Dealing with crowded email inboxes, many marketers are looking for new ways to stand out. How can you prove to your customers (some of whom receive hundreds of emails daily) that you’re worth their time?
Email overload is a real and growing problem for many consumers. Edison Software found that three-quarters of Americans feel overwhelmed by their email inboxes. More than 30% of survey respondents admitted feeling stressed out by too many emails. This means that even if your brand follows all email marketing best practices, you may struggle with shrinking list sizes.
Sometimes, no matter how creative you get with email marketing, consumers just aren’t going to engage. Or, worse yet, they’re going to become annoyed and unsubscribe or resent your brand. Luckily, email is just one of many communication tools at your disposal. You can avoid being at the mercy of crowded email inboxes by building out an omnichannel strategy.
Many marketers already practice omnichannel marketing, coordinating email campaigns with social, search and push marketing. But there is one more tool to add if you truly want to get your customers’ attention: direct mail.
Increase Engagement with Direct Mail Automation
With direct mail, you can reach just about anyone—even those consumers who haven’t engaged with any of your recent emails, and those who’ve (gasp!) hit “unsubscribe.” Even when you’ve lost all access to a customer’s inbox, you can most certainly reach them via mailbox. A whopping 98% of Americans bring in their mail daily, according to USPS. What’s more? The vast majority of millennials (90%) actually enjoy reading their mail.
Until recently, it wasn’t feasible to send very effective direct mail, but with direct mail automation it’s just as easy as triggering an email. Inkit’s software allows you to send highly targeted and personalized postcards at the click of a button. You can even add postcard automations to your omnichannel workflows when you use Inkit with one of our CRM partners.
We recommend sending strategic direct mail that not only reaches your customer, but jump-starts engagement online again. Consider directing customers to a landing page or your social media sites for free added value, spurring online activity.
3 Times to Send a Marketing Postcard vs. an Email
In this era of email overload and general digital fatigue, there are countless times that a postcard should be your go-to medium. Whenever you think your customer journey would benefit from a personal touch or a nearly guaranteed “open,” think direct mail.
Here are three times you should definitely automate direct mail.
- Re-engage. If you’re using a solid CRM or email automation platform, you should be able to respond to signs of disengagement pretty quickly. You probably already have well-timed email offers set up to combat waning engagement. But if email is the only channel you’re using for re-engagement, you’re needlessly losing customers. Some customers are surely defecting because the problem is all of the emails. Direct mail can be your secret weapon to re-engagement when email alone isn’t working. Set a rule in your re-engagement sequence to trigger a postcard as customers cease to open your emails.
- Communicate loyalty benefits. Direct mail elicits a stronger emotional response than digital communications, and thus it is a perfect medium for most loyalty programs. Check out the highly effective loyalty postcard below that pulls in each customer’s unique rewards’ balances.
3. Close leads. Sending effective follow-up emails is a key strategy for many eCommerce brands. If you’re already using a follow-up email sequence, consider adding a personalized postcard to the mix. Most people find printed messages more trustworthy than digital, according to USPS, and this is key when closing a sale.
Ready to jump into modern direct mail marketing? One way to test the power of the medium is simply to send direct mail when email open rates falter. Do you have great email promotions that perform well when opened, but you’re struggling to get those opens (due to the aforementioned crowded inbox problem)? Try sending a postcard when an otherwise strong email just isn’t getting enough visibility. Simply use Inkit’s plug-and-play builder to repurpose an email as a postcard, and then send it to those who don’t read the email.
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