Is mail relevant for marketing these days?

Post is dying, that’s what everyone is saying. No business mails things now if they can help it, and if they do you get a ‘statement charge’ added to your bill. The kids born in the 2000’s might very well be the last generation to get any form of non personal mail in a post box, so they say. It is true the demand for postal services is shrinking year after year, with the inverse economies of scale (less demand increases costs to process each letter ￫ increases price and reduces services ￫ decreases demand) accelerating the process. Is using the post system worth the effort and expense these days for a business to market themselves? We say yes, it’s still an effective tool to market yourself. We are going to tell you why and how you have to change what you do to get the most out of it.

Firstly let us be clear in our definition of what we mean by mail based marketing. We do not mean the flyers and brochures that get stuffed into a mailbox every week. That is mass marketing and that is a vastly different process with a different goal in mind. Mail based marketing by its nature is a personalised form of communication, where a company has your contact details due to an existing relationship. It’s a direct connection between a business and customer/client.

Let’s be honest here, the vast majority of the ‘mail’ that businesses sent out to their customers is paperwork of various forms. Bills, invoices, statements etc was what you got the most of in the mailbox from businesses. With the majority of people getting those online thanks to the decreasing costs of computers, rise of smartphones, the use of high speed and mobile internet connections, naturally businesses would gravitate to a more automated, also far faster and cheaper, digital system. Removing that type of paperwork from the post box, what is there left for physical mail to do for your business.

What it can do is promote your business in a way that electronic advertising can’t. People will read what you send in physical form, they only scan the subject lines of emails. This simple fact means that there is a much higher potential for customer engagement and response. These are key factors in getting the custom/sales you’re after. Improve that engagement with the following features:

Make it exclusive

Instead of targeting 1000’s only do 10’s. If you’re promoting to existing customers, pick the ones you feel are the most likely to respond to your offer. Spell it out in the material about that exclusivity. Make sure that you write it as you have picked them because you felt it would best suit their needs, not because you thought it would be easier to sell it to them.

Personalise it

Don’t just limit yourself to their name and contact details. Pull out key buying history from your records. Set up the offer/s based on what their buying patterns are, or what other businesses in their profession commonly need. It’s about showing them you know their needs and will do everything you can to tailor what you do to fit them.

It costs to send it so spend on the presentation too

Since you are limiting your physical promotion to a select number of customers, it’s not going to be a great expense to improve the finishing of the material you send to them. Don’t just print your letter on copy paper, do it on a nice letterhead (which is especially effective with your logos and colours printed on it.) Have versions of your flyers printed on a thicker premium paper. Look at supplying them in a presentation folder. With our on demand smart variable content printing systems at Copy Express we can easily combine many documents into a single high quality booklet for that extra wow factor.

Be willing to give something away for ‘free’

Yes you could offer a discount, a get ‘x’ at half price, or other price reductions, this isn’t what your mail out is about. It’s a costly process so keep that going by offering something that shows how valuable it is. Offer a consultation or service review at no charge. Maybe a new product that isn’t part of your normal range exclusive to the select few. (This is also a great way of testing your market to see if it’s worth making that new product part of your range.) This is where looking at each customer’s history is good as it allows you to tailor your offer to personally meet their needs. What you give away isn’t as important as how much value it offers. You’re spending money to reach out to your clients, so show that you’re valuing their time by giving them something they really want.

Build in that quick response hook

This is a bit of a contradiction. Given that mail can take days to reach its destination, and if going to a post box, it might only be cleared on a weekly basis at best. You still want people to be driven to respond to that offer, so build that delivery time frame into the length of the offer by starting it a week after you mail it out and lasting for only two weeks to allow for any slow letterbox clearance. Also when the offer starts, send out a reminder email to ask the customer if they got that great offer in the mail and would they like to know more.

Make it easy to respond by following up in a personal way

Tying in to that response hook, make it as easy as possible for people to get to your offer and say yes. While you could use a special page on your website as a written link, or a qr code on the printed page, that takes effort to respond and you want to make it as easy as possible for the customer to say yes. As stated in the previous section, follow up your letter with either an email or better still a phone call asking the client if they received the letter and what they thought about the offer. This gives you an excuse to reinforce the idea of how exclusive the offer is and that the client should take it up. It also gives you the chance to listen to their feedback if the offer wasn’t right and tailor a new one for their needs right there and then.

In conclusion

Thanks to the time and cost involved, physical mail should be treated as a premium tool in the marketing process. By carefully choosing who you use it on, you will be able to maximise the return on investment. More importantly make your customers feel special because you too took the effort to reach out to them on a personal basis. The customer feeling important to you is far more valuable to them than any price saving they could get and will improve the chances they will pick you when they spend. If they don’t spend this time around they will see your business in a better light from the effort you spent which will make them more likely to choose you again in the future.