Which is better direct mail or digital marketing? The answer is whichever avenue gets you a new customer, but the question is flawed. The question should be what is the best way to increase your ROI? Combining digital marketing and direct mail will increase your ROI. Don’t look at digital advertising and print advertising as competitors look at them as partners. At first glance it may seem that direct mail and digital marketing would be strange bedfellows, but they have a great “opposites attract” kind of relationships. Here are 3 ways to integrate the digital and print marketing to help your bottom line.
1. The good touch – Once a prospect sees your brand and company name they are likely to remember it and pay attention to future correspondence. By combining direct mail and email you get the opportunity to touch a prospect twice to make the critical first impression; their inbox and their mail box. One person my delete unsolicited email (or have their spam filter do it for them), but that same person my look through the mail they receive. After your company makes an impression on the prospect and they start to recognize your branding all your future marketing attempts will have a better change at conversion.
2. But I am a real Boy! – A decade or two ago companies were investing in websites as ways to prove to consumers that they are real. Now it’s the other way around. Every fly-by-night-pray-on-your-savings-greasy-haired-con-artist has a web site with an official looking @mycompany email. By combining a well developed direct mail campaign, with an equally well developed digital marketing campaign you create an impression of integrity and stability with your prospects.
3. Sorry your information is out of date – One thing that digital marketing has over direct mail advertising is the ability to change. Find a phone number with a typo on a web site; it gets changed in 5 minutes. Find a phone number with a typo on the 20,000 piece mailer that went out last week; find a new proof reader. What that means is that print media should focus on driving people to the web. Use print to build your brand and get prospects to visit you online. Send them to your website, or your social media page. Get them to follow you on Twitter. By using this strategy all of your print materials will have a longer shelf life, and your customers will be able to get the latest information.
Blending direct mail and digital advertising will get a better response versus using one over the other ever time.