Direct mail automation gives brands and marketers innovative tools to streamline direct mail through CRM integration and creatively implement customer data into personalized direct mail campaigns. It removes human error and provides cost savings at every campaign stage.

What is Direct Mail Automation?

Direct mail automation amplifies one of the best marketing channels, direct mail, by increasing efficiency, cost savings, and the ability of brands and marketers to track and measure results. It gives businesses tools for greater personalization, engaging design elements in each mailer, and the same analytics capabilities they enjoy with digital channels.

Whereas traditional direct mail took a more shotgun approach to spreading brand awareness and sales promotions across a community, direct mail automation allows for pinpointed, personalized communications that resonate individually. It adds sensory and tactile elements that intensify the messaging and add new interactive elements to the experience.

The ability to integrate direct mail platforms with CRMs and use the customer data collected across digital channels to segment audiences based on shared characteristics and qualities makes automated direct mail so impactful. Businesses can easily set triggers for sending direct mailers based on customer behavior and scale mailing campaigns easily with variable data printing (VDP) and print-on-demand innovations. This gives companies flexible and adaptable automated direct mail solutions to boost sales and customer satisfaction.

Why Direct Mail Is So Effective

Direct mail has endured for the simple fact that it works. There’s something about receiving an attractively designed mailer, that causes a recipient to check out both sides of a postcard or open an envelope. It has traditionally delivered higher response rates than email because direct mail faces less competition for getting noticed. Tactics such as making the mailer larger than the other daily mail or containing interactive elements like gamification or pop-up designs make them memorable.

These touches can be further enhanced with digital content and marketing strategies using QR codes and other print-embedded links. These can transport recipients to landing pages or e-commerce sites to take advantage of special offers, enter promotional codes, or return to abandoned shopping carts to complete purchases. This digital integration also allows brands and marketers to track customers at different stages of the direct mail campaign, which had previously been a limitation with traditional direct mail.

How Direct Mail Automation Works

Direct mail automation gives marketers the tools to send focused print messaging to prospects and customers in various sizes, finishes (glossy, satin, uncoated, etc.), and colors, at practically every touchpoint in their experience with the brand. Using data gathered over digital and other channels from the relationship, direct mail streamlines the entire process, from ensuring the mailer is addressed and formatted correctly to notification of proper delivery. In between, automated direct mail platforms like DMM can alter mailer templates for more personalized photos or text, or customize promotions based on milestones, location, or language.

5 Benefits of Direct Mail Automation

Audience Targeting & Data Segmentation

Direct mail automation allows you to dial into the most pertinent characteristics about your customers so that every mailer delivers something of value to your recipient based on their behavior and your relationship with them. Powering direct mail with your CRM system lets you segment your prospects and customers by demographics, loyalty program membership, purchases made, or periods of inactivity, making the contact more meaningful and memorable.

Then, based on conditions you establish, mailer content and design are dynamically personalized based on an action taken, like making a purchase. Or choose an action not taken, such as leaving an abandoned shopping cart before completing an online transaction. When your CRM system is integrated with your direct mail campaigns, this automated response occurs without the need for any human intervention and completes the process efficiently. That saves you a lot of time!

Personalization & Variable Data Printing

Variable data printing (VDP) and print-on-demand innovation make it possible to style every mailer differently with customized messaging, images, and offers to create a great experience and make the recipient feel noticed and appreciated. Recipients show higher response rates with direct mail than with digital channels, and it’s been established that personalized direct mail has higher response rates than non-personalized mail.

VDP lets your brand increase the relevancy of every mailer and helps the message resonate with the recipients’ interests and lifestyle. Seeing their name on a direct mail piece immediately establishes an emotional connection, which is reinforced by the exclusivity of the outreach. This integration creates a seamless process from design to send and provides personalization and customization with every mailer, all without human intervention. All of this means, you can scale campaigns easily and adapt quickly to changing consumer tastes and marketplace conditions.

Integration with Marketing Tech Stack

When your direct mail automation platform integrates effortlessly with marketing and CRM systems such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, and others, you can further optimize customer data by integrating automated direct mail into multi-channel campaigns. This integration capability increases the effectiveness of each channel. It lets you lead the recipient to tailored landing pages and set triggers to send direct mail based on social media or website visits.

Integrating automated direct mail with your CRM system lets you react to your customers’ behavior and be proactive by connecting them with content and promotions that keep the relationship going. Direct mail is a tangible representation of your brand and links to other channels that your customers trust, where you can complete transactions and continue to gather customer data.

Automated Workflow Setup

Direct Mail Manager’s API provides seamless data exchange into existing technology and workflows for flexible, scalable, and accurate print-related processes and reliable reporting.

When your direct mailer has meaning and arrives in your customers’ mailbox based on an event or action taken by your audience, it significantly impacts the recipient more than a randomly received mailer. It builds brand recognition and brand relationships to boost responses and sales.

Tracking, Analytics & Optimization

With our automated dashboard, your campaign runs without a hitch while you focus on strategy. Use the platform’s tools to track and measure results, and continue to improve your multi-channel marketing strategy at every step.

On one dashboard, you can monitor real-time mail delivery or engagements through QR codes and other interactive print links to assess campaign performance. It’s easy to adjust based on A/B testing that determines what content or design best impacts your audience. You gain actionable insights that help you refine strategies, manage marketing budgets, and dedicate spending where you’ll see the best ROI and conversion rates.

Types of Automated Direct Mail Campaigns

Your business can incorporate several automated direct mail campaigns into your marketing strategies that can be performed independently or concurrently, including:

• Sending direct mail pieces based on your customers’ actions they’ve taken with your business. These can include a thank you, upsell, or cross-sell offer after a purchase; a postcard reminder of an abandoned cart waiting to be emptied; congratulations based on a milestone such as an anniversary of the first purchase; a re-engagement mailer sent to lapsed customers; or a notice of an impending subscription expiration.
• Drip campaigns can be sent over time to nurture leads and to guide customers throughout the buying journey, engaging them at essential moments with relevant and valuable mailers. One example of a drip campaign is a welcome campaign that introduces new customers to products or invites them to sign up for loyalty programs. Drip campaigns can also move prospects to make purchases or entice re-engagement with special offers.
• On-demand mailings optimize the capabilities of VDP and print-on-demand innovations to respond to specific requests or real-time events. These can include actions spurred online, such as time spent on a website browsing a product, the completion of a purchase, customer onboarding, birthdays or anniversaries, or life events like moving into a new home. These mailings are particularly effective due to their timeliness and relevance.

Best Practices for Successful Direct Mail Automation

In many ways, a successful direct mail automation campaign is like all successful marketing campaigns in that it should begin with a thorough understanding of your customers. That way, you know that you’re delivering something important, essential, and providing an offer that they can and will use. You should also set clear and measurable expectations for the campaign and establish key performance indicators (KPIs) that can guide your actions once the campaign is up and running.

Best automated direct mail practices include:

• Designing eye-catching mail pieces and using templates that can be optimized with VDP technologies. Consider the mailer’s tactile nature when selecting paper stock, finishes, and when adding interactive features.
• Ensuring that the call-to-action (CTA) on the mailer stands out and is easy to identify and understand. This is, after all, the most crucial aspect of the mailer, and you want to make it easy for the recipient to understand the message.
• Choosing the best mail format (postcards, letters, brochures, dimensional mailers) can help your mailer stand out and make a memorable impression. Oversized postcards, mailers that transition into memorable popups, or envelopes with elegant textures or appealing colors get noticed.
• Complying with privacy laws and mailing regulations demonstrates a respect for the privacy and security of your customers’ data. It helps you avoid potentially damaging fines or eroded customer trust. You also ensure that your direct mailers are deliverable and processed efficiently.
• Measuring ROI and Optimizing Performance. Using elements like QR codes, personalized URLs, unique phone numbers, and customized promo codes that can be embedded into the mailer design has enabled precise engagement results and a better understanding of recipients’ actions.
  Whether delivery rates, response rates, conversion rates, or the cost per acquisition (CPA) are the key metrics used to assess campaign success, an automated direct mail platform like Direct Mail Manager lets you track issues in real time.
  In addition, automated direct mail platforms’ ability to A/B (split) test the offer, headline, design layout, format, images, or calls-to-action helps determine approaches to drive higher engagement. You can make decisions based on actionable data that can be analyzed continually to improve the mailer’s impact and influence with minimal alterations to the overall look and feel.

Getting Started with Direct Mail Automation

All in all, a successful automated direct mail campaign begins with clear objectives, such as lead generation or customer reactivation, a direct mail automation platform that integrates with your CRM system. This alluring and memorable mailer design template allows for variable data printing to insert effective personalization and embedded tracking codes, as well as data-segmented audiences based on a thorough understanding of customer behavior. From that point on, crafting compelling messaging and calls-to-action that cause the recipient to act, then setting the triggers that will cause the mailer to be sent and monitoring the campaign through a single dashboard.

Checklist to Launch Your First Direct Mail Campaign with Automation

• Define campaign goals and KPIs
• Plan campaign budget, timing, and frequency
• Design Mailer Template
• Get connected to your direct mail platform
• Identify and segment the target audience
• Integrate CRM and direct mail platform
• Set up automation workflows and direct mail triggers
• Test for print quality and deliverability
• Launch campaign and monitor performance with A/B testing
• Analyze results, adjust, and repeat for success

Ready to get started? Reach out to our team today, and we can help you every step of the way.