Finding great data for direct mail campaigns

Direct mail marketing is an effective way of reaching out to customers, no matter where they are on their buyer’s journey. Whether you’re getting in touch for the first time or checking in with a long loyal client, direct mail makes it possible to increase and maintain brand awareness.

More importantly, it manages to do this while representing something exciting, special, and much more personal, than an email. That’s not to say that you should rely entirely on a strong direct mail marketing strategy, though. In fact, combining element of both direct mail and digital marketing is a great way to keep things efficient and cost-effective.

A mailing list makes it easy for businesses to use direct mail marketing to spread awareness of - and hopefully build interest in - their product to a more targeted audience who are more likely to want to engage. Creating and implementing a mailing list may seem a little intimidating at first. That’s why we’re taking you through the process below. And remember, once you’ve got a list to work with, you have limitless potential to grow with the information that you learn from it.

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Buying a Mailing List

GDPR and the CAN-SPAM act make buying a mailing list for the purposes of email marketing a pretty bad idea. However, it’s absolutely possible to buy one for a direct mail marketing campaign.

Having a pre-made selection of suitable recipients can save you a ton of time crawling for them. If you manage to find such a list, the bulk of the work segmenting will be done too! It’s still important to do your research though. There are plenty of companies offering mailing lists for a reasonable price, but you need to remember that these lists can vary greatly in quality.

But, as with almost anything these days, even this job can be automated. There are plenty of services that offer mailing list reviews. Vetting your own mailing list shouldn’t be too much trouble, though, and it’s better to be sure that you know exactly who you’re mailing to.

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Optimizing Your Website

Remember that before you go looking to spend money, you should always try using the tools you have available. You can use your website data to develop a mailing list organically.

Who are your most frequent visitors? Who has the highest levels of engagement? By targeting the customers who already show an interest in your product, you can increase the success of a direct mail marketing campaign exponentially.

If you don’t already have a user’s address at hand, then you can optimize your website to request the information through a subscription sign up, offering to send a discount in the mail, or by blocking a white paper behind a landing page.

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Increasing the Quality of Your Content

Directing your efforts to the quality of the content in your direct mail marketing can help your engagement with new customers, but it can also help keep their interest long into the future.

Customers tend to reward the business that makes them feel appreciated and cared for. That’s why they’re so happy to share their positive experience with direct mail.

In fact, 23% of direct mail, and 21% of promotions and special offers, are shared between members of the same household.

Maintaining a consistent quality of interactions is key to maximizing the effectiveness of your direct mail marketing, both in satisfying established customers and in growing your customer base.

Simply including a request to get in touch in an engaging piece of direct mail can aid you in your mission of creating a mailing list for the future.

Implementing Automation

In the modern day, it’s hard to run a business without some degree of automation involved in every task. There are countless services offering a range of different automation tools, from segmentation to analytics.

Any of these tools can be extremely helpful when creating a mailing list, or just planning a direct mail marketing campaign in general.

You should get to know what options for automation are out there and identify just what aspect of your direct mail marketing would benefit most from automation.

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Tracking Your Campaigns

Tracking is arguably the most important thing you need to implement as part of your direct mail marketing. Marketing is about testing, and you can't test without data.

However you decide to create your mailing list, if it doesn’t include a way of tracking your customer responses, then it’s impossible to see what methods actually work and what needs changing.

Implementing some digital tactics with your direct mail marketing can go a long way here. Include specific URLs, telephone numbers, and QR Codes that are unique to your direct mail marketing campaign. We covered this tactic in a recent blog post. Read more about it here!

When your recipients engage with your marketing by using those links or calling those numbers, you’ll be able to positively attribute the success to that specific campaign. When you know what works and what doesn't, you’ll be able to improve the success of all future campaigns.

Targeting Your Audience

There’s nothing worse than wasting time and resources marketing to people who are uninterested in your product. That’s why it’s so important to segment your audience and only target those that have the potential to buy.

The thing is, it won’t be possible to effectively segment until you know exactly who it is you need to be targeting. To learn this, you could try marketing to various demographics through isolated campaigns.

This way you can directly identify who is already interested in your brand and discover a few clues as to who might be interested with a little persuasion. Segmenting based on customer purchase histories will help focus the aim and content of your marketing towards those specific groups.

The better targeted your content is, the more likely it is that your marketing campaign will be a success. And remember, the more your engagement rates increase, the easier it becomes to segment further and continue boosting sales.

Making your own mailing list isn’t always easy, but there are plenty of ways to simplify the process. Luckily, it only gets easier with time. The more direct mail you send, the more information you receive through feedback, and mailing lists are built on information.

But best of all, the bigger and better your mailing lists are, the bigger your customer base will soon be. Click here to send personalized direct mail at scale.