Your franchises depend on you, as a franchisor, to help them attract customers and build their business. They’re counting on you for support with local direct mail and other digital and traditional marketing channels to build brand awareness and increase sales for their location within the communities they serve. Direct mail remains a powerful tool for connecting with potential customers, especially for local franchise businesses. However, it’s effectiveness as a marketing channel for a local franchise hinge on how effective your direct mail  localization strategies are.  

Here are seven tips for developing successful local franchise direct mail campaigns.

1. Define and Understand Local Audiences

To create exceptional franchise direct mail campaigns, go beyond segmenting households using traditional demographics and instead add elements that local audiences will relate to. This can include using local imagery, like landmarks for instance, or everyday language or slang that is unique to your audience or region. Research the local competition in order to develop campaigns that set your franchises apart in every community. If there are unique celebrations or events held seasonally in your local market, create promotions or events around them to build stronger community recognition and brand awareness.

2. Build A Targeted Direct Mail Address List

Generally speaking, direct mail serves two purposes, and your objective will determine whether you create lists to hold onto existing customers or to gain new ones. In both cases, your list should be more than a collection of names and addresses. With today’s data analytic tools you can easily unearth insights into current customers and build profiles of prospects that closely mirror the behaviors of those loyal customers. You want your direct mail piece to have relevancy for its recipient, whether you’re rewarding an existing client or offering a promotion that can’t be ignored by prospects. Optimize the customer data you’ve collected from past interactions, events, and website and landing page forms to segment, refine, and personalize each message.

Direct mail’s effectiveness for lead generation increases when decisions are based on objective data, not merely subjective, and the best fit for growing the franchise. An excellent resource to reach new customers is purchasing new mover mailing lists to get direct mail promotions into the mailboxes and households of new homeowners or renters before the competition.

3. Integrate Localization

Variable data printing opens opportunities for you to put the customer data you have on hand to work on your direct mail piece in new and engaging ways. If there are local phrases or terminology that resonate with your customers, include them, as well as testimonials from customers that live in the same geographic area. Customize the promotions or offers with maps and directions to increase the likelihood that the mailing will convert to sales. You can even swap out products or change prices based on individual franchise location pricing.

QR codes printed on the direct mail piece let recipients use their smartphones to connect to websites and download coupons that can be redeemed at local franchises. The printed piece remains static while the digital component behind the QR code can be changed to stay relevant, reducing print costs while keeping the content fresh. Every customer sees the same mailing, but the digital content adapts to local audiences. Customers are willing to give you information if you can make their relationship with you feel genuine and expect every communication to add value. 

4. Benefit from Geodata Variable Mapping Print Modules

Variable mapping print (VMP) applies an added layer of personalization to your franchisee direct mail campaign using geo-location software to print and customize maps based on recipient address and business or event location. Including maps in your mailer reinforces the proximity of your business to the household and you can even provide estimated travel time to further reinforce the localness of the franchise. VMP works well when coordinated into ‘new neighbor’ direct mail packages. It helps customers unfamiliar to the area see in an instant how close the franchisee is and the best route to travel to reach the business.

If you’re holding an event at a new or unfamiliar location, a map will make it easy to attract attention with a “Near To You” call out that is eye-catching and personalized. VMP can play an important part in promoting branch openings at a new location that is closer and more convenient to the household of a loyal customer. MVP works especially well for multi-location promotions when the map reflects the nearest one based on the household address. An added benefit to VMP is the ability to add a QR code beside the map that a prospect can use to activate their phone’s GPS and guide them to the franchisee once the prospect is on the go.

5. Establish Clear Lines of Communication

A major hurdle for maintaining brand consistency and messaging in a direct mail campaign across franchise territories is keeping every single franchise on-voice and in-the-loop.

For your franchisee to completely buy in to your local direct mail campaigns, it’s important to create a workflow that balances your goals with their own unique levels of business and marketing acumen. Not all franchisees have marketing experience and they welcome and rely on you to give them the tools to carry out the marketing programs. Others may prefer a degree of autonomy to adapt messaging to resonate with their specific audience. Begin by creating and sharing a style branding guide to instruct franchisees on all aspects of brand usage and compliance.

You should also create a central library or libraries of pre-approved content that can be shared based on your comfort level and access to control by franchisees.  Don’t set it and forget, but stay involved and maintain campaign support based on the franchisee’s needs and share results to identify areas for improvement from beginning to end.

6. Use a Direct Mail Platform

Chances are that your franchisees don’t have the same resources to allocate staff time to optimizing direct mail marketing campaigns that you may. That makes it to incumbent that on you to you deploy a centralized direct mail platform like Marketing.com’s Dot™ to distribute your content across your franchisee network. The direct mail platform should free up franchisee staff from performing routine and repetitive tasks. It can let them focus on developing customer experiences and growing sales. You can guarantee increased and enhanced brand consistency across your network because you have all the control over what your franchisees see or have access to. Your direct mail platform should also efficiently scale up operations as business grows and more franchisees are brought on board.

7. Test and Improve

It’s easier than ever with direct mail automation to get a dashboard view across your entire franchise network so that you can quickly see what’s working and what isn’t. You’ll also identify which franchisees need additional support and which ones don’t. You have several key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can monitor and analyze such as leads generated, sales conversions, retention, and revenue. The information that you collect can help you create more complete, refined prospect profiles so that you understand your current customers better. Analytics let you segment your customers and messaging around the unique nature of the relationship between your franchisee and customer and tailor subsequent mailings more closely to their needs and expectations. Tracking customer and prospect response to promotions and special offers brings you a better understanding of the needs and expectations of your customers, as well as the most cost-effective way to focus your franchise marketing dollars.

Regardless of whether you’re using your local franchise direct mail marketing to create greater brand awareness, generate leads, attract new customers, or stay connected and offer reward to existing ones, you can improve your success rate with well-strategized, tailored direct mail marketing. Marketing.com’s franchise direct mail experts can work closely with you to optimize your marketing with cost-effective direct mail marketing solutions. For more on how to structure effective direct mail campaigns checkout or comprehensive Direct Mail Guide and connect with a direct mail expert today.