve never been in before. A store clerk immediately approaches you with a t-shirt and asks, “Should I ring you up?”

What would your reaction be? Confused as to why someone is asking you to purchase an item you haven’t expressed interest in? Anxious that you’re being pressured into something that could be the wrong size or color?

This is how your prospects can feel when you send them the wrong message at the wrong time from your business.

“Why are they sending me this?”

That sense of confusion — even resentment — can be avoided if you are careful to target your customers with the right message at the right point in their buying journey. Direct mail can be a highly effective approach to accomplishing this:

Direct mail can both cater to customers’ current stage and direct them to what comes next

For your direct mail piece to succeed in getting customers through the sales funnel, its call-to-action (CTA) must makes sense for those customers’ current stage. For example, if you’re communicating for the first time with a new prospect or customer who knows nothing about your business, the direct mail piece you send should not go into the nitty-gritty details of every plan or service you offer. Rather, it should include general information about what products or services you can provide, along with a friendly CTA about learning more or keeping your business in mind.

That said, a major advantage of sending direct mail in the first place is that it can be very effective in moving people onto to the next stage of the sales funnel. This can be accomplished through an effective CTA that encourages prospects or customers to take a specific action next.

Use direct mail to draw attention to your online sales funnel

Mail advertising is great for directing attention to other marketing channels, and so supporting multiple touchpoints. In particular, mail can be effective in directing people to specific destinations online — a landing page or your business’ social media profile, for example. With this in mind, a tailored direct mail piece can be effective at moving people over to, and ultimately through, an online sales funnel. This is particularly advantageous if your business conducts transactions and other kinds of meaningful conversions online.

Use highly-targeted list segments to make sure you’re targeting the right group

Copy, messaging, and packaging all contribute to making a mail piece great; using data to help target and refine your audience’s various segments is what makes a mail piece exceptional—and exceptionally effective. Effective use of data is essential when it comes to making sure the right audience is receiving the right message at the right time. This is especially important when it comes to action-based targeting.

For example, a mail piece sent to people who are familiar with your business would look different than one you’d send to a list of people from a nearby zip code who haven’t heard of your business before. The goal of the first campaign would be to spur re-engagement; the second campaign’s goal would be to initiate brand awareness.

In order to make sure the right campaigns land with people who are in particular parts of the buying journey, create (and maintain) list segments that reflect these stages in your contact database.

The goal is that no one who receives a piece of mail from you will ever wonder why you sent it or what it could possibly mean for them.

We know all about how to target customers throughout every stage of the buying journey, and we can help you craft your next campaign. Contact us today!