Sole Founder/CEO of PostcardMania. Joy bootstrapped her business to $62 million in 2019 with only a phone, a computer and postcards.
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Like many others, you may believe that direct mail is an antiquated marketing tactic. It’s a reasonable assumption — how could paper ever outperform digital marketing tactics?
Before I get into how this “old-school” marketing tool got an automated facelift, we should consider direct mail’s efficacy alone and why marketers, including tech giants like Google, still use it.
USPS Customer & Market Insights found that:
• 50% of consumers have tried a new product, service or establishment in the past six months after receiving a direct mail advertisement.
• 81% of people reported that they look forward to seeing what they’ve received in their mailbox.
• Two-thirds of customers collect their mail every delivery day.
These statistics correlate with the findings from a 2015 study on “the neuroscience behind the response-driving power of direct mail,” which show that direct mail messaging is more persuasive and easier for our brains to process than digital.
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Now let’s discuss how to automate this proven marketing tactic so that it’s as effortless as digital advertising.
What Prospect and Customer Actions Does Your Business Want to Supercharge?
In marketing, a trigger is anything that creates an automated response. You can pre-set your triggers to be almost anything: a new prospect just inquired, a customer’s subscription lapses, etc. Triggers create a more personalized consumer experience, which typically equates to more conversions and higher revenue.
Triggers have been limited to online activity — until now.
Technological advancements have given businesses the ability to deliver personalized, highly relevant physical messages to prospects at home using digital-level automation with ease.
There are endless trigger variations depending on your business’s goals. Some triggers nurture leads by moving prospects through the sales pipeline and function similarly to online retargeting. For example:
• A website visitor fills out a form on your website that triggers an automated mailer introducing a salesperson with their photo and contact information.
• A website visitor abandons their online shopping cart, which triggers a postcard with an image of the product and a discount to entice them back to complete their order.
Other lead-generating triggers activate by offline activity. Your business can take advantage of changes that come with certain life events, such as:
• New movers: USPS records are updated regularly, and you can automate mailings to new movers within your area to ensure they hear about your business before competitors. Moving companies, storage facilities, landscapers, home contractors and even local services like dentists often take advantage of this trigger.
• Insurance policy expiration dates: An insurance agent can set up automated mailings for all homeowners whose policies are up for renewal that month.
Customer relationship-based triggers build loyalty and encourage customers to reorder. This type of marketing is sometimes referred to as account-based marketing. Basically, you’re using available data and collected personal information for mailings, such as:
• Birthday coupons: People ride a natural high on their birthdays, and receiving a discount for your product or service in the mail will always be appreciated.
• Customer “thank you” mailings: This is a great way to retain that previous new customer, and you could even include a coupon to ensure their return.
• Reactivation mailings: It’s been three months since their last order — why not automate a mail piece with a discount?
One of my clients used a mixed strategy, targeting both prospects and past clients with mailings to make roughly $100,000 in revenue. Considering the cost of the campaign, that’s a 1,315% ROI.
In today’s consumer environment, this level of personalization matters — 84% of customers say that being treated like a person (versus a number) is important in winning their business.
Implementing triggers is easier than you think — you just need to figure out how they fit your business’s goals.
Trigger-based mailings have an endless amount of applications for any industry. Medical industries (i.e., dentists, physicians or veterinarians) use trigger-based mailers to remind patients to return for checkups.
Seasonally driven industries — like many home servicing businesses — use inactivity triggers to remind clients to keep up with their homes, like a pool cleaning in summer or a heater tune-up in winter.
Age-based triggers are beneficial for after-school activities like dance or karate classes.
Direct mail has the unique ability to leverage publically available data for targeting. Get creative and explore how you can build them into your business’s structure.
Three Steps For Creating Triggers For Your Business
It’s not as complicated as it seems to implement effective triggers into your marketing scheme.
Step 1: Outline your business’s need for a trigger. Is there a point in your pipeline where prospects and communication drops off dramatically? That could be the best place to start.
• What aspect of your business or marketing will this automation improve?
• Which actions do you want to focus on to activate the trigger?
Step 2: Map out what your trigger criteria will be, when it will occur and come up with your direct mail piece designs.
Step 3: I’d recommend setting up a connection with a direct mail company directly, not just a SaaS marketing platform that provides automation and relies on someone else to do the printing. (Like Uber or Airbnb, they don’t own anything and only connect you with people who do.)
This mistake is common and too many businesses get burned with low-quality printing or low-response campaigns — and it isn’t until after the damage is done that they realize they’ve been working with a middleman.
Do a little research beforehand and select a direct mail company that covers your triggered-mail needs. Work directly with experts who can personally guarantee the quality of their product, and you’ll avoid lining the pockets of the middleman.
The best thing about triggers is that you can set them and forget them. I just recommend tracking the results and checking them every couple of months to see which designs are working best so that you can tweak them as needed.
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Author: Joy Gendusa, Forbes Councils Member
