Don’t forget Direct Mail

What comes to mind when you hear the words ‘direct mail’?

More and more these days, you may be seeing and hearing people talking about ‘digital
marketing’ or ‘e-mail marketing’, but what happened to direct mail? Is it as dead as some
people would have you believe?

At Circletown Marketing we don’t think so. Let’s talk about why we think that it is still viable as well as a handful of ways you can
use it to help grow your business and connect with your clients.

Snail Mail Is Alive

Do you remember that feeling you used to get when you were a kid and you got a letter in the
mail? Most people don’t even remember what that feels like anymore; in fact it has become so
rare that when you do get a letter by regular mail, it is really exciting (unless it is a bill)!

I know of a dentist office who which sends send out birthday postcards to all their clients with a
discount on services the next time they are in the office for a checkup. This does two things:

1. Firstly, it tells the client that their dentist office cares about their birthday and
   remembered to send them something.
2. It gets them excited to come in and use their discount! Given this is a dentist office, this
   is pretty genius since most people don’t really like to go there.

How Can You Use Direct Mail

There are many different ways that you can use direct mail. When it comes to business,
especially one that you own and run, you can do whatever fits your needs the best. You may
need to try a few different ways out until you find what fits for you and what converts well for
bringing clients and business in.

Let’s look at five ways you can use direct mail for your business and you can decide which ones
you would like to use.

• Postcards. As I already stated in the story above, postcards can be very effective when
  sending out mail to your clients. You can use this as that dentist office did and send it
  out to clients for their birthdays with a sale or discount. This is a great way to get
  customers into your store and once they are there they will want to use their discount,
  which means sales for you. This is also the time to get them on your mailing list.
• Christmas Cards. This is another great way to send something out at a certain time of
  year. People used to get Christmas cards every year and hang them up or display them
  in their house. This isn’t as common anymore, which means that your Christmas card
  personalized for each customer is going to go a long way in making them feel that you
  cared about them enough to send them something. You can include information for a
  Christmas or Boxing Day sale as well and encourage them to come into the store to get
  access to the deals you are offering.
• Reminder Cards. This is great, especially if your business carries appointments out for
  your customers or clients. If you have a standing appointment (for example if your
  customer comes in once a year for something and sets the appointment at the prior
  year’s appointment) then sending out a reminder card to them a month or a few weeks
  before the appointment is a great way to maintain contact and to enable the customer
  not to forget to attend their scheduled time with you. This has the added benefit of not
  making the customer feel badly for missing an appointment, — they feel good because
  they have been able to keep it!
• Sales Notices. A great way to keep your clients or customers in the loop and coming
  into your store when you have sales is to send them out a flyer or notice card when you
  are running a special sale. You can have something printed on to 100 or more flyers
  and then send them out by regular mail. Often times, as a consumer, I find that when I
  see this it reminds me that I wanted to go in and get something from this specific store
  and I feel the added excitement of realizing that I can now get it on sale.
• Incorporating with Your Website. An added benefit of living in the times that we do
  now, is that we can use our business website to work with our direct mail campaigns.
  One way of doing this, that I saw in action very recently, is to have a dedicated landing
  page on your website and when you send out the notice in the mail (whatever type that
  might be), include a link to this landing page on the notice. You can say that if they go
  sign up to attend your special sale, for example, by going to this link then they will get an
  additional 10% off their entire purchase the day of the sale. This is a great way to track
  how your direct mail campaigns are working and how many of the notices you send out
  are being looked at and engaged with.

Direct mail is certainly not something to be forgotten. It has become another way to engage with your clientele in
this more technological time, and is a great thing to incorporate as part of your plan, even if you
are using the online space as well.

What do you struggle with when connecting with your customer base? If direct mail is a
challenge for you but you want it to be a part of your marketing plan, contact us and let us know
how we can help!