What could these five corporations in completely different industries have in common?
- AAA
- Dish Network
- Forbes Magazine
- Smithsonian Institute
- Sprint
They’re all new to the Target Marketing 2012 Top 50 Mailers list. These highly sophisticated marketers are using direct mail in sync with digital marketing to generate leads and drive sales in a growing trend of ramped up mailing activity among big companies.
Even Google sees the power of using direct mail. The internet marketing powerhouse mails an assortment of AdWords coupons, app offers, and business advice for using its services on a regular basis.
Direct mail is increasingly effective due in large part to a rise in “share of mailbox” since more mail recipients opt to receive and pay bills online. As a result, direct mail pieces are gaining more attention and are making a bigger impression.
Of course, as the top mailers know, direct mail works best if used in concert with online channels like Pay Per Click, banner ad, and email messaging campaigns, which extend their reach to others not targeted by mail.
How an integrated online/offline marketing mix can generate a higher ROI:
- Direct Mail — You can select exactly who you want to reach. Start with your own lists of active and inactive customers. These are your low-hanging fruit for upsell, cross-sell and win-back campaigns. For new customer acquisition campaigns choose vertical market lists of prospects that already demonstrate an interest in your market. Add compiled lists of prospects identified by the right demographics or business information that match your best customers. Test offers, lists, formats, and personalized messaging to optimize response.
- Email — You can cost-effectively stay in touch with email subscribers by sharing relevant news and information. Keep your message simple and strive for new opt-ins based on providing valuable content that subscribers will share. Where you have both email and postal addresses, time deployments just before and after direct mail pieces arrive.
- Pay Per Click — This search engine marketing tool brings qualified prospects not reached by mail or email to your landing page by targeting keywords they use for searching the web. Optimize your incoming prospects by writing ads with well-researched keywords, adding geography, and suppressing negative keywords. You only pay for clicks, not impressions and you can set the budget on a daily basis.
- Digital Display Advertising — This red-hot area of online marketing began with banner ads placed on websites where prospects are likely to visit. Now, through “retargeting,” you can serve ads to visitors who looked at your website but abandoned it, a tactic that has proven to bring many of them back to buy. You can also identify an online audience by targeted demographics and serve digital ads to them wherever they go on the web. Referred to as “data driven digital display,” it is a very effective method of keeping your brand front and center.
In addition to reaching a wider audience through multichannel direct marketing, you gain the added benefit of reaching many prospects with multiple impressions—and you don’t have to be a Forbes, Sprint, or Google to do it!
For more creative thinking or tips to make the most of your next campaign, contact your Digital Dog Direct Customer Service Representative today or call us at 609-882-DIGI (3444).
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