Is Your Direct Mail Trash or Treasure or BOTH?

Consider this – When marketers send out mail on behalf of their clients it’s called direct mail. Yet, most of the clients list of prospects who receive it, call it junk mail. So my advice to clients who have a direct mail list is to stop sending junk mail. How? Use an online call to action to identify which of the list thinks your mail piece is a treasure – not trash.

We did a multi-channel campaign for a dozen high end menswear specialty stores this fall.

Example of Post Card with an Online Landing Page Call to Action

All offered a generous gift to their customers to come into the store and shop. While the campaign details varied from store to store, they had one thing in common: they required the customer to sign up for his “deal” online. Depending on the list size, the results ranged from 2% to 10% response on the landing page. But the significance is that they were able to determine which of their customer viewed their offer as “trash” and which ones valued it as “treasure”. By collecting emails as the call to action on the landing page, our goal is to identify who are active, motivated buyers for these stores and to go forward using only cost effective email marketing as the retention component of their marketing.

In the book “Inbound Marketing: “Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs”, Brian Halligan redefines the way people shop. Outbound marketing- where we look to get in front of people who we think might be our customers- is out – and inbound marketing – where customers find us- is in.

My hope is that the budget dollars saved from transitioning their direct mail to email can be transferred to a search strategy designed for new customers to  find them using inbound marketing.

My advices… take out the trash and focus on marketing to the treasure.  Identify who your customers are and let them help you market your brand to the customers looking for you…

Stay tuned for our success stories of our clients using social media blogging.