New Technology Ups the Ante for What Direct Mail Can Accomplish

Combining digital campaigns with physical mail creates new opportunities

Today, there is no one way to craft the perfect path to purchase. Consumers bounce from touchpoint to touchpoint and are easily distracted at each one. For marketers, this means the pressure is on to create campaigns that can drive consumers from prospect to advocate status.

In this environment, digital alone isn’t enough. You need to integrate digital technology with physical mail and create omni-channel campaigns that drive more attention, deeper engagement and faster responses.

Coordinating digital and direct mail has a very real impact on consumer behavior. In a survey conducted by USPS of seventy-five marketing decision-makers who combined digital and direct mail, 68% reported an increase in website visits, 63% an increase in response rates, 60% an increase in ROI and 53% an increase in leads. You get the point—combining digital and direct mail is a powerful way to drive consumer behavior.

To really make an impact, this integration should happen at every stage of the customer journey. Synchronize digital and physical campaigns to drive initial brand awareness that sticks. Then generate desire by encouraging customers to keep exploring on and offline. From there, assist in the evaluation stage by providing helpful information and offers on multiple channels. This omni-channel relationship-building can lead to a successful transaction and a loyal customer.

Here are four innovations in direct mail that can drive action throughout the customer journey:

1. Informed Delivery

Create two interaction points for one piece of mail with an Informed Delivery interactive campaign. This digital campaign tool allows marketers to create eye-catching and interactive ride-along content that reaches a recipient via email before the physical mail arrives. From the Informed Delivery email—which arrives daily and shows which mailpieces and packages are arriving soon to their address—consumers can click through to watch product videos, follow a brand on social media or continue their shopping.

2. Informed Visibility

Optimize timing and messaging by coordinating the digital arm of a campaign with the delivery of direct mail. The Informed Visibility feature from USPS provides near real-time tracking and lets you see when mail is out for delivery.

With this data, you can then retarget direct mail recipients with social ads, banners or emails with similar messaging. This helps keep your brand top of mind and encourages consumers to take meaningful action in the moment.

3. Retargeted Direct Mail

Move a prospect toward action with hyper-targeted mail. Individualized mailpieces are triggered according to a person’s interaction with a business’s digital properties, like browsing its website, downloading its app, opening its emails or liking a post on its social channels. These custom, action-based messages are mailed within 12-24 hours of the online action, while the brand is top of mind, to drive conversion.

4. Digitally Enhanced Mail

Let digital channels complement direct mail messaging and bring moments to life. Layer modern technology like near-field communication (NFC) chips, quick response (QR) codes and augmented or virtual reality experiences into a piece of mail to launch a recipient directly into your brand’s digital world and move them deeper down the funnel.

Each of these innovations weaves the ease and intelligence of digital with the effectiveness of physical, driving real-time action with every interaction. Using these four innovations in lockstep with one another helps marketing campaigns more intelligently connect online and offline channels. This moves people further down the path to purchase toward loyalty, no matter where in their purchase journey they might be.

Bob Dixon helps develop products and services for the U.S. Postal Service that meet customers’ needs in the digital age. He leads a team that supports a variety of online tools, including Informed Delivery, which is changing the way people interact with their mail.