Snail Mail Marketing: How To Incorporate It Into Your Digital Marketing Strategies

MotoCMS Editorial 31 May, 2022

These days, it’s easy to dismiss direct or “snail mail,” as it is derogatorily called, as an outdated marketing method that your enterprise doesn’t need to concern itself with. After all, all you need to do to market successfully is send email newsletters to customers and put up banner ads. Wrong. Snail mail marketing can easily be incorporated into your digital marketing strategies. More importantly, direct mail marketing automation could lead to an even greater return on your marketing investment than digital marketing techniques. With that in mind, let’s explain why and how you should incorporate snail mail marketing into your big-picture marketing efforts.

Can Snail Mail Still Bring Good Results?

Yes. Snail or direct mail marketing campaigns can do a lot for your brand, help generate more cash flow, and provide excellent results. Why?

Snail mail can do things like:

Highlight the important or unique aspects of your brand.
Provide a cost-effective way to market to many people without completely emptying the company’s coffers.
Make people feel special or appreciated by a worldwide brand (an often-understated advantage).

Snail Mail Marketing Compared to Digital Marketing

Snail mail or direct marketing has a bad rap, but it’s not far behind digital marketing’s results. For example, the average conversion rate for a digital ad is about 2.35%. In comparison, it’s between 0.5% to 2% for a direct-mail ad.

As you can see, snail mail marketing can be as effective as digital-only marketing, even more so if you use both formats simultaneously. This might be because many consumers find direct mail more personal, regardless of what’s included in an email ad or newsletter. Many industries rely on the power of a direct mail tool like Postalytics to supercharge their campaigns, consistently delivering outstanding results.

Benefits of Integrating Snail Mail into Digital Marketing

Still not sure you should integrate direct mail with your digital marketing campaign? You could be missing out on benefits like:

The ability to touch prospective clients or customers more personally than ever before. Keep in mind that in the case of medical-related marketing campaigns, such as digital marketing for dentists, you can reach out to patients in a more personal way as well
Significant improvements in marketing methods and business goal achievement in a short timeframe.
Increased ability to send customized messages or notes.
Creating long-term brand engagement, relationships between essential clients or customers, and more.

In short, snail mail allows you to reach your customers and may make them more inclined to remain customers for years. When you forge an emotional bond with a prospective or current client through direct mail, it’s much harder for them to move on from your brand than if you send them emails once in a while.

How to Use Snail Mail with Your Digital Marketing Strategies

Good news: You can use snail mail with your digital and other marketing strategies in many ways. It is preferred because you can market to your target audience even more aggressively (hopefully more successfully!). Here are a few ways you can incorporate direct-mail ads into your marketing strategies:

Use Social Media

Firstly, you can and should leverage social media to locate the ideal target recipients for your snail mail packages. No matter what direct mail you send, it’ll only be worthwhile if you send it to the right person. You can use social media metrics, addresses from your email list, or other information, such as email verification tools, to determine whether a target customer would be a suitable recipient for a free snail mail marketing push.

Don’t waste your time and money sending snail mail to everyone; in the worst-case scenario, your customers may start to think of actual mail packages from you as junk mail.

Personalize the Package

Next, be sure to personalize every single snail mail package or marketing push you send. Why?

Because personalizing direct mail makes receiving it much more special. There’s nothing that snail mail can do that digital marketing or emails can’t, aside from making your target consumer feel particular about the attention. But that makes a big difference in practice! You can personalize your snail mail marketing packages by:

Adding handwritten notes
Using the target consumer’s name when possible
Including a goodie or present that you think the target consumer may like. Depending on how good your data collection is, you may be able to choose a gift based on their spending habits or other factors.

A lot of effort should go into the look of the snail mail marketing package, whether it’s just an envelope or a full-on box. The fancier and more put-together the physical mail is, the more the customer will be enticed to open the package and see what’s inside.

Leverage Personalized URLs

You may find that your snail mail marketing strategy has a greater return on investment if you use personalized URLs, sometimes called PURLs. These personalized URLs are the perfect way to integrate your digital marketing and direct mail campaigns with one another.

A personalized URL can take customers to a custom landing page when they type it in. The custom landing page can include their name and other personalized elements to make them feel like a million bucks. It’s the perfect example of how direct mail campaigns can bolster your digital marketing efforts and vice versa.

Handwritten Is King

As mentioned above, writing a handwritten note (ideally from the head of a department or even the CEO) can make a big difference in how seen and unique a consumer feels when they open a package. Handwritten notes are also an excellent way to incorporate sales empathy into your marketing strategy, allowing you to better connect with your customers.

If you send snail mail to market to prospective customers or clients, put a handwritten note in each shipped package. It can be as simple as a “Thank you for being a customer” or something more empathic, like “We hope this small gift brings you joy during this difficult time.”

Of course, you can get away with a little cost and time-effective tweaking with this strategy, such as photocopying the same note from the executive and then just having them write in the client’s name at the end. In any case, handwritten notes seem more thoughtful, feel more authentic, and maximize the emotional power that snail mail can bring to your marketing campaigns.

Don’t Send the Same Offers

Lastly, ensure that your snail mail marketing efforts don’t have the exact special offers, deals, or promotions as your digital marketing materials or emails. Remember, the whole point of snail mail is to make your marketing feel special and entice the folks who traditional email advertisements or offers may not sway. So make sure each direct mail offer is unique or has a slightly different promotion to draw people to your brand.

This is important because copying the promotion twice will gradually teach your target audience that your actual mail packages can be ignored. They will think the same information is just spam, so why would they bother opening a package you sent to their doors?

Snail Mail Can Reinvigorate Your Marketing Efforts

At the end of the day, snail mail is just another helpful tool you can and should leverage to maximize the returns on your marketing investments. With direct mailing in your toolkit, your digital marketing efforts will be more successful, your customers will be even more connected to your brand, and you’ll increase your brand awareness by separating yourself from the competition.