As the year steadily progresses, your company’s agenda should be driven by marketing strategies. 2018 sees consumers expecting more from businesses, especially when it comes to their buying habits and other purchasing information. Using emails to offer your products or services no longer suffices. Instead, you’ll need to appeal to the curiosity and creativity of your prospects.

UK-wide mailing house Washington Direct Mail shares its thoughts on why it’s essential to incorporate direct mail into your marketing plan.

Justifiably seen as a traditional form of advertising, direct mail marketing is experiencing a resurgence, emerging from the shadow of digital marketing. This is mostly due to what is the very overwhelming nature of the digital age and all the information overload it comes with. Your brand, message and products would need to stand out from a whopping 269 billion emails sent every day, translating into the average office worker getting 121 emails per day in their inbox. You don’t have much time to grab their attention.

These stats highlight just how saturated digital marketing has become, so companies need to look towards channels such as direct mail with which to place their campaigns directly in the hands of their consumers. Estimates suggest that direct mailers are kept in the house for 17 days, while more than 66% of direct mail being read.

Direct mail response rates have witnessed a 190% increase, perhaps as a result of technological advances within the industry, including UV spot printing and digital printing. In addition, consumers are just looking for alternative ways to digest the information they receive via their screens. Direct mail is even attracting Millennials. 64% of them seek information and discounts from brands via their mail.

Amongst many others, Dimensional mailers can be looked into, however these are quite considerably different to those which deploy a standard postcard or letter received in the mail. They deploy a lot more creativity and innovation and they’re used by some of the best brands to introduce some personality to their advertising using this format. SMEs and start-ups with smaller budgets can send cost-effective promotional packs to their audiences, encouraging some physical interaction which engages them in something like building it to reveal a ‘secret’ message.

Smart who naturally have a much bigger budget to work with sent out a cardboard to prospects with which they could construct a recyclable helmet. This proved to be a genius stroke of marketing as they saw improvements in responses, extending to social media as well.

The combination of direct mail and digital marketing has proven to be a success for some companies, reported to lift response rates by a vastly impressive 118%. You can expand your reach very widely with this multi-channel integration as you won’t be ignoring specific sections of your target audience.

We recommend a look into direct mailing to form part of your company’s advertising, but always remember to personalise. Never address your direct marketing to ‘homeowner’ as this will be disregarded, particularly since you can gain access to their details. Personalised direct mail has some proven results to it and will be a continuous feature in our direct mail trends.