Personalization in advertising is now easier than ever. Utilizing companies like Welcome Wagon, help to focus direct mail marketing efforts into the hands of the right people in your community. Adding direct mail to your current marketing strategy will lift your performance overall.
Luci:
There’s a couple things here when we talk about personalization and again, leveraging the data to personalize across life event changes, but I really want to talk here about two things: one is leveraging now for brand awareness, while at the same time, it being measurable. And I know, Michelle, you and I talked about this earlier this week. Tell us a little bit more about what you’re noticing with your customers leveraging mail in this way.
Michelle:
Sure, absolutely. There’s a couple of things that we’re seeing. We typically and historically have really been all about digital, right? We’re an ESP, people know us as that. We do display targeting, video targeting, CTV targeting within our media network. And one of the things that we’re seeing is by us adding direct mail onto our packages and our managed services, it just provides a lot of continuity across all of the different channels. And it also provides a really strong way to do attribution, and to do measurement and to live that response, which is really important when you’re a marketing company, and you gotta go to your boss and prove that what you’re doing is really providing value to your company, right? So, by adding on direct mail, you have the ability to really do that in a true 1-to-1 manner, versus just looking at clicks or points.
And clicks are a part of the journey, but they don’t take you all the way through. And so, I know so many companies, probably, 3 to 5 years ago, really started putting most of their marketing budget in display and advertising, and some of these other channels, and those channels work, but you really need another channel to be able to solidify the attribution.
And direct mail is one of those ways that, as a follow-up to a digital campaign, display campaign, whatever that might look like, is the way that you enhance attribution and really get 1-to-1 attribution on how that campaign worked.
We do a lot of research around control group testing, channel group testing, and audience group testing. One of the things that we have seen work 100% of the time, is when you add direct mail to a campaign, you will lift your performance.
Um, you sometimes have to be a little patient on the results, right? But your performance will lift.
Luci:
I’m glad you mentioned patience because, Maria, we were talking about this earlier, and often your customers are small businesses. They have limited marketing budgets, and they’re, like, “Maria, we’re going to test you. One month of mail and let’s see how that goes.” And I think, you know, again, you’ve been doing this a long time. So what is the advice that you give to your customers, when they really are looking for that short return?
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Maria:
Yeah, honestly, we typically do not engage for shorter terms, because there’s a learning process that we really have to work 1-on-1 with a client to get to.
So there, through the coupons, through the audience, through the whole marketing strategy around the direct mail distribution, you get valuable information regarding consumer behavior specific to the brand. And so, those are things that we want to make sure that we’re sharing with the customers on a month-to-month basis, so that we know, then, what to pull the trigger on, and what to do more off. And so that’s how we really want to partner with our clients. We really want to be able to build up a strategy that they can scale into an excellent source of productivity. Or, positive lead generations for them. And so that’s why we typically wouldn’t engage in shorter terms or periods of time for direct mail.
Just think about this, think about the normal distribution time from, you know, printing, design, etcetera, and distributing the piece, right? You have just 2 to 3 weeks before it’s hitting the home. Then, we also think about, when do we want the recipient to receive the piece?
And so, that’s why all those factors are taken into consideration when we’re planning out our mail distribution. And there’s time to consider. And so those are the conversations that we make sure to map out to our clients so that we better plan together that direct mail strategy.
Michelle:
I wanted to add onto that really quick, one of the other things to consider is to consider the person that you sent that Gift Book to and they hung it up on their refrigerator. And, you know, those type of activities. And they’re like, OK, well, I’m gonna go shopping this weekend, or I’m gonna go shopping in two weeks, right? That’s another reason why we need time to truly test attribution, responsive rate, and timeliness right to all of the packages, because you still want to be able to give the attribution the energy that it needs to be correct.
Maria:
That’s an excellent point, Michelle. Sorry to interrupt. That’s a great point that Michelle brought up, because a Gift Book has a very long shelf life.
Sometimes we get calls from movers, you know, asking if we can resend the Gift Book because they misplaced it. And they truly use it as a reference so our Gift Book becomes a reference book. So what we’ve come up with is the Welcome Wagon app so that they don’t have to dismantle the book and still exercise the coupon.
Luci:
That’s great, yeah, I forgot about that. Thanks for reminding us about that. I think, you know, again we look at direct mail having power, right? So many people think of direct mail as lower funnel. What’s my last touch attribution? You know, I’m just going to measure the direct attribution that I got from mail. But really, when you look at, again, the use of coupons can be measured separately, and brand awareness…You know, it really does serve as an upper funnel support mechanism. And because you can make it highly personalized it also can live long, so make sure you’re giving your direct mail that longer timeframe of attribution, and also checking your other channels and your walk-ins. Either retail walk-ins, digital walk-ins, as you are dropping your direct mail, check and see the relationships between your other channels and how direct mail is really being leveraged as an upper funnel awareness driver for those other, more tangible last touch channels.
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