Are you looking for an efficient way to promote your small business? Have you considered direct mail? You might have. But how can you use it for your business’s benefit?
If you are considering direct mail for small businesses, this guide will help you with the necessary information.
Here include the advantages of direct mail marketing for small businesses, the costs involved, and the use cases. Most importantly, we will help you with a step-by-step guide on using direct mail for your small business marketing along with several best practices.
How Direct Mail Marketing is Useful for Small Businesses?
Does direct mail work for small businesses? People consider direct mail marketing outdated but it can perform better than many digital marketing strategies.
And if you aren’t sure whether it’s true, look at the stats:
- 90% of direct mails are opened compared to 20-30% of emails.
- 59% of US respondents say they like to receive direct mail from brands.
- It offers a 29% return on investment (ROI).
- Response rates of direct mail marketing are up to 9 times higher than that of email.
- Direct mail recipients bought 28% more products and spent 28% more money than customers who didn’t receive the direct mail piece.
Advantages of Direct Mail for Small Businesses
Every direct mail postcard marketing offers several unique benefits for small business owners. These includes:
- Direct mail encourages interaction: There are fewer chances that you will open an email marketing message. And if you did, you won’t be encouraged to take action. Even if it’s convenient, include a catchy CTA but won’t encourage most people to take action.
But with direct mail, you can expect response rates higher nine times. As the mail piece will be physically in their hands, including a coupon they can use to redeem it is more likely to make them take action.
- Direct mails are memorable: Online customers are overstimulated. They see an online ad or email and forget it later. But direct mail creates nostalgia as businesses include personal messages targeting an audience. This creates an emotional connection between brands and audiences that results in increased engagement and more likely to be remembered.
- Direct mail allows businesses to be creative: Creating a capturing direct mail includes a lot of creativity. You try multiple direct mail options and engage with the audience with more personalization. Further, they are easy to combine with other direct mail marketing channels.
- Direct mail campaigns target a wide demographic: Even if part of your target audience is not active on social media, a direct mail marketing campaign is the best way to reach them. By combining direct mail efforts with digital marketing materials, you can turn even more consumers into potential customers.
- Less competition: As most businesses opt for digital channels, direct mail marketing opens opportunities for local businesses to outrank competitors. Less competition improves the chances of consumers reading your marketing materials.
How to use Direct Mail for Small Businesses?
Step 1: Identify your Marketing Goals
Marketing goals are the core of any strategy, they enable you to determine the target audience, design your marketing collateral, analyse the campaign’s metrics, etc.
So what can be your direct mail marketing objectives? Some common objectives include generating new leads, introducing new products or services, announcing discounts, generating traffic, or re-engaging.
Step 2: Know your target audience
Who do you want to target with your campaign? This depends on your goals.
If you want to generate new leads or traffic, you will need to target an audience that doesn’t know you yet. If you want to define your audience, the best idea is to find who to send, their requirements, their buying habits, and their location.
Step 3: Create your direct mailing list
Generally, there are two types of targeted mailing postcards for business lists:
- In-house mailing list: This includes the address and names of your existing customers and the data that you have already in your database.
- Purchased mailing list: You can buy or rent mailing lists from third-party agencies or the best direct mail company. Purchase lists are your best option if you don’t have an existing audience or want to target a new one.
Step 4: Think about your CTA
Now, how will you engage with the audience? If you want to generate new leads, the best idea is to include an offer they can redeem by registering for your business’s newsletter. Make a CTA that can convince them to leave you some kind of contact information so you can add it to your database. Make sure it’s engaging, so it can lead them to make your desired action.
Step 5: Select your format and design your piece
Choose who you want to send a message by selecting your direct mail format. Re-engage with existing clients by sending them personalised mail that contains a survey or a coupon code as a form of gratitude. It’s always a good idea to design something eye-catching that grabs your customer’s attention.
Step 6: Print and send your mail
According to mail piece and its complexity, expect to pay around $0.03 – 2.00 per unit. The cost will also depend on direct mail marketing postcards printing companies as various printing services can have different pricing.
Step 7: Analyse your direct mail campaign
Once your direct mail campaign is up and running, measure it. Use the engagement metrics that match your goals and track how the campaign performs. Based on that, you can determine its success and see which elements of your strategy require improvements or upgrades.
Final Thoughts
While direct mail marketing might seem like an outdated concept, it grants a lot of opportunities for small businesses to promote their offerings. It comes with high engagement rates, involves limited competition, and offers a fantastic return on investment (ROI).
Direct mail campaigns generally take much longer to generate desired results. Additionally, results will be difficult to measure, not to mention that printing postcards direct mail may be costly.
So you can eliminate all the potential challenges with automation. Using the best postcard mailing services, you will be able to automate each process of your marketing strategy, combining direct mail with other marketing efforts.
Take advantage of automated mailing services and stand out from your competitors.