The German Postal Service published a report in 2016 covering the possibilities and obstacles of direct marketing. The report contains information and trends about dialogue marketing – national and international. 3,000 marketers were asked to provide information about their marketing activities to create a complete picture of the national and international marketing landscape.
The Research
The research found that in contrast to stagnating classical marketing, direct marketing activities are on the rise. In retail in particular – the use of customer communication via personalized mails is very popular. In fact, the second highest marketing budgets are spent on direct marketing – after those for print advertising.
In 2015, 17% of all marketers used personalized direct mail
In this context ‘personalized mailing’ means mailings with complete address and personal form of address. The most cited reason in favor of ‘physical’ mailings: targeting specific groups. Further reasons are: customer loyalty, higher engagement, personal form of address, acceptance by customers & good cost-value ratio
The Learnings
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Physical direct mailing is still one of the most important forms of marketing
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Delivering the right message through the right channel to the right customers is an important and challenging task for a marketer
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Used properly, direct mailings can leverage the success of your campaign
Put into Practice: Upgrade Your Direct Mail Campaign in 2 Steps
locr services help you to drive more engagement to your direct mailing, leverage response rates, and optimize ROI in the long run.
Go beyond the personal form of address and create a personal connection to your customer! Two advantages of direct mail named by the interviewees are targeted, group-specific mailing and good cost-value ratio. Both aspects can be implemented and optimized easily with locr GEOservices.
Step 1: locr GEOservices let you target only the prospects that are in the right location to do business with you and for whom your offer is relevant. Using real distances and travel times you can segment your offer to specific target groups or assign the nearest sales location from a separate list to each address. For example, prospect addresses from one highly targeted geographic section of the list are assigned to location A, another targeted segment assigned to location B, and so on. Define rules like assigning the next three locations within 10 miles around each address or the nearest shops from different brands or groups. GEOservices further help you to cut postal costs by identifying faulty records in your mailing list.
Step 2: Personalized maps by locr are not only an eye-catcher and provide relevant information; they also create an emotional connection to the recipient. Besides the personal form of address, highlighting the recipients’ location on a personalized map creates a personal aspect helping the recipient to identify with the mailing piece. A personalized map showing the fastest route to the next supermarket, hairdresser etc., pinned to your fridge is much more accessible than an email that gets lost in your online postbox.
