Struggling to Get Noticed? Try Direct Mail

Marketers have had to make adjustments to conform to privacy and data use regulations like the GDPR, CCPA, CASL, and CAN-SPAM. A marketer that violates these rules can incur substantial financial fines. Emailing promotional ads to prospective buyers is more complicated than it used to be.

Besides the extra work necessary to remain in regulatory compliance, communicating via digital channels is laden with barriers between the marketers and their target audiences. As they are blasted with thousands of electronic marketing messages per day, consumers have adopted avoidance techniques over which the marketer has no control:

 

• Unsubscribe
• Ad blockers
• Spam filters
• Abandoned email addresses
• Image blocking
• Automatic incoming email rules
• Bulk email delete
• Virtual private networks

 

Technology and data availability has made targeting, re-targeting, and personalization more precise, so marketers have improved their ability to identify prospects and make communications more relevant. But penetrating the defenses erected by governments, corporate security, ISP’s, and end users is getting more difficult. Those highly targeted digital ads don’t always make it through to the intended recipients. This drags down the ROI of digital marketing campaigns.

Fortunately, marketers have a way to eliminate all those hazards that make conversion rates on digital messages so dreadfully low—direct mail!

 

Marketers: Have You Tried Direct Mail?

These days, tangible mailpieces may be overlooked as effective tools in a marketing campaign. In their rush to leverage cheap digital communication channels, many marketers have apparently forgotten about the power of high-touch tangible mail. Some younger marketers may have never even run a direct mail campaign and they aren’t sure how well it works.

Consider this… studies have shown a personalized mailpiece in the hands of a target consumer is extremely effective at driving them to the marketer’s website to take action.  This action could be taking advantage of a coupon offer, free shipping, or simply answering a plea of help from a charity.

Just as in digital marketing, data is the key to success in direct mail campaigns and the most important direct mail data item is the consumer’s postal name and address. Addresses are obviously important for getting the mailpieces delivered to the target audience, but they are also keys to several other aspects of a targeted and personalized direct mail campaign.

In direct mail, marketers are targeting consumers residing at a fixed physical location. This opens the door to a slew of other information that can identify the best prospects, eliminate the poorest targets, control the presentation, and vary the offer.

 

Getting the Most from Your Data

To make direct mail work, you must first ensure the postal address is accurate. Tools like Firstlogic’s Address Correction and Encoding (ACE^®) software validate that files contain correctly formatted and deliverable addresses. Then, you’ll want to ensure the people you are targeting still live at the address in your files. Firstlogic Mover IQ^® is the tool that compares your data to the change of address database maintained by the US Postal Service. Mover IQ will update your marketing campaign addresses and ensure your mailpiece makes it to the consumer, even if they move often.

Since direct mail is more expensive than the digital alternatives, marketers should aim to limit their mailings to only those individuals likely to respond to the offer. Eliminating duplicates, deceased individuals, and prisoners is a simple way to trim useless prospects from the mailing list. Next, leverage enhancement data to add relevant information like income levels, age, sex, and dwelling type to the file.

The extra data items allow marketers to further trim the size of the mailing list, eliminating those individuals who do not fit the profile of the desired buyers. Because you have clean address data after standardizing and performing the move update processes, matching your mailing address file to suppression and data enhancement data will be easy. Firstlogic has a new product to help make data enhancements and list suppression simple— Firstlogic Enhance IQ™.

You’ll also use the U.S. postal address database to strike any records the USPS deems as undeliverable. This prevents you from mailing to vacant lots or empty buildings.

 

Clean Addresses Get Delivered

Once you’ve done the work to clean up the mailing list, the USPS will deliver the vast majority of your marketing pieces. As a bonus, the postal service’s Informed Visibility program will tell you precisely when each mailpiece was transported to the recipient’s home. For the few pieces that could not be delivered, the USPS Address Correction Service (ACS), provides marketers information about non-delivery such as “moved—no forwarding address”.

Many marketers are surprised to learn this level of tracking, and feedback is available via the mail. These are valuable features that enhance the effectiveness of future marketing efforts.

Once marketing mail hits consumer mailboxes, it benefits from far less competition than marketers face from crowded email inboxes. Direct mail has no unsubscribe button, nor is it subject to any filters that prevent the mail from reaching the intended recipients. Yes, direct mail costs more to produce, but the response rates are greater than all the digital channels combined. The ANA/DMA-measured response rate for direct mail generated from house lists was 9% in 2018.

Direct mail’s great response rates are all dependent on accurate postal address data. That is why address cleansing and enhancement are so important. Marketers diligent about maintaining their mailing lists enjoy improved performance from their direct mail campaigns.

 

Regulations Still Apply

Postal addresses are still subject to the privacy laws. If consumers request marketers remove their data, companies may still have to comply, so they must keep accurate records. Messages sent through the mail are not susceptible to the same regulatory restrictions faced by email, but responsible marketers must continue to exercise good judgement about the data they use to generate that mail.

Regulatory compliance and direct mail campaign effectiveness both rely on postal address quality. A practice of regular address maintenance and verification keeps this valuable data ready to use on the next campaign. Data quality tools like those from Firstlogic are extremely effective. Use them to improve and enhance the value of your postal addresses and take advantage of the unique benefits of postal mail.