Direct mail works. The evidence is clear.

67% of people say physical mail is more personal than digital messages. (USPS)

All age groups are interested in direct mail, and 92% of millennials have been influenced to make a purchasing decision by direct mail (National Mortgage Professional Magazine)

39% of customers say they try a business for the first time because of direct-mail advertising. (DMR)

That makes the question: How do I make direct mail work for my business? 

A number of variables come into play that impact your direct mailing campaign. However, your business can greatly improve opportunities for success by incorporating these best direct mail practices into every campaign.

1. Embrace Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Direct Mail Automation – There’s no denying that AI provides significant benefits for direct mail, especially when integrated into a multichannel marketing platform that can manage every facet of a direct mail campaign. AI and automation can support campaign content creation and management, target audiences with pinpoint data segmentation, manage multiple campaigns, and accurately and effectively analyze campaign data in real-time. That’s why, according to BusinessWire, 81% of marketers who use a software platform like Marketing.com’s for direct mail, agree it delivers the best response rate of all channels their company use today.
   
   AI can transform direct mail campaigns by providing actionable insights that lead to better decision-making capabilities. Managing direct mail campaigns through a single dashboard gives your staff access to all of your marketing resources and the ability track performance in one place.  AI automates and performs many direct mail tasks at more amazing speeds than previously possible and provides accuracies in reporting that can improve conversion rates and also save your company money on print and postage costs and reduce waste through improved efficiencies. 
   
   
2. Optimize Mailing Lists – You can expect better direct mail conversion rates by fine tuning your house and prospect mailing lists to target your ideal customer and then give them something of value through your company’s direct mail campaign. Mailing lists have become much more that a collection of names and addresses, and today can be created from insights into consumer behavior to build exact customer profiles that increase engagement and response rates. As a result, your direct mail gets seen by the people you want to see it. A recent survey by the Data and Marketing Association (DMA) found that house lists with direct mail leads pulled an impressive 9% average response rate. More astounding, the study found that prospect lists enjoy a 4.9% response rate, nearly double what you can expect from an average email marketing campaign.
   
   Relevancy matters to the audience you’re reaching out to with direct mail, and segmenting your lists makes your company’s messaging more personalized and meaningful. There is valuable data at your fingertips, and a channel marketing platform can help you energize it into intelligence, empowering you to effortlessly launch engaging direct mail campaigns.
   
   
3. Include a Strong Call to Action – Increasing direct mail conversion rates can simply be a matter of including a clear, direct, and easy to follow call to action in your company’s direct mail material. Focus the purpose of your piece around the one step you want your customer to take, whether it’s redeeming a coupon, scheduling an appointment, or visiting a website or landing page to place an order. Households trust direct mail. Another DMA study shows that nearly 60% of Americans consider mail a good thing.
   
   The visual element of direct mail presents a wide variety of ways to capture attention and make the CTA stand out when people sort through their direct mail. Effective CTAs create a sense of urgency with deadlines and motivate the recipient with both a sense of excitement and a fear of missing out on something special.
   
   The growing acceptance of CTAs embedded in direct mail as QR codes or Personal URLs (PURLs) to engage with customers across multiple channels has the added advantage that these innovations allow you to better track customer interactions.  Print marketing statistics show that more than 60% of recipients either scanned a QR code or typed in a website’s URL from a piece of direct mail.
   
   
4. Make It Personal – Use the data you have on hand about your customers to add personalized content into practically any part of your direct mailing piece and make each piece unique. Customers are willing to give you information if you can make your relationship feel genuine. When your company reaches out, they expect that it’s to their advantage to respond. According to NerdWallet, more than half of consumers want direct mail from brands they’re interested in.
   
   Innovative print technologies, like variable data printing and software that handprints addresses, greetings, and signatures, allow for highly personalized messaging that creates emotional connections that lead to even greater conversions. Running direct mail campaigns through a channel marketing platform like Dot allows for API integrations that provide tools to help your mailer get noticed. Personalized direct mail is even effective for reviving relationships with dormant customers. According to a recent ANA study, 70% of customers surveyed have re-started a relationship because of direct mail.
   
   
5. Make It Part Of Multichannel Marketing – Direct mail on its own delivers great results, but when it’s added to a multichannel marketing mix, conversions skyrocket. That’s because consumers today don’t rely on only one marketing channel to get their information. Direct mail is the most trusted, but every way you market your business can add value to the customer journey. According to the USPS, marketers saw their ROI increase by 60% when combining direct mail with digital channels. 

It’s not only digital channels that can improve direct mail conversion rates. Direct mail reinforces commercial signage, which makes it a powerful way to market businesses in local markets. Consistency across all channels is what matters, so that everywhere your customer looks, the message is the same. Automation can build customer trust effortlessly. Direct mail can be triggered after a customer’s first purchase, a visit to your company’s website, or even be a nudge to bring shoppers back to abandoned online shopping carts with added incentives to complete the purchase. Studies have shown that by adding just one extra marketing channel to your direct mail campaign, according to industry research, you stand to boost your company’s revenue by close to 40%.

Direct mail offers significant benefits by reaching into the households of your prospective and loyal customers where it can stand out and grab their attention on a personal level. Targeting audiences with segmented behavior and demographic data analysis increases direct mail’s effectiveness, and its impact can be further greatened when deployed as part of a multichannel marketing campaign. Innovative and intuitive channel marketing platforms give businesses of all sizes scalable solutions to boost direct mail conversion rates.

Contact a Marketing.com direct mail marketing expert today to learn more about Dot™, our comprehensive, technology-centered, people-powered platform that seamlessly connects the dots across all your marketing channels.