I cannot answer if it works for your business or not but i can teach you how to try in a few actionable and simple steps, see the KPIs measure and check for yourself. It sure gives good results for some big retail players in my area because i see brouchres and offers everywhere, they bomb the mail gorilla style.
I have never even considered this marketing method in the marketing mix that i use before seeing a podcast that opened my eyes because i always thought it is too complicated to hire someone to put flyers in the mailboxes and verify his work, too many variables.
What i have recently realised was that every country’s post office offer this as a service.
So lets get things going:
First of all, we need a good offer , something like 20% discount code avaiable untill end of the month (using FOMO – fear of measing out as a persuation tactic.
Second we need a good way to measure the results. if you are a service provider or psihical store you should use a phone system like call hippo so you could track every result also if you have a ecommerce website you could create a special discount code an track the results that way.
Measure KPI’s and find out if it works for your business
What KPIs should you have in mind when it comes to direct mail? It is not like you have a google analytics tool on the screen and you can measure so be aware of this 3 KPI’s.
- Cost per Mail Piece
This is simple to calculate, it is basicaly the cost of Print and Design + Cost of mail service - Response rate
To measure this i recommend doing a separate phone number in call hippo for the specific campaign so you can acurately track the results. - Cost per lead
Cost Per Lead = Cost per mail piece / Response rate
Pro’s:
- There is no alogith to learn, no money to burn in the process.
- It suits well local business, as you can target a certain area.
- Easy to scale
- Simple math to track.
- You don’t need to be tech savvy
Con’s:
- It is a guerilla marketing strategy that some people may not apreciate due to privacy issues.(But is less invasive than cold calls outreach).
- You need more traditional marketing efforts to be aligned (vs. an online ppc campaign where you don’t need that much marketing mix efforts to get conversions)
- It needs trial an error to make it work, it is not like SEO or PPC to be an algorithm that you can learn.
Pro Tip:
If your competitors don’t use this promotion channel and you do it can represent an big unfair advantage that gets your overall marketing efforts to get better cost per lead.
You definetly need to try this in your business!
