Direct Mail and Print Marketing Can Complement and Increase Online Sales

Do not believe it when pundits say that print advertising is dead. Those who want to promote online marketing often put forth this claim. True, we live in the Internet Age. Any business without an online presence will probably fail. However, relying solely on digital media to make sales is a mistake too many make. They need to recognize and respect the value of direct mail and print marketing.

Following are three important ways printed material can complement and increase online sales.

A More Personal Experience

There is no better way, besides actual door-to-door sales, to provide potential purchasers with a personal experience. Printed media allows the user to touch something and see the products on display in their hands. They identify more intimately with the company and its products than they do online.

Stimulation of the Senses

Printed media also provides a pleasing feast for the senses. For example, the recipient can hold a catalog. They can see the products on the pages. At times, it might even be possible for them to smell fragrances. For younger people, this stimulation of the senses is a welcome break from the more impersonal online experience. The older generation finds printed media rekindling memories of their youth. Either way, it is a winning situation for the sender.

Inspire Confidence in the Business

Last, but not least, printed media helps a business appear real. There are too many fake websites out there today. Moreover, some legitimate sites are unfortunately outdated. Nothing is worse than clicking a link to make a purchase only to find out that the business no longer sells the item. A waste of time.

A contemporary direct mail campaign can inspire confidence in the legitimacy of a business.

Start a Direct Mail Print Campaign Today

The goal of any successful marketing campaign is to capture new customers and retain current clients. Printed media remains a primary means of doing so.

To stay ahead of the competition, get started with a direct mail print campaign today. Readers will find the material engaging and then visit the listed website address for further information.

Your Website Content Can Affect Your Sales

Websites are no longer just visual representations of brands and companies. In fact, they play a pivotal role in any online marketing or SEO campaign. No truer is this then when it comes to effectively marketing products and services to core, niche and mass audiences. With this in mind, your website content has to be easy to scan and digest. It should also entail industry-relevant and high-quality content for visitors and potential customers. No matter the industry or sector you serve, your website can truly be a tool in generating leads, profits and recurring revenue.

Visibility is the Key to Success

According to industry experts, your website must have the following features in order to secure higher visibility across Google. These essential tools can also foster brand validity and growth, while driving business and sales across the board:

Uniformity and Consistency

Sites must have gripping templates and user features that are easy to access. This includes eye-catching logos, along with menus and designs that establish uniformity and consistency across your pages. The days of intricate Flash presentations and add-ons are simply over. Today’s websites are streamlined, centralized, and optimized for SEO and especially mobile and wireless access.

Captivating and Compelling Content

Your content must also be precise, concise, and to the point. This will keep visitors and customers on your pages longer – resulting in higher conversion rates and sales. Long gone are the days of lengthy content that would turn potential clients and customers away. Keep your content direct, industry- specific, and inclusive of strategic keywords and links that connect your customers to the products and services they seek.

Websites must also feature links to your social media pages. This can generate a lasting buzz about your brand, while appearing in local search results and Google Maps.

5 Ways to Reinvigorate Your Direct Mail Marketing

In our world where email paperless billing has shrunk the amount of mail delivered by the post office, the fact remains that direct mail marketing is still a viable option or getting new customers and making more sales because most people still love getting mail, especially when it’s not bills.   However, if you have a business campaign that is a bit lackluster, then you may be searching for a way to revive your direct mail marketing presence. Five tips that will help you do just that are highlighted here.

Change your approach

Long gone are the days of creating a thin, cheap looking pamphlet to mail to customers. Instead, you need to create a great looking piece of mail that seems important. This way it will not be thought of as “junk mail,” but rather an important piece of correspondence that will garner attention and interest.

Target the right customers

It is important that you are not blindly sending mail into the world. Instead, find out who your target customer is and ensure they are the ones who receive your direct mail. This will help to optimize your marketing dollar, ensuring the highest possible potential for a sale.

Don’t go overboard

When it comes to a direct mail marketing campaign, it is essential to keep it simple. If you try to put too much information on a pamphlet or other piece of paper, or do not make the message you are trying to convey clear enough, chances are your mail will not have the desired effect and will go straight into the recycling bin.

Consider using recycled paper

While the environment may not be on the forefront of your customer’s minds, it is something they will notice if you are taking steps to protect it. Using recycled paper shows you care.

Include an online presence

When you send customers direct mail, you should include an online URL or other resource. For example, are you promoting a product? If so, include a URL where a customer receiving the direct mail can actually order that item.

Direct mail is not dead. But it may require a bit of reviving if you have not given it any thought recently. Use the tips here to bring new life into your direct mail campaign.

Best practices for incorporate direct mail into a multi-channel marketing strategy

Businesses that employ a multi-channel marketing strategy should make consistent use of direct mail. The multi-channel approach is quite effective at reaching potential customers and engaging them in content. Out of the multitude of typical marketing channels, the best is direct mail. Let’s take a look how it can be an integral part of a multi-channel marketing strategy.

Direct mail has many distinct advantages over other marketing channels. A direct mail campaign should initially be incorporated in a test message. Don’t commit to a single message right off the bat. Direct mail affords you the flexibility to test a variety of messages to see which approach works the best. While other marketing channels can be quite costly to produce, direct mail is very affordable in comparison. If your initial test message doesn’t produce the desired results, you can still afford to tweak it until you’ve found something that works.

Another clear advantage of a direct mail campaign is that it enables a business to strive for several different goals. With direct mail, your customers are more likely to keep your advertisement around and they might consult it more than once. This means that it is the ideal platform to tout your company’s other marketing efforts on different channels. Use direct mail campaigns to inform potential customers about these efforts. Tell them all about your company’s website and social media presence on Twitter, Facebook etc.

Simply put, a direct mail campaign has the potential to do more than inform customers about your products and services. It has the potential to reinforce other aspects of the business, including its diverse marketing efforts.

Direct mail also allows a business to alter its message based on the time of the year. Other more expensive marketing channels don’t permit such flexibility. Direct mail campaigns can be timed with precision to capitalize on seasonal changes, economic changes and just about any other current event in order to maximize response rates.

How to Incorporate Direct Mail into Marketing Automation

Just when you thought direct mail was a thing of the past, more and more people are starting to use it as means to reach their target customers. With the advent of emails and other digital marketing tools, most companies stopped sending direct mail as it was thought to be quite expensive. But that did not deter ambitious companies from using direct mail, as they found out, if used intelligently, it can generate numerous leads in no time at all. But how would one integrate direct mail into marketing automation tool? We will tell you how.

Choose your key audiences

Believe me; previously it was a hectic task to choose the right personnel to direct mail. But marketing automation allows companies the luxury of quickly identifying their desired leads and following up with highly personalized direct mail. In addition, you can configure the list yourself. For example – you are looking to send personalized mail to college students. So, you decided to put a specific piece of content online geared towards college students. Once they download that content, your marketing automation tool identifies customers and notifies you to send direct mail with their name and address on it. It is simple and, at the same time, highly effective.

Personalization

Customers who receive offers with their name and address on it, and which is tailored to their needs, are more likely to respond in a positive manner. Direct mail providers have devised ways to link your direct mail to your marketing automation tools through advanced APIs. It will process your “potential” customer information and will allow you to come up with personalized offers. For example, the fully integrated marketing automation tool allows companies to send coupons to customers few days before their birthdays. In that way, they will be “soft pressed” for a positive action.

Add a flow step for direct mail

Your marketing automation tool might allow you to use several marketing channels at once to promote your product or services. But instead of using direct mail in each of those cases, you should consider adding a flow step in your marketing automation that incorporates direct mail. For example – you might want to make sure you client has seen your offers by following up with direct mail after phone calls from your sales team. In that way, customers will feel more valued.

Why You Need to Incorporate Mobile into Your Marketing Strategy

Mobile integration is at an all-time high globally, making it an indispensable marketing tool for businesses. For entrepreneurs, mobile devices have offered a new platform for making collaborations and communication, marketing and operational purposes. On the other hand, the clients have been given a greater role in selecting who, when, and how to communicate with other businesses. The nature of mobile devices has enabled marketers and entrepreneurs to reach their clients wherever they are and has allowed the business premise to be just an impulse away from the client, therefore providing the right mix for both parties.

Below we look at the value of incorporating mobile into your marketing strategy.

Shoppers rely on mobile-based searches

Currently, more than 40% clients use mobile searches and reviews to make buying decisions. Most of the potential clients visit at least three mobile websites before making the final choices of which supplier to buy goods or services from. For this reasons, you should aim at creating a mobile-friendly website for your brand, and go a step further by encouraging the clients to leave positive reviews about their experience with your brand.

Mobile-friendly emails are a great tool

While texting is faster, easier, and convenient, it’s safe to say that emails are a great method for reaching a more specified audience. An effective and responsive mobile based email allows the marketer to customize the message, for example, email segmentation, which not only creates a personal touch to the content but also adds tons of value to your marketing campaigns.

Apps are becoming incredibly popular

Just like mobile games, apps are becoming more addictive. You can capitalize on the apps by creating an informative and exciting app that can create a superb way of creating and connecting with your loyal customers. The automated ultra-modern apps are easy to maintain and do not require constant monitoring.

5 Ways to Get Your Direct Mail Opened

Despite the fact that marketing has become all about digitization, direct mail still receives positive responses and is a very active and beneficial way of approaching clients. Even clients who consider themselves to be “high-tech” can appreciate a good direct mail piece and, as a result, direct mail can still have a high response rate.  In order to ensure that your next direct mail piece get opened, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Keep your direct mail unique and appealing. You can even experiment with things like 3D direct mail pieces. This can add value to your mail and helps recipients recognize and consequently respond to it.
• If you are representing any company, then make sure you do your marketing well through your direct mail. The mails can get rejected right in the beginning if you do not check your content. So, it is advised to concentrate on the marketing campaign. Try using freebies to attract the recipients to grow their interest.
• Making use of unusual envelope options can increase the interest of the recipient, making them want to open the mail. Examples of this could include color or having a unique structure.
• Put that extra effort by putting inside something that is going to make the recipient interested. You can use a pen, a key ring, or any other object. By including something other than a flat piece of paper in your direct mail piece, people are exponentially more likely to open it.
• Use that personal touch by placing a personalized message on the envelope. This will get you better responses from the recipient.

By taking into account some of these things, you can increase the success of your next direct mail campaign.

Five Content Marketing Ideas to Note

Content marketing is the process of distributing and providing valuable, consistent and relevant information concerning a particular product to attract clients who will in turn consume it. This marketing technique slightly differs from general marketing. The key in content marketing is conveying value in the best way possible for clients to relate and in turn buy your product. Below are ideas you can incorporate.

Create More On-site Content

The more content you have on your website the more needs you meet and the more people you relate to. Having an active contact line for responses and feedbacks will help you know your clients better. Having that contact line will be like having an active ‘suggestion box’ in a school. Use good domains like .com and incorporate SEO optimization techniques for your content. This will help you rank higher on Google and other search engines for your content to reach more people.

Use Social Media

With social media, creativity and an uptown approach will be essential. If your market uses social media, then as a company, you need to be in line with the language used and techniques of tapping into this rich space. Consultants and social media managers can be a better way to get you off with social media account. This is because they will draw followers and that audience you seek. In addition, social media will help you understand you clients better. That close interaction on a social media platform is also fundamental to effective marketing and branding.

Be You

As a company, you have your own traditions and culture. You know what you want to sell or convey to your customers. This alone should be enough to have an effective content marketing strategy. If you add what your clients love to do or what is shaping entertainment and lifestyle at the moment, then having a good ad should be easy. Creative content marketing techniques lay within your institution. Therefore, to succeed, it is important to know your techniques.

Answer the Question

When you sell or offer your product to customers, what is the most commonly asked question? If you know that then come up with a marketing strategy around that problem. Come up with ideas that will convey these scenario in order to relate with your clients. Doing this is like putting yourself in the shoes of the customers, which is essential to being effective.

Appeal to the Ethos

If it is a sad scenario, be in line with the feeling of your clients. If by using your product this is a sense of joy or happiness, then use humor. Humor is the easiest to incorporate because users tend to hold happier memories longer than sad ones. As a marketer, you can incorporate humor in your content marketing technique to drive those sales. However, use humor only if the joke is good.

How to Combine Email Marketing and Direct Mail

If you are a business owner then you might already know how hard it is to convince a potential customer to purchase your product or service. No matter how attractive your promotional campaigns are, most of them will just ignore your offers and go about their usual business. If this is the case, how can you expect positive reactions from your customers just by sending them a single generic promotional email? You need to reach them repeatedly through multiple marketing channels and make sure your messages are heard. In this regard, combining email marketing with more traditional direct mail might be an effective idea. You take the benefits from both online and off-line marketing channels, mix and match between them, and send them to your target customers. Below are some ways on how this should be done.

Branding your product

Both your marketing channels should complement each other. Make sure your potential customers recognize your emails and postal pieces just by glancing through them. Use the same tag line on both the envelope of your direct mail and the subject line of your emails. You should also use the same logo, design, and message in all your marketing channels. While the email is more interactive and easy to use, direct mails would confer legitimacy. Hence, you should include your web address in all your direct mail, and make sure your web pages have all the necessary information regarding your products.

 Timing is key

Companies often get confused when deciding on the timing and frequency of emails and postal pieces. In an ideal world, emails should be sent on the same day of your delivery of direct mails. But it would be perfectly fine if a client receives the emails within one week of receiving the direct mail. We would suggest delivering the direct mail pieces first, as they have longer shelf life compared to emails.

Next, you would have to decide on the frequency of your marketing mail and postal pieces. It usually depends on what you are sending to your clients. Ideally, you should send brochures and catalogs once every three months. Regarding promotional emails and direct mail, you should arrange for monthly deliveries. General rule? Try to be on your buyer’s face as long as, and as many times as possible.

Best Ways to Market to Millennials

Millennials constitute a significant portion of the market today. In the US alone, demographic statistics indicate the presence of approximately 80 million millennials; that’s nearly a quarter of the total population. Also, millennials are the most lucrative market with an annual buying power of up to $200 billion. As such, every marketer today is making millennials their top priority-or at least trying to figure out what drives and delights this generation.

Below we look at some excellent tips for marketing to millennials

Go Mobile

Millennials are technologically savvy and are comfortable with every facet of technology, particularly social media. If you want to target millennials, do extensive marketing in places they often hang out. Many millennials have social media accounts on different platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many more.

Market Your Brand Using Influencers

Unlike baby boomers or Generation Xers, millennials always like to be associated with public celebrities for status and bragging rights. Millennials wear brands, and always associated with what they wear or use. And if they love a particular brand, they are going to shout about it making your brand go viral overnight.  A marketer can capitalize on this by incorporating a popular celebrity who is relevant to your niche for marketing purposes. For example, if you’re a sports brand, why not let a celebrity basketball star be your brand ambassador. Even those who can’t afford high status celebrity endorsement can still use less famous but still influential members of their industry be ambassadors for their brand. In some instances, it can take as little as some free perks or merchandise.

Capitalize on Inbound Marketing and Referral

Unlike other generations, millennials are known to be budget conscious and skeptical consumers. These are traits that can make marketing extremely hard, especially for those who use outbound marketing strategies. Millennials are more inclined towards what their peers say about a product or service, and not what the marketers say. They are three times likely to purchase a product because their peers suggested, referred or bought a product.

Provide Digital Convenience

Millennials are used to having information at their fingertips. They do not have the time to make calls or send letters for clarification. As a marketer you can provide the generation with the convenience of information to your brand by incorporating features like;

• Online payment methods
• Providing communication to your brand online
• Providing brand information online

Keep these tips in mind and you can successfully keep in touch with your millennial audiences.