With the oversaturation of digital channels, more marketers are turning to automated postcard mailings for a multi-channel lift. Done well, postcard marketing can be just as smart as everything you’re doing online–only much more likely to reach, and resonate with, customers.
Even giants like Amazon and Starbucks, as well as newer e-commerce retailers such as Third Love and Stitch Fix, are sending direct mail to find and re-engage customers offline. Postcard mailings allow marketers a unique opportunity to put a tangible, memorable message right in their customers’ hands. And with the advent of direct mail automation technology and better production capabilities, sending data-driven automated postcard mailers is just as easy as triggering an email.
Click here to learn all about postcard automation and how it works.
Here are 3 tips to make sure your automated postcard mailing is noticed in the mailbox.
1. Personalize Your Automated Postcard Mailing
Many marketers are beginning to do a lot of things right with direct mail, but they’re failing to personalize it.
Personalization can make such a huge difference in all of your marketing, and if you’re personalizing digital messages chances are you can easily personalize postcards, too. In fact, you’ve really got not excuse not to.
Simply integrate Inkit’s direct mail software with your CRM in order to plug variable data into fully customizable postcards. Don’t stop at first name fields. Reference recent purchase history, or abandoned cart statuses to provide a truly relevant message.
Another way to ensure the relevancy of marketing postcards is to set behavioral triggers within your CRM to kick off postcards based on customer events; this is very similar to automating email workflows. Pro tip: Add a postcard trigger to existing email sequences wherever you need a personal touch or an opportunity to curb waning engagement.
2. A/B Test Different Postcard Concepts
There are a number of postcard design and copy best practices to help ensure your mailing stands out in the mailbox. But to really know what works with your audience, you’ve got to test out your ideas. Test different postcard sizes, colors, graphics and copy in order to create effective postcard control templates for your brand.
Click here to learn how to split-test postcards with Inkit.
3. Track Engagement, Not Just Response Rate
We saved the most important automated postcard tip for last: make it measurable. A number of marketers and brands still treat direct mail like an old-school medium when it is anything but. Today’s direct mail is automated, interactive, testable and trackable.
There are many ways to track direct mail performance. You might use a QR code, special discount code, dedicated e-mail or 800 number or a trackable URL. We highly recommend using a method that allows you to start measuring direct mail at the customer’s first action vs. at the point-of-sale only. What is the first step you’re asking recipients to take? Go to your website? Track that engagement. The easiest way to do this is typically to include a unique URL on your automated postcards, different than what you’re using for digital marketing, in order to measure postcard engagement. This is essentially the “click-through” rate of your automated postcard–you want to know how successful your mailer is when it comes to bringing offline customers into an online funnel.
