Direct Mail for a Digital Audience

Direct mail has long been a staple in any marketer’s strategic plan. Direct mail continues to be an effective way to reach a wide audience and we’ve put together some tips that can make your direct mail program even more effective.

The phrase “Old is Gold” does not apply to direct mailing because direct mail marketing has always worked and continues to dominate. A relatable success story comes from Opendoor’s strategy adopted for direct mail. What needs innovative adaptation is transforming the print media to be digital.

A print ad grabs attention and interest, but due to busy lives and constant distractions, traditional CTAs such as “call us” and “email us” aren’t effective conversion methods anymore.

Landing Page with a QR Code

Instead, consider directing your prospects to a landing page on which you present multiple options that best suit the reader's use case. Using a QR Code instantly transforms your direct mailer to an interactive marketing tool where you can provide more information to help your prospects.

Depending on where in your sales-cycle your target audience falls, there are ways you can better address their needs.

Top-of-Funnel

In this stage, you predict and assume the customer is interested in doing business with your company. Mail is commonly addressed to “current resident” and the goal is to get the prospect engaged in order to share their contact information. This allows an agent to continue nurturing the prospect further down the sales funnel. For such use-cases, landing pages should do the following:

• Collect Contact Information - email, phone, name and a short message
• Allow A Pop Up Chatbox To Engage With An Agent - if agents are available, allow the prospect to connect with one and have a chat
• Provide An Opportunity To Schedule An Appointment - if no agents are available, allow the customer to schedule a call-back
• List Available Agents - provide a list of available agents in the area and list contact information for inbound sales

Top-of-funnel prospects are very response sensitive. If interested and high-intent, these individuals need a quick reply and strong attention to detail. They close fast with the right level of support and smooth processes.

But top-of-funnel is just one strategy you might employ in a direct mail campaign. Let’s explore a few others.

Retarget

In this process, the prospect is already in your system whether it be a CRM and/or an in-house portfolio application but you may not have all their contact information. Consider hosting a landing page that would collect information such as a phone number or email. From there you can share a customized offer or a time sensitive promotion with a short expiration to the user to get them to act with urgency. Share stats that display what other prospects, similar to the targeted audience, experience. This is where you can effectively entice your prospects with reviews and testimonials. A retargeting landing page could consider offering the following:

• Chat with Live Agent - ability to chat with an agent in order to review/approve and move to any next steps
• Document Collection - ability to upload or share needed documents
• Schedule Appointment - provide the visitor with an option to schedule a call-back to enroll into a transaction

It’s also wise to retarget customers on alternate engagement channels. They already know about your brand and product/service offerings, marketing on multiple platforms and channels builds influence and recognition. Check out more on multichannel marketing.

Abandoned or Requalify

Here, the prospect was not interested and did not convert or did not meet the requirements to close a transaction with your company. Eventually they may requalify or re-enter into the market again looking for your product or service offering. These would be top-of-funnel prospects that need to be nurtured or incubated, as they stalled for a reason. The landing page must speak and connect with these prospects. It should be highly customized and is possibly personalized so that they can make quick decisions from what is offered. A landing page of this sort should contain the following:

• Returning User - option to pre-populate and direct the prospect to an authenticated portal
• Logged in user experience - provide authenticated chat option to assist with any decisions or navigation questions
• Returning Inquire - option to explore “shared conversations” in order to for agent to have easy access to past conversations

A targeting strategy for lost or abandoned prospects is greatly determined by what and how much information is available on file. Here is an article that promotes numerous win-back direct mail ideas.

Text this Number or (Call)

Essentially, you either know the prospect (i.e. you have contact information available in data records) or you do not. Texting is a unique strategy and based on the category that the prospect audience falls under, choose the best text back or call back automation strategy. This follows the above with top-of-funnel and retargeting strategies.

Anonymous Top-of-Funnel

This strategy reflects a “current resident” approach where you don’t know much about the prospect status or intent. Provide a text flow that, if engaged or initiated, will ask for preliminary identification information prior to agent assignment. Based on your company’s product/service offering, these flows can be both simple or complex.

For example if you’re an automotive dealership, real estate or mortgage loan provider, gathering information about the prospect’s city/state is important. This allows for the option to route to the right dealership, brand or realtor/mortgage agent. So collect the name, state, and city prior to collecting the email-address and the reason to connect!

Once information is gathered based on in-office or out-of-office availability you may choose to direct to other automated flows or keep them informed what the estimated agent response time would be. Feature offerings should be:

• The ability to connect with Agent
• The option to respond with a link to schedule a call
• The implementation of a bot to collect info

Re-target Known Prospect

In this strategy, the phone number the prospect texts or calls from is already on file. If identified, the goal is to reduce automated flows and engage the prospect with an agent or department that is best suited to get the user to move to the next step in the process. If the user is unidentified, given the engagement is from a retarget campaign, it is best to keep minimal automation. With minimal automation, you get to collect basic information and the intent of the lead in order to direct to the right agent / department.

The goal of using automation along with lead routing is to maximize agent engagement with more qualified prospects and reduce time spent on low intent leads. Direct mail has changed but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep up. Using a combination of old school tactics with digital tools lets you customize and provide a better experience for your customers and prospects.

Are you capturing and closing all prospects with multi-channel engagement strategies?  We have helped several consumer direct businesses discover and retain prospects dropped on the floor. Reach out today to learn more about Botsplash and evaluate if we can help you win and keep the leads/inbound inquiries, and convert them into more closed deals.