Add Direct Mail to Your Drip Campaign

To keep a constant flow of messages to your prospects and customers, a direct mail drip campaign makes it easier to accomplish your goals. At the same time, when done well, it can help your brand achieve a good ROI as well as serve your audience better than the competition.

What’s a Drip Campaign?

A drip campaign is a carefully planned approach that sends a series of communications to clients and prospects over a specific period of time.

Why the word “drip”?

In agriculture, drip irrigation is a way to water crops, a little bit at a time, using a perforated pipe, tube, ring, or drip tape.

It’s low-volume, but also steady enough (and efficient) to get the job done.

That same concept can be applied to your marketing strategy, especially when it is long-term. If you are trying to establish a relationship with your customers, then you’ll want to focus on how to increase brand recognition and familiarity. That’s hard to do with a high-volume, wide-focus saturation campaign.

With a drip campaign, you can reach customers based on a predetermined schedule of communications. Or, as an alternative, set up an automation platform that triggers targeted messages based on actions taken by a prospect or customer.

Why Use a Drip Campaign?

As I stated earlier, a drip campaign can fit into your marketing strategy due to its slow-build advantages. Here are few reasons to consider a direct mail drip campaign:

• Make a sale – A drip campaign that addresses pain (or pleasure) points of specific target audiences or audience segments creates a better opportunity for converting them than a broad mass-market campaign.
• Increase usage of a product or service – Besides finding out about tutorials for basic features, a new or existing customer should know about other ways they can benefit from their purchase.
• Solidify customer loyalty – Regular communication grows that relationship and helps your brand stand out from your competitors

Because the average American is exposed to a few hundred messages a day in many channels and media, a direct mail drip campaign with intent – like the types of campaigns briefly mentioned above – builds direct mail leads and keeps customers engaged.

When putting together a drip campaign, it’s necessary to put yourself in the customer’s shoes.

• What product or service do they need? (Be exact, if you can)
• What information or persuasion do they need to make a decision?
• How easy is it for them to take advantage of your offer – and how soon?

5 Direct Mail Drip Campaign Ideas

Drip campaigns are most effective in today’s world when deployed across several channels. While maintaining the same look, feel, and general messaging used for every touchpoint, your direct mail drip campaign should be carefully planned to make a positive impact on the recipient with its unique advantages.

Here are a few ways to meet these challenges with mail.

1. Replace an Email Effort

Email is often plagued with flagging open rates and click throughs. A simple postcard or two to replace an email in your usual sales cycle will stand out simply because it is mail, especially when a customer receives a lot of email.

2. Mine Your Data

Your customer file is rich with data on buying preferences and patterns. With their histories as a guide, a customized mail piece produced with Variable Direct Printing (VDP) stands out. An email to that customer can provide a sneak preview of the piece as well as a follow-up.

3. Follow Up a Web Visit

You know – or should know – who visits your website and how to get in touch with them. How? By matching your prospect’s IP address to a physical address. You may then choose to retarget them with a mail piece based on the page or pages they visit.

One alternative – especially useful in B2B marketing – is to gate your content by requiring an email address, if not a more elaborate qualification or contact form to download information.

4. Provide Relevant & Meaningful Content

Surveys have revealed that many non-profits achieve better results for their renewal and special gift appeal campaigns with a printed newsletter than one delivered by email. A mail piece is tangible and doesn’t get easily lost in the digital clutter.

5. Finish the Sale

Many times all a customer needs is a reminder that they’ve abandoned a shopping cart on your site. Or looked at one of your ads on Facebook. Again, you can target them by mailing a physical mail piece that provides more relevant information on the item or service they were considering. An incentive or discount – maybe for a limited time and exclusively for them – may move them toward conversion.

Wrapping it up

Slow and steady wins the customer. But to make it happen, you need to think hard about what messages are appropriate for the audience or audience segments you are targeting. You should also understand how specific messages are best delivered by email or direct mail, or a combination of both.

If you need help, the data management experts at mailing.com have years of experience working on complex unified campaigns.

Drop us a line or call us! We’d love to show you how you can use a direct mail drip campaign as an important part of your marketing plan.