From lack of marketing visibility to high costs, here are the 5 ways outdated direct mail processing hurts your business — and what to do about it.
Just because direct mail isn’t a digital channel doesn’t mean that it can’t be run like one. But too many companies still use old-fashioned direct mail processes that haven’t kept up with marketing automation. Here’s why these processes are holding your business back — and what you can do about it.
Analytics have become standard across all digital channels. Marketers track everything from site visits, to email opens, to ad clicks in order to learn how consumers interact with their brand.
These analytics enable companies to precisely analyze the impact of their digital marketing strategy, and hone their messaging. They can tweak blog content to gain more visitors, A/B test email marketing to find which messages are bringing in new customers, and fine tune social media ads to target particular customer personas.
Except none of this technology is currently benefiting your direct mail marketing team. Most companies can’t even see whether their mailings are reaching the intended customers, much less track engagement or use data to hone their messaging.
Lob can help you modernize your direct mail marketing, bringing your analytics up to the standards you take for granted in other marketing channels. Our automated direct mail technology provides reliable address verification and delivery confirmation to ensure your mailings are reaching your audience, and comprehensive analytics integrated directly with your CRM, marketing automation, CDP or IPass solution. That means you’ll have complete visibility across all your marketing channels.
Direct mail generates excellent ROI, but the costs are still considerable. According to Fundera, direct mail spend is the largest single contributor to advertising spend in the US, with advertisers spending $167 per person on mailings.
Companies tend to assume these costs are unavoidable — you have to proof, print, address and send the mail after all. But in reality, a large share of this spend is due to outdated, inefficient direct mail processing. Mailings are designed manually and shuffled around as paper proofs, wasting time. They’re then printed in-house or at low-volume prices by third parties and mailed at high cost, using unverified address lists.
Lob can streamline the entire process, cutting costs and improving ROI. The process starts with professionally designed templates to simplify the creative process. Mailers are then routed to our extensive network of printers, offering every customer bulk rate prices, whatever your volume. Our integrated address verification guarantees you’re not wasting money on invalid addresses and our mailed event tracking provides transparency of your mails progress to delivery. All told, our customers save up to 37% on direct mail spend.
Outdated direct mail processes don’t just affect your cost and analytics — they also impair your ability to respond to changing demand patterns.
Right now, your direct mail team is siloed away from the rest of your marketing department. They have a slow, inflexible workflow that likely doesn’t allow them to personalize mailings or segment their list. They lack the ability to send relevant offers based on a customer’s previous purchase, or to show appreciation with “thank you” notes. And they certainly can’t adapt quickly to current events or changing market conditions like the rest of your marketing department can.
Fortunately, we can help. Lob integrates to common workflow management systems like Marketo, Salesforce, Braze and Salesforce Marketing Cloud, along with eCommerce tools like Shopify, giving your direct mail team the same responsiveness and flexibility the rest of marketing enjoys.
They’ll be able to trigger customized mailings based on dates such as birthdays, customer purchases and other relevant factors. Customer segmentation, A/B testing and other sophisticated marketing functions are easy, and your team can quickly build out new campaigns to respond to special events and changing market conditions. It all adds up to direct mail technology that’s every bit as easy, powerful and flexible as digital channels.
With the deluge of ads and offers they see daily, consumers have learned to filter out most marketing materials. Getting your message through often requires multiple touch points across different channels. To be truly effective, your marketing team needs an omnichannel approach. By nurturing leads and rewarding customers across channels, they can drive new sales and build loyalty among existing customers.
Right now, they can’t do that at the mailbox. With your direct mail team using its own separate workflow and siloing its own separate data, there’s no way to coordinate with digital channels.
Lob enables a truly effective omnichannel marketing strategy across all channels, by eliminating data silos and integrating direct mail marketing into your CRM or marketing automations systems. Not only can you use events like email opens or orders to trigger direct mail — our direct mail technology also works in the opposite direction, enabling you to trigger digital events based on mail events. This enables your marketing team to coordinate touch points in all sorts of creative ways. For example, they can send direct mail offers if a customer downloads a digital asset, then send an email to thank them when they take advantage of the offer.
With a legacy workflow, the more sophisticated your digital channels get, the more isolated your direct mail team becomes. And this fragmentation will only continue to grow until you update your direct mail processes. Lob can unite your marketing department and streamline your workflow, allowing your entire marketing team to stay on the cutting edge.
Contact us to get started.
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