Turn More Visitors into Clients with Direct Mail Retargeting
As brands increasingly shift their priorities to digital marketing, new opportunities are arising from old marketing methods. One marketing method that’s seeing a revival is direct mail. Direct mail retargeting presents an opportunity to create a memorable marketing touchpoint
A recent study by the Data & Marketing Association showed that print is impactful, engaging, and a powerful marketing tool. While less direct mail is being sent (which means less competition for you) has decreased with the rise of digital media, the response rate for direct mail has increased by an impressive 43% year-over-year.
Now, with just one line of code, you can send postcards to the people visiting your website – even if they don’t fill out a form!
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Re-Engage Stagnant Sales Prospects
Brands are increasingly seeing that timely and relevant direct mail sends offer a way to stand out from digital noise. When emails go unopened and contacts fall away, direct mail may serve as an opportunity to captivate and reengage your prospects.
Brands often see visitors engaging with their website content without ever responding to email or phone contacts. Consumers, though curious about the opportunities & products available, have grown understandably resistant to a constant barrage of targeted ads and follow-ups.
However, if your website provides valuable information or transactional value that keeps consumers coming back, direct mail remarketing may serve as the catalyst that pushes your contacts into the next phase of their sales journey.
With LeadPost’s site abandonment solution, you have the unique opportunity to personalize the direct mail piece sent to your contact, based on their website activity. If they show interest in a particular service or product and don’t take the next step, LeadPost will send your targeted message directly to their mailbox.
Combat Marketing Fatigue
According to recent reports, the average American consumer is exposed to thousands of advertisements per day. In fact, it’s not unusual for the average consumer to see more than 300 advertisements within the first waking hour each day.
And while digital marketing experts can’t seem to agree on the exact number of ad exposures per day, it doesn’t really matter. This is because, in order to maintain our sanity, consumers have developed an autonomous mental screening process to ignore advertisements.
As a general rule of thumb, about two percent of advertisements garner our valued attention each day. In other words, only about 100 out of every 5,000 ad exposures have any meaningful impact on consumers.
Simply put, there are just too many nurture points and too many campaigns – too many pieces of outreach, too many truly terrible email messages and auto-dialers.
Driving Site-to-Store Business
In 2017, shopping and strip malls became deserted wastelands as more and more retailers downsized or shuttered their physical locations altogether. Those that remain are looking for ways to increase sales and remain competitive in an increasingly digital economy.
In an industry starved for user analytics, some retailers are implementing special floor tiles with sensors that provide retailers with data on customer walking paths and their physical in-store behavior–and therefore, their interests as well.
Businesses are seeking ways to understand their customers and to provide them with a superior price and experience in their retail locations. Customer analytics will be a foundational requirement for retailers looking to compete with online giants such as Amazon who employ a wealth of customer data in their every move.
Long a mainstay for local retailers, direct mail discounts and coupons are an effective way to generate local interest and in-store activity. For retailers looking to take this to the next level, direct mail remarketing technology allows retailers to send coupons and opportunities to their local website visitors who showed some online interest and left without making a purchase.
By utilizing the data on their website visitors, retailers are able to bridge the gap between online shoppers and their brick-and-mortar stores. Furthermore, mail pieces can be tailored to speak to the products or services the visitor was perusing on-site.
Direct Mail for Abandoned Cart Recovery
If someone has abandoned a specific product in their shopping cart, and a merchant has their contact information on file, a personalized piece that reminds them of their pending purchase and offers a discount to complete it, will often result in a purchase or lead conversion.
In the past, direct mail was a cumbersome process. You’d engage a graphic designer, work with a mail house, gather addresses, and schedule a mail drop.
With today’s technology, you’re now able to set up triggered drip direct mail campaigns and create campaigns that “listen” for triggers from your CRM or Marketing Automation workflows to send out direct mail postcards and letters on a piece-b-piece basis.
Once these programmatic direct mail triggers are set up, they run without any need for manual intervention. Just like your email-based automation, they run as triggered – except a physical printed piece is delivered to your audience instead of an email – or at times, in addition to an email.
Triggers can be set for any number of occurrences including:
- Birthday reminders
- Thank you for purchases
- New customer offers
- New product alerts
- Sales alerts
- Product recommendations based on prior purchases and inactivity
Converting Sales with Long Sales Cycles
When you work in an industry with a longer sales cycle you must consider your target’s experience. Whether you’re selling in a B2C scenario – such as offering your home building services to a consumer looking to build a home – or you’re working in a B2B scenario offering technology to revamp an entire business’s IT infrastructure – some offerings require more time.
At the end of the day, the decision-maker in these transactions needs to weigh the pros and cons of your offering, consider budgetary needs & restrictions, and review competitive offerings before making their decision. The larger the expenditure, the longer the sales cycle – in some instances, as long as 18 to 36 months.
While it may feel the best way to get in front of a prospective buyer is to oversaturate them with information, this can hurt brand perception. There can be a balance where you avoid overwhelming the buyer while still offering the right information through the perfect touchpoints and channels.
The primary goal throughout a long sales cycle is to remain at the top of your customer’s minds. This engagement needs to go beyond a monthly payment reminder or email that will be archived in the spam folder. Your company should be the first one a prospective buyer thinks of when they have a question, concern, or need.
Achieving this requires filling gaps in their knowledge or offering support in a strategic manner. The customer needs to see that you have value to offer, and are not trying to inundate them with advertisements and pressure. Instead, you are there for guidance and reference.
By adding tools like direct mail and email remarketing into your strategy, you have the opportunity to provide materials that build your authority as a trusted resource to that buyer over the time they’re considering their options. When they visit your website at various times for new information, you can send responsive mail or email pieces with helpful, valuable insights that will keep you top-of-mind with the consumer throughout their consideration process.
Direct mail advertisements give consumers a moment to think. It’s in their hand and under consideration. With each trip to the mailbox, we are forced to consider each and every piece of mail – to toss it, open it, or set it aside for further consideration. Sometimes we lay it on the kitchen table or a bedside table until we can get to it, meanwhile, it’s gathering views and impressions every time we walk by.
Well-crafted, well-timed direct mail comes quietly and awaits our attention, which we often eagerly provide. That’s the power of direct mail in a digital world.
CASE STUDIES
Problem: Ryan Homes, a national homebuilder, had a sales cycle between 90 to 120 days. During that period, the company wanted to create brand trust and reiterate the value of their communities and the quality of their homes to increase sales.
Solution: During a 90-day period, Ryan Homes decided to test site abandonment for three of their new nationwide communities.
For each community, the company created a 6-week drip of 6×9 postcards. These postcards were delivered to anonymous website visitors, with each drip message in the sequence containing a different message and promotion.
Results: 120 days after their drip campaigns were complete, Ryan Homes analyzed the data to determine whether the recipients of the campaigns ultimately purchased homes in the targeted communities.
It found that during the 90-day period, a total of 838 unique anonymous website visitors received the 6-week direct mail drip sequence. Of those users, LeadPost had direct attribution on the direct mail sent for 5 exact home sales.
Problem: VSP, a nationwide vision insurance provider wanted to test the conversion lift when anonymous website visitors that did not convert on their site were retargeted with a direct mail piece.
Solution: VSP test a site abandonment campaign with a 65 percent hold back, or control group, for 30 days. During this test period, LeadPost sent 35 percent of the company’s non-converting website visitors a single 4×6 postcard. Four months after the campaign, VSP analyzed the conversion rate of the 65 percent of visitors who did not receive a postcard versus the 35 percent who did.
Results: The direct mail retargeting campaign increased VSP’s conversion rate by 43 percent.
Problem: A Virginia auto dealership partnered with LeadPost to drive more in-store visitors. They were eager to try new strategies to retarget shoppers who viewed their vehicles online. The company allocated a small budget to incentivize online shoppers with relevant offers – right in their physical mailboxes.
Solution: When anonymous online shoppers looked at vehicles on the dealership’s website, LeadPost was able to identify approximately 30% of these visitors. LeadPost automatically triggered a direct mail piece to interested shoppers with an offer for the exact car they were browsing.
Results: During the 30-day test period, LeadPost retargeted 262 anonymous online vehicle shoppers with 4×6 postcards. The test campaign yielded 7 car sales, 4 of which exactly matched the vehicle in the postcard creative.
The test campaign yielded the desired results with minimal advertising. The campaign achieved a CPA of just $34 per vehicle sold.
Generate Leads Automatically
Reduce friction and generate more leads by automatically capturing the names, email addresses, and mailing addresses of up to 40% of your anonymous website traffic.
That means you can focus on providing value instead of annoying your visitors with popups and convincing them to fill out forms.
Maximize Return on Ad Spend
Increase the ROI of your digital advertising campaigns by following up with email and direct mail when you pay for clicks that don’t convert. You can trigger direct mail, email, social media and display campaigns automatically or follow up manually.
Get More ROI from SEO
Generate more revenue from your content marketing efforts by converting organic traffic into leads you can contact by email, direct mail, and more.
Learn More About Your Audience
Improve your personalization efforts by enriching your records with demographic data on your website visitors and customers. Segment customers by marital status, presence of children, automotive data, and more.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does LeadPost cost?
LeadPost has different plans starting at $249. You can also collect more information (e.g., automotive data, marital status, etc.) for an additional fee. And you can upload a list of your existing customers so you don’t pay for records you already have.
How does LeadPost identify anonymous web site visitors?
We use deterministic (cookie-based identification) probabilistic data providers (IP and fingerprint technologies) to match your website visitors. Based on the identification signals of anonymous web site visitors, this site visit data is then converted to verified name, mailing address and email, leveraging additional data partners and verification providers.
How will direct mail retargeting work with my current marketing strategy?
LeadPost clients use direct mail retargeting to:
- re-engage stagnant sales prospects,
- combat marketing fatigue,
- drive site-to-store business,
- effortlessly stay in touch with triggered touches, and
- converting sales for products & services with a long sales cycle
What data do I get?
You can set your campaign to always receive the name, mailing address and email address of identified web site visitors, or you can prioritize email or name and mailing address. More information can be captured for an additional fee.
Is the data verified?
Yes. Name and address data is verified using 3rd party services to confirm that the address is deliverable and the individual lives at that address. Where the email address is available, the email address is also verified as deliverable.
Is my data shared with other parties?
No. Under no circumstances will your site visitor information be shared with anyone else. The site visit data collected is for your exclusive use.
How do privacy laws apply?
Since LeadPost only operates in the US, international privacy laws such as GDPR and CASL do not apply. From a US perspective, states are beginning to enact state-level privacy laws, such as California’s CCPA. But these restrictions have been centered around notification of data collection and usage and the ability for users to opt out and/or purge data collected.
Because no personally identifiable information (PII) is being passed, use of the service does not require any additional steps to be taken outside of the ones that you likely already have in place to comply with these laws.
However, your privacy policies should be reviewed to ensure proper disclosure of the use of third-party data collection services as outlined in Section 1.3 of our Terms of Service.
What Our Customers Say
“This technology combined with a compelling offer significantly boosted our overall conversion rate as compared to past campaigns without LeadPost.”
Jason. C, General Manager
Health, Wellness, and Fitness Company
“I love that this software allows even small businesses with low marketing budgets to enjoy the benefits of remarketing to site visitors who do not convert on the first visit.”
Amanda T., CEO
Marketing and Advertising Company
“What’s amazing is the ability to accurately provide leads that visit your website without no friction.”
David J., CEO
E-Learning Company