The integration of your Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) system into direct mail strategies strengthens both for your business. Enhance the data your business has collected about your customers and start using it for targeted, personalized mailing pieces with these integration tips.

Automate the decisions you need to make, such as when to send your direct mail, who to send it to, and how to create direct mail that contains messaging and calls to action that resonate with your customer with workflows that trigger event-based direct mail. These can all become automated direct mail functions with innovative print technologies like variable data printing and automated workflows with your CRM.

Direct mail has traditionally been one of the most effective ways to engage with customers delivering valuable offers directly to their doors. Your CRM system makes it even more effective with the ability to gather and evaluate data during the campaign to improve results and adapt and test text, graphics, photos, and promotions based on actionable analytics. Integrating your CRM and creating direct mail workflows provides your business with the ability to automate, segment, and track direct mail just like you can during email and digital marketing campaigns.

Jump to a Section:

• 5 Steps to Sync Customer Data for Direct Mail Automation
  • Step 1: Choose the Right CRM System & Direct Mail Automation Platform
  • Step 2: Segment Your Audience for Targeted Campaigns
  • Step 3: Automate Trigger-Based Direct Mail
  • Step 4: Ensure Data Accuracy with Address Verification
  • Step 5: Measure Performance & Optimize Campaigns
• Four Key Metrics With CRM-Powered Direct Mail

Benefits of CRM-powered Direct Mail

• Personalized Messaging Based on Customer Data:
  Ordinary direct mail campaigns are energized when powered by the customer data available in your CRM system. You can use your knowledge of purchase histories, product preferences, demographic factors, and where they are in the buying cycle to deliver the right message into their homes with mailers created specifically for them with offers that they’ll enjoy.
• Automated Triggers for real-time engagement:
  Automated CRM-powered direct mail takes the guesswork out of when and what type of direct mailer to send to your customer. Automation lets you set the event that triggers the sending of a piece, whether it’s a post-purchase thank-you with a discount for complimentary items, a physical reminder of an abandoned shopping cart, to celebrate a milestone, or it’s sent to entice them to re-engage with your business.
• More Accurate Targeting and Higher ROI:
  CRM-powered direct mail lets you drill down and really get to know your customer or prospect so that every piece you mail reaches exactly who you want, when you want, with the offer you know they’ll find hard to resist. Working with a professional direct mail partner like Direct Mail Manager puts variable data printing and other innovative technologies at your command and eliminates wasteful spending on printing and postage.
• Multi-Channel Marketing Synchronization:
  When your CRM-powered direct mail campaign is integrated into a multi-channel marketing strategy with a data-driven approach, you dramatically boost the effectiveness of both digital and physical engagements. You can create seamless transitions between digital and print, either by including QR codes or PURLs on printed matter or following up mailers with digital ads or emails. A cohesive marketing strategy also lets you collect actionable customer data from every source to increase conversions.
• Create Look-Alike Audiences:
  You can use the information you have on hand about your current customers to attract new ones who act and make purchase decisions just like customers you already know.  CRM-powered direct mail lets you build more complete buyer personas as you gain more valuable data with every engagement. When purchasing direct mail lists, this information helps you pinpoint the most important customer characteristics to focus your decisions.
• Test, Track, and Analyze:
  You can easily track the effectiveness of your CRM-powered direct mail campaigns with sophisticated and automated A/B tests to continually refine components of your mailer. You can conduct multivariate tests by evaluating more than one element of the piece and can embed QR codes, PURLs, or Intelligent Mail Barcodes (IMB)s, to measure engagements, website visits, or USPS delivery status. You should also be able to map your customers’ journey based on engagements on multiple channels initiated with direct mail.
• Enhanced Efficiencies with Automation and AI:
  Automation allows for faster pre-sorts and real-time address verification. AI optimizes the data on hand to identify the best recipients and provide predictive modeling advantages to accurately match the message to the customer. AI can also provide real-time tracking and identify at-risk customers before they’re lost forever.
• Tangible Use of Data:
  Direct mail cuts through the digital noise engulfing consumers today, and CRM-powered direct mail provides customers with stronger emotional ties due to the neurological impact of holding a direct mail piece that’s created from quality materials. Direct mail also stays around the house longer, is remembered longer than digital ads alone, and can be hyper-targeted using the customer data in the CRM system to more fully resonate with the needs and lifestyle of the customer.

5 Steps to Sync Customer Data for Direct Mail Automation

Step 1: Choose the Right CRM System & Direct Mail Automation Platform

Since your CRM is essentially a database for the customer information of your choosing, you can determine what additional functions will make it a more powerful tool when integrated with direct mail. Key features to look for in a robust and efficient CRM that seamlessly connect with direct mail automation platforms include:

• Open API access that enables a real-time exchange and utilization of data and lets you set the triggers specific to your buyer’s persona and the stage of your customer relationship. These can be event based, prompted in response to purchases, motivations to empty online shopping carts, or set to loyal customers to celebrate milestones.
• Advanced segmentation tools that allow you to collect and section your customers into groupings that best reflect their habits, tastes, demographics, or purchase history. The system should be able to stay current in real time with customer engagements and keep data relevant. This ensures the direct mail piece always provides value for your customers. 
• Workflow automation that enables you to set up direct mail campaigns that go off without a hitch and run smoothly with minimal human input. This lets you focus on optimizing the message and ways to increase conversions while the relationship with your customer grows with scheduled birthday greetings, follow-ups to purchases, or personalized promotions automatically. 
• CRM integration with Variable Data Printing (VDP) technology that gives you the ability to optimize customer data by crafting personalized messaging that makes every direct mail piece uniquely important to the customer. VDP allows you to use the data in your CRM system to generate more powerful, meaningful calls-to-action in every mailer.
• Integration with analytic and tracking tools that lets you measure delivery rates, response rates, conversions, and ROI. This is especially important for improving direct mail campaigns with A/B testing as a standard practice to compare the effectiveness of messaging, colors, photos, and other mailer components. 
• Seamless multi-channel marketing that enhances the entire customer experience as you optimize your customer data by coordinating direct mail and digital engagement. Technologies like QR codes and A/R allow you to build more holistic marketing campaigns across the channels your customers trust and use to gather information and make purchases.

CRMs with Integration Capabilities

There are several popular CRMs with the capabilities to integrate with direct mail platforms like DMM (Direct Mail Manager) or similar direct mail platforms.

• Sales Force – provides advanced segmentation, workflow automation and strong support for API customization.
• HubSpot – has robust personalization tools that sync with dynamic, real-time data and streamlined multi-channel workflows.
• Zoho  – allows for seamless integration with direct mail platforms and provides tools to trigger and track direct mail easily.

Step 2: Segment Your Audience for Targeted Campaigns

CRM-powered direct mail platforms give you opportunities to identify the qualities in your customers that define their relationship with you and build upon them. There are several ways to segment your audience:

• Demographic segmentation: targets customers by age, gender, education, household income and size. 
• Behavioral segmentation: tracks purchase history, website activity, and other engagements with your brand.
• Geographic segmentation: gives you the ability to create direct mail pieces tailored to the characteristics of regional or local communities.
• Psychographic segmentation: provides opportunities to build direct mail campaigns focused on customer lifestyles and values.

Step 3: Automate Trigger-Based Direct Mail

CRM-powered direct mail empowers your business to automatically send direct mail to consumers without any human intervention that are based on important events in your relationship with your customer. When integrated with VDP and digital print technology, setting automatic triggers lets you add levels of personalization that are accurate and meaningful to the customer.

This provides immense benefits to brands all across the board. These include:

• Cost savings with the elimination of redundant tasks performed by staff
• Flexibility to print as many or as few direct mail pieces as needed
• Increased response rates and boosts in conversion due to personalization and timing

You can also combine trigger-based direct mail coordinated with digital and social media channels for multichannel workflows that deliver even better results. For instance, when integrated with email, the direct mail piece can reinforce notifications sent to customers and help the message stand out in the inbox. When used with social media messaging, the mailer can lead to increased open rates and support calls to action. Digital ads can be sent as follow ups to direct mail and display products featured in the piece.

Step 4: Ensure Data Accuracy with Address Verification

Mailing address validation is vitally important to help businesses deliver every mailing piece to exactly the person it’s intended for, and CRM-powered direct mail address verification saves brands money, increases response rates, and improves the customer experience by minimizing delivery errors.

CRM systems that integrate with direct mail platforms offering address verification can validate addresses at the point of entry, whether it’s a customer sharing information on-line or manually entered from a contest sheet by customer service. They cross-reference addresses using authoritative databases that ensure that the individual does exist and that the address info is formatted correctly in the database and standardized according to postal regulations. 

CRM systems flag errors and even auto-complete addresses before a mailing goes out and deletes incorrect entries. On-going list hygiene and regularly scheduled cleanings remove duplicates and prevent multiple mailings to one household. The process streamlines data management and provides regulatory compliance when privacy is also a concern.

Step 5: Measure Performance & Optimize Campaigns

CRM-powered direct mail platforms let you see how well your direct mail campaign is working and where you can make adjustments to create even better results in subsequent campaigns. You gain insights into the performance of your campaign with real-time data reporting on one dashboard and gain valuable knowledge about your customers’ preferences and behaviors and determine how best to motivate a response. The end result is a more efficient allocation of resources and distribution of revenue.

Four Key Metrics With CRM-Powered Direct Mail

Campaign Summary

CRM-powered direct mail print APIs provide direct mail and multi-channel campaign reporting capabilities to gain detailed analysis of your customer and segmentation strategies. You get a fuller understanding of your customers so that subsequent campaigns deliver even better results. 

Engagement Insights with QR codes, QR codes, PURLs, and Personalized Tracking Links 

QR codes, PURLs, and other personalized tracking links provide opportunities to measure open rates, track conversion rates, your cost per acquisition (CPA), and ROI. Through the links on the printed mailer, you can monitor delivery status and determine recipients’ online activity and behavior through scans and conversions that can be attributed to the direct mailer. 

Delivery Speed and Accuracy

CRM-powered direct mail platforms can provide real-time updates on mail status, including when accepted by USPS, arrival at local postal office, when it goes out for delivery, and if the mailer is being returned or rerouted due to address issues. This information is often helpful when your direct mail campaign is coordinated with digital or social media marketing channels and timely delivery is of the essence. Closed-loop reporting and attrition lets you track which recipients received what you sent and their subsequent actions once they did.

Format Testing

Better decision making is made possible when CRM-powered direct mail platforms take your customer segmentation to the next level by splitting your group further in two and sending different versions of the same mailer to each. This A/B testing feature lets you compare the performances of the two and see what works best. With this understanding, you can continue to optimize and refine the mailer based upon precisely attributed responses to elements in the mailer.

Get Started Today!

Your CRM is an invaluable tool for managing relationships with your customers but it’s possible that your company is underutilizing the benefits that you can realize by integrating a direct mail platform into the system. Doing so can convert the diverse types and large amounts of data you have available into a tangible and personal outreach to your customer that reinforces your brand and forges a deeper connection with them. 

CRM-powered direct mail lets you add alluring elements of personalization with automated processes that increase the speed and accuracy of every mailer you send. It allows you to tailor every message directed to specific segments of customers based on purchasing history, location, and other factors. This leads to lower print and postage costs and lets you track and measure results to increase subsequent results.

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