One of the main challenges facing businesses today is being heard amidst the vast array of marketing messages. Your customers are exposed to literally thousands every single day, making it hard to get your message through. And that challenge is exacerbated in difficult times, such as those we’re all facing now.

If you’ve got a couple of minutes, read on and you’ll see a number of reasons, when it comes to customer acquisition – why direct mail delivers. And why DM should form part of your overall acquisition strategy. Ready for a statfest? Here we go:

Trust

DM is returning to prominence as, with smart targeting, you can get your message directly into the hands of your prospects. And compared with other media, physical items are more trusted, believable and more likely to promote action.

87% find messages delivered by mail as believable, compared to 48% for email.

Grab attention

The physical and tactile nature of direct mail grabs attention. By putting your brand directly into people’s hands, they remember you.

Mail has a 94% customer engagement rate, and 38% bought or ordered products or services after receiving mail.

GDPR compliance

Post-GDPR, brands that are returning to direct mail as part of their marketing campaign are finding higher response levels due to improved data quality. GDPR had a cleansing effect on the supply of third-party data, with the positive effect being improved response.

Boost your omni-channel acquisition strategy

With JICmail (Joint Industry Committee for Mail) quantifying how people act when they receive direct mail, it’s clear DM is not only surviving but thriving. After analysing thousands of items over the course of a year, JICmail has helped reveal the previously unknown patterns of exposure to DM, and the interactions with mail, across a typical month. Allowing us to determine what people are doing with individual campaigns, the commercial outcomes we see as a result, and the content that drives those commercial outcomes.

This ability to more effectively compare direct mail against other media channels has created renewed interest. And brands now have a better understanding of consumer attitudes to direct mail, as marketers have more knowledge of how people value well-crafted mail containing relevant information.

In short, the longer items hang around, the more actions are taken.

On day one:

over 66% of mail is read

If they hang around for a week:

47% of mail is shared with another

If they hang around for a couple of weeks:

22% of mail drives people online

And if they hang around for 28 days:

45% of mail is still live in the home, with 6% driving people online

This shows that direct mail is being kept – put on the sideboard, pinned to a noticeboard in the kitchen, or left on a desk for later.

The latest data has revealed that:

  • 69% of all direct mail is opened
  • 67% is read or looked at immediately
  • 27% is put on display, in the usual place and looked at later in the month

These are numbers even the biggest digital devotees will find hard to ignore in a world where digital cut-through is increasingly harder to come by.

Smart ways to target new customers

Along with renewed awareness of how effective direct mail can be when used as part of the customer acquisition strategy, Royal Mail also offers Partially Addressed Mail, a GDPR compliant way to contact potential customers. It’s misleadingly named, we’ll give you that, but PAM is a great tool to target new customers without requiring their personal data. Instead of being addressed to a named individual your mail is addressed to the ‘householder’, or if you want to be a little more creative, things such as ‘Pet lover’, ‘Kitchen Wiz’, or ‘New homeowner’.

88% of Partially Addressed Mail is opened, read or set aside for later.

What’s the conclusion?

So, Direct Mail is proven to be an effective and complimentary media channel. It reinforces TV, out of home and digital messages within customers’ homes, with high levels of engagement. It provides the most accurate approach for geographic targeting, and can deliver something tangible and tactile which other forms of media can’t.

There are lots of compelling reasons to use direct mail aren’t there? Talk to us about how you can implement DM to boost your customer acquisition strategy.

Stats from Royal Mail MarketReach.