Imagine your ideal customer opening their mailbox to something unexpected—instead of the usual bills and generic flyers, they’ve received a beautifully crafted card containing a thoughtful message addressing them by name. At the very least, the novelty of this piece of mail will take them by surprise enough to be remembered.
But, it could accomplish even more than that. They might be eager to see who it’s from and devote more time to reading it than they would other mail. They might associate the pleasant surprise of receiving something new and appealing with the company name and branding that they see, making them more open to future advertisements from you. They might take action based on what they read. They might even go from being an ideal customer to an actual customer.
A Marketing Method That Shows Effort
When leveraged to its full potential, direct mail marketing delivers something beyond just advertising. After all, any advertisement can increase brand recognition, even if a consumer only views it for a moment. But, direct mail can also go a long way toward building brand awareness. With a strong direct mail campaign, you’re not just telling your audience what to think about your brand—you’re inviting them into an experience and allowing them to form a positive impression about your brand on their own.
In the digital age, your audience increasingly feels like they’re just data points in a larger algorithm. Even if an algorithm does guess their preferences correctly, it can be frustrating to feel like they’ve been reduced to binary code. On the other hand, direct mail feels like a collaboration and an acknowledgment of shared humanity. Mail requires effort, and you’re showing your recipients that they’re worth that effort, because you chose them.
These days, digital effort doesn’t go nearly as far in the way of demonstrating to a potential customer that they’ve been seen and chosen for a message. That level of intentionality is something people don’t quickly forget. This is why direct mail is among the best ways to build brand loyalty and trust with potential customers.
The Potential of Direct Mail
Direct mail has a lot of the same strengths as digital marketing but with additional value that can’t be accomplished via a digital campaign alone. Utilizing direct mail to its fullest advantage gives your company new and novel opportunities to engage with potential customers and stand out from the competition.
Prioritizing Personalization and Connection
Even though it’s not run by an algorithm, direct mail offers opportunities for highly personalized messaging—especially if you’re willing to get creative. You’ll want to use what you know about your recipient to make your mail piece individualized to them. In some cases, you might have only their name and address, but that means you have the opportunity to address your recipient by name in your copy—or reference their city or neighborhood.
The more information you have about your customer’s purchase habits, pain points, etc., the more tailored your message can be. You could highlight their interests and even include personalized offers. Personalization communicates to your recipients that your company knows and values them as an individual—not just as another potential sale.
And, even if you don’t have much information to go on yet, think strategically about the language you want to use—prioritizing language that communicates your genuine interest and facilitates a personal connection. If you can elicit an emotional response in your recipients—and a sense that they’re seen and valued—you’ll go a long way toward promoting your brand’s value and instilling goodwill in your audience.
Investing in Long-Term Relationships
While direct mail consistently performs well in the short term, it’s important to consider the long-term promise it holds. When you follow up on your initial campaigns with consistent communication via additional campaigns, you pave the way for long-term relationships to form between your customers and your brand—especially when each of your campaigns are strategically built on the results of the campaigns that came before them.
Regular and well-timed campaigns provide your audience with a reminder of your brand and its value to them. A one-off mail piece would still have benefits for your brand. But when you design your campaigns in such a way that each mail piece is an interconnected segment of a larger marketing strategy, with each mailing contributing to the brand affinity that your customers have built up to that point, you further elevate the value of your brand and start tapping into the power of direct mail.
Cultivating Loyalty for Your Brand
Real relationship building takes time, but it’s always worth the effort. From the beginning of your communication with your audience, make sure you have a compelling enough offering to garner interest that will lead to sales—enough sales to justify continuing to play the long game, too. Continue to invest in this new relationship between you and your customer—between your customer and your brand. When you show that you’re committing to a relationship with your customers—by staying present in their lives through consistent, quality communication—you start to develop enduring relationships that translate into loyalty and advocacy for your brand.
Some companies will send out a campaign just to hit some metrics, and then they pull back once they’ve hit their numbers, and they may have won customers and some short-term reputation. But loyalty—the kind that can sustain your brand for decades—is built on intention, commitment, and effort. It’s a long-term approach with long-term results.
Build the Brand Your Business Deserves
Just like any other marketing channel, direct mail doesn’t have the same power if it isn’t done well. If you want your campaign to live up to its full potential, it has to be backed by data, strategically executed, and thoughtfully analyzed once you start receiving responses. When you factor in everything that goes into building a campaign—market research, segmentation, list acquisition, messaging, design, A/B testing, analysis—direct mail is a huge undertaking. That’s why, if you’re ready to utilize the full advantages of mail to cultivate loyalty and trust for your brand, we’d recommend enlisting the help of a company that specializes in strategic direct mail.
From designing eye-catching materials to targeting the right audience, direct mail professionals know how to deliver solutions that drive measurable results. Their expertise ensures your campaign runs smoothly at every step of the way so that you end up with a final product that aligns with your brand identity while boosting your visibility, customer engagement, and overall traffic.
Leave It to the Experts at Salt Lake Mailing & Printing
At Salt Lake Mailing & Printing, we’ve been helping businesses reach their target audience for over 40 years. We specialize in putting together high-quality direct mail campaigns that deliver real results for our clients. If you need results, don’t miss out on this opportunity to build strong brand loyalty and trust with your audience. Contact us today to get started on your direct mail campaign!
