As the saying goes, slow and steady wins the race. And that means snail mail is making a comeback. In 2019, every marketer and their mother is exclusively leveraging digital channels, unknowingly jading their audiences in the process. On the other hand, direct mail is a breath of fresh air to professionals bombarded by digital clutter.
Stand out against your competitors and build rapport with your customers, prospects and partners by seamlessly incorporating direct mail into your account-based strategy. Leverage the following tactics to engage, delight and evangelize your target accounts through impactful direct mail campaigns.
Do Your Research
First and foremost, do your research. There’s a reason no one uses mail anymore; it’s expensive as can be. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be worth the investment. With this in mind, it is absolutely critical that your direct mail tactics are informed by research in order to promote their effectiveness.
The only thing more annoying than receiving an email from a company that’s completely irrelevant to you is receiving a package with a handwritten note from a company that’s completely irrelevant to you. Why? Because the idea that someone actually took time and money to source your address, put together a package and hand-write a note to you without even bothering to double check that it would be well-received looks even worse than just sending a poorly-thought-out marketing email.
If I haven’t made that clear already, don’t just go sending your direct mail campaign to anyone with a mailbox. Your budget and your reputation will thank you. Instead, consider your high-fit target companies and identify the best person at each company to receive your content.
If you’re selling marketing automation software, don’t send a direct mail package to the CMO who figuratively, hasn’t stepped foot in a piece of marketing software in years. Instead, send it to the marketing strategists who report to the CMO that are working day in and day out in their current marketing automation platform. They’re going to be your champions and therefore, winning them over should be your first priority.
Make It Relevant
Once you’ve identified the exact person you’d like to send your package to at your target company, it’s time to determine exactly what you’d like to send them. In this step, relevancy is the name of the game. Just like in any digital marketing method, you’ll want to ensure that the content you are sending will resonate with the challenge your product or service could help the prospect solve. Even if they like what you send them, if it has no relation to the product or service you’re ultimately trying to sell, it’s money wasted.
For example, if your prospect is in a sales position and your product or service is meant to make the lives of salespeople easier, reference this information to create a connection between the two. Obviously, salespeople spend a lot of time on the phone. And good salespeople spend much of that time listening rather than talking. But practicing active listening is no easy feat, so for many, small distractions like stress balls or simple puzzles are helpfully suppressing the urge to interrupt while engaged in a lengthy sales discussion.
With this in mind, a small distraction like a stress ball or puzzle sent with the purpose of enabling the salesperson to better practice active listening could be an excellent, relevant direct mail item.
Reference their challenge in your outreach, connect the direct mail item to that challenge and then allude to how your product or service can further alleviate that problem. Finally, provide a call-to-action (CTA) that details a clear next step, whether that’s booking a meeting or checking out a piece of content.
Be Personal
If you’re at all familiar with how to be successful at marketing in 2019, you probably know by now that anything but personalized won’t cut it, especially when it comes to direct mail. And by personalized, I don’t mean just writing a note and signing it with your name. Or sending them something “safe” like a box of candy or a water bottle with your logo on it.
If you can’t think of something more personal than that, perhaps you shouldn’t be sending them direct mail in the first place. As marketing and salespeople, we have access to an absurd amount of information. Thanks to the abundance of data enrichment and prospecting tools at our disposal, before we even introduce ourselves, we know your name, your role, your company and its size, your industry, your past jobs, where you went to school and much, much more. But honestly, that’s just scratching the surface. If you’re truly savvy and you’re engaging in social selling techniques, you can dig beyond the professional data points to forge a genuine connection with someone.
For example, if you go to my LinkedIn or Twitter, you’ll quickly learn two things about me: I’m a marketer, and I love dogs. I’m not saying that if I got a direct mail package that somehow connected those two passions that I would immediately drop everything and become a customer, but you’d definitely leave a “pawsitive” impression on me.
Of course, not every business professional is necessarily leveraging these platforms to outwardly share about their hobbies and interests outside of work. More often or not, these details are subtle, but they are surely there. Look into what types of content they interact with. What types of accounts do they follow? What do they comment on or like? Are there trends you can identify? Whatever it is, use that as a starting place to establish common ground and weave in your business angle from there.
The Takeaway
While it’s not used as frequently as it once was, direct mail can be a refreshing and effective tactic within your greater demand generation strategy. Moreover, it can be seamlessly integrated into your existing account-based marketing strategy to create a unique multi-channel experience for your target accounts.
Tag(s):
Demand Generation
