Triggered direct mail campaigns hit the right people, at the right time, with the right message.

Whether bringing in leads, converting prospects, fostering loyalty, or re-engaging lapsed customers, triggered direct mail encourages action. Triggered direct mail is a marketing strategy that combines the best tactics from online and offline marketing into one powerful channel.

Click here to learn more about direct mail automation and how it works.

There truly has never been a better time to dive into triggered direct mail.

What is Triggered Direct Mail?

Before we get into some of the benefits of triggered direct mail, let’s talk about how it works.

Using Inkit with a direct mail CRM integration, you can trigger highly customized postcards in real time based on event data. This means when a consumer takes an action that is tracked and recorded in your CRM, a particular trigger determines a postcard is sent. The postcard is then printed and mailed almost instantaneously (within about 24 hours), while the consumer’s motive is still fresh. As a result, you capture the attention of highly qualified leads at an ideal moment in their customer journey.

And how is this different than triggered emails, you might ask? Triggered direct mail is actually very similar to the triggered emails you already send. However, triggered postcards have a few distinct and powerful benefits, allowing the medium to outperform email by a landslide. These are:

• direct mail’s tangible nature that elicits a strong emotional impact, and
• direct mail’s ability to reach consumers and command their attention in an era of email overload

Here are 5 examples of direct mail triggers:

• Refinancing postcard offers triggered by fintechs and banks when customers hit certain loan balances.
• Loyalty reminders mailed out to remind inactive customers of unused points. (Pro tip: Add a bonus to incentivize consumers to cash in soon).
• Cart abandonment postcards triggered as part of a cross-channel cart abandonment sequence.
• Service reminders from car dealerships, jewelers and other retailers based on purchase history timelines.
• Welcome or onboarding postcards triggered upon an initial sale.

Click here for a few more direct mail triggers to add to your strategy.

Triggers can be set around just about any type of event or behavior, depending on the data you’re tracking. Online actions like landing page visits, content downloads, webinar attendance and product demos are all opportunities to bridge online and offline marketing with a postcard trigger.

4 Reasons Why You Should Send Triggered Postcards

Now that you understand how triggered direct mail works, let’s talk about why it works. Here are the top 4 reasons marketers trigger postcards.

1. Triggered postcards save time and money. Direct mail has a bad rap as a sluggish, manual and expensive channel. To be fair, at one point in time it was all of these things. With direct mail triggers and automation, you pay only for the postcards you send. There are no minimum batch sizes and costly design and set-up fees. Simply design your postcards in Inkit’s builder, and plug them into campaigns based on events in your CRM. This means every postcard you send should be highly targeted, customized and automated.
2. Triggered direct mail is data-driven. Good data is the key to all good marketing. When you couple the data-driven capabilities of a CRM with the high performance of postcard marketing, the possibilities are incredible. This is one reason direct mail beats all digital channels combined when it comes to response rates—by a factor of 10 to 30!
3. Variable data printing further boosts relevance. Inkit’s digital presses work on-demand and are set up for variable data printing. With dynamic content insertion and direct mail triggers, you can capitalize on the power of personalization to boost postcard relevance.
4. Triggered direct mail is cross-channel. When you leverage multiple channels to deliver integrated customer experiences, you can cut through the noise and reach customers when and where they want to engage. The data is clear: cross-channel marketing improves engagement and fosters loyalty. When you trigger direct mail within larger cohesive, cross-channel marketing campaigns, you can improve results on all channels.

Are you ready to get started with triggered direct mail marketing?

How to Start Sending Triggered Direct Mail

Marketers have a few options when it comes to triggered direct mail. For a seamless, cross-channel approach to triggered direct mail marketing, we recommend integrating Inkit with your CRM. This enables you to create, trigger and mail postcards just as easily as anything you’re doing online.

We’re building direct mail integrations with top CRMS to make triggered direct mail accessible to more marketers. If you don’t see your CRM listed on our integrations page, please drop us a line to let us know. We’ll let you know where your CRM fits on our schedule, as well as whether it is possible to trigger direct mail via workarounds in the meantime.