Picture this: Your team just spent weeks creating the perfect direct mail marketing piece. You’ve honed in on the messaging. The design is revolutionary. The packages are on their way to your prospects and you’re ready for the big payoff.

Why isn’t the phone ringing off the hook? Turns out your team is too busy working with existing customers to call or email the prospects on your list. Or worse, you didn’t have a follow-up plan in the first place. Your hard-earned creative time has fallen flat due to a lack of pre-planning.

The dawn of the digital age brought new ways of reaching potential customers through new marketing channels like email, social media, pay-per-click, display ads, and paid search. But it has also created an information overload for your prospect. It’s harder and harder for your company to stand out in a sea of ads & emails.

Enter direct mail marketing. No one can negate the benefits of digital marketing. It’s relatively inexpensive to reach a ton of people through email, search, and social media. Yet digital marketing doesn’t hold a candle to the effectiveness of old-school material marketing like print or corporate gifts. In fact, direct mail still pulls a higher response rate than any digital direct marketing medium, with a response rate that ranges from about five to nine times greater than that of email, paid search, or social media. 

But how do you take advantage of direct mail marketing when your team is small, strapped for time, or isn’t sure where to start? The answer is integrating your digital marketing with your material marketing. 

If you are currently using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool, adding a direct mail step into your digital process should be fairly easy. But even if you’re using a simple spreadsheet to manage your campaign, integrating digital and material marketing is as easy as following these 5 steps: 

#1 Create your list

A list of 50, highly engaged prospects will give better returns than a list of 15,000 unknown prospects. Make sure you narrow your list down to your most likely and valuable prospects. This will free up your budget for a more impactful mailer. Plus, it will require less time from your team when you get to step 5. Whether you’re building your prospect list from referrals, face-to-face leads, events, or lead captures on your website, determine a metric that ensures you are reaching out to serious leads.

#2 Design your direct mail marketing piece

Once you have a list, you should be able to make some general assumptions about “who” they are. Are the recipients mostly male/female/unknown? Do they have similar titles? What challenges are they all facing that you solve? What kind of messaging or small corporate gift could help them with their day? Build your direct mail piece with your prospects and your messaging in mind. Your promo & direct mail provider should be able to help guide you with creative ideas that will create a meaningful experience for your prospect and fit within your budget. (Don’t have a go-to for print, promo, & direct mail? Shoot us an email and we’ll be happy to help!)

#3 Build your email follow-up campaign

While the direct mail piece is in production, create an email follow-up cadence. Be sure to incorporate that incorporates the messaging from your direct mail piece. Most email providers can create triggered sends based on opens, clicks, etc. If you have an existing CRM, you may be able to trigger this campaign to start once the package has been delivered. If you don’t have a CRM, you can manually trigger the start based on delivery time and location.

Not sure how many emails to send? The general rule of thumb is that it takes 5 “follow-ups” to close a sale. So if you’re relying entirely on email (see #5 below) then you’ll want to include at least 5 emails. Keep it relevant to your campaign and include an action for the recipient to take. For example, they could download a companion piece to your mailer, schedule a meeting, or get a quote.

#4 Get creative with social media

Create a social media campaign that specifically targets your ideal customer and incorporates the “theme” of your mailer. You don’t have to overthink it. For example, we love the “trailblazing” mantra that Salesforce has adopted. It allows them to unify all aspects of the digital and material, marketing on one central theme but is flexible enough to apply to various products and services. 

If you’re targeting a specific regional area, or the majority of the recipients on your list are of a certain age, title, or demographic, you can also get more bang for your ad buck by targeting your ads. It may be worth a little bit of ad spend to ensure that they are seeing your brand and messaging again. You’ll stay front and center in your prospect’s mind. ProTip: Try adding $5-15 dollars to a campaign and see how well it performs. If it does well, carve a bit more out of your next campaign’s budget for advertising.

#5 Make some phone calls!

In this modern age of messaging, we can sometimes forget the power of a good, old fashioned phone call. While some prospects may find cold calls invasive, remember that you’ve already warmed them up to who you are with your direct mail piece. If you’ve done your messaging right, they will know about your business and the problems you help solve. Most importantly, make sure the right person is following up on your campaign. Your caller should be someone who is excited and knowledgeable about the solutions you offer. Everyone gets busy, so a call about how you can help them do better work may be just what they needed.

If you or your team does not have time to call everyone on the list, focus on the individuals who are taking action in your digital campaigns. Did they click on an email? Did they visit your website from social media? It may feel a little “big brother” to call after someone clicks something. Remember that you’re trying to help them make a decision – not asking them to buy you. “I saw that you downloaded our 3-tips for XYZ. Did you find those helpful? What challenges are you facing that this tool is helping to solve? And can I answer any additional questions?” Always lean on being helpful, and let the sale be the benefit of great service.

Ready, set, send!

Integrating your digital marketing with your physical marketing doesn’t have to be hard! With a little bit of planning, your digital marketing can work as an extension of your team. Integrating digital marketing with your direct mail marketing helps you narrow your most likely prospects and ensure that every call counts.

Are you ready to grow your business with direct mail campaigns? Say, “hey” Our team is ready to help your brand stand out.