Direct mail marketing continues to be an effective way to communicate with both customers and potential customers. But you can use either email or postcards to do the communication. Both have advantages and disadvantages for communication and your business. Choosing which one is right for your business will save you time, effort, and money.
The main advantage to email is that it?s cheap. You can send out a million emails for about the same cost as sending out one. But that cheapness is also a disadvantage as people are overwhelmed with electronic communication. Recent estimates put the number of spam emails sent at 230 billion ? every day. That?s over two-thirds of all emails sent around the world. So, if your email runs the risk of getting lost in the noise, you may want to resort to postcards instead.
Postcards
In the same way that email is cheap in both the cost to you and in its efficacy with recipients, postcards are more expensive and more impactful. Not only do you have to pay for printing, but you also pay for postage on the cards. But, each postcard has far less competition with other mail, and people will at least look at the postcard, an advantage that emails do not have.
Get Permission
Both email and postcard campaigns are much more effective if you get permission from people before sending them your marketing material. You?re automatically saving yourself time and money by not sending out as much, and your impact is greater because people are already wanting to hear from you. One of the most common ways to do this is to create a loyalty club with deals and discounts like a free item for birthdays.
Know Your Audience
Think about how your audience prefers to communicate. How they will interact with your business and where they?re located? If the primary form of communication is electronic, mirror that in your marketing. Use your website and email campaigns to connect. If your business is brick and mortar, a physical postcard will help to reinforce the connection you have with people at your physical location. And, if you?re a local business, you can target local people very effectively with postcards, but a disparate audience is easier to reach with email.
Do Both
A major, national coffee company uses a loyalty program to reward and retain customers. The customers first sign up for the program online and receive emails, but then they start getting postcards in the mail with coupons and deals tied to their coffee card.
In the same way, as you get to know your customers and as they commit to working with you, you can increase your impact by moving from electronic marketing to physical marketing. Use email campaigns to cast a wide net and then find the committed customers and reward them through a postcard campaign.
Using both forms of direct mail marketing in the right way increases your chances of moving your customers to action, but remember that the key here is ?in the right way.? Send direct mail only to those customers who agree to receive your mail.
Tara Hornor writes for PrintPlace.com, an online printing company that offers services for brochures, business cards, marketing flyers, posters, postcards, custom booklets, and more printed marketing media. She has found her niche writing about marketing, advertising, branding, web and graphic design, and desktop publishing. In addition to? View?full?profile
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