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Combine Direct Mail With Social Web Marketing

June 30, 2010 by Frank Goley, Business Consultant

Direct Mail is now often seen as yesterday’s marketing as compared to email marketing and other marketing technology replacements. Also direct mail is seen as an expensive proposition since you need to mail out a lot of pieces to get a decent response. However, there are web marketing tools and platforms to combine with direct mail which make it much more cost effective on a per customer acquisition standpoint, as well as, increase the response rate.

Think about putting a web sales landing page URL on the direct mail piece which offers a Free product or service, or provides a great discount. Give each mail piece its individual code that the responder has to enter on the web page. This gives you an excellent way to track results and stay in contact with individual respondents.

Now here is how to take it up a notch. Put a Social Networking element in the web sales page by offering an incentive for the respondent to spread the good news through their Twitter, Facebook, My Space and other social networks. Maybe a double discount or two items for free will be a big enough incentive. Make sure to make it easy for the respondent to spread the viral social offer by putting automatic links to all the social networks.

Be sure to offer the social network recipients similar offers of free stuff or discounts so they continue to spread the great marketing offer to their friends and associates. Be sure to keep the code in place so you can track how deep one respondent can send your marketing message virally on the social networks. Also always ask for a name and email so all the respondents and their friends can ne re-marketed to in the future and sent a newsletter, etc.

What is the potential here? It is exponential. Say you send 1,000 direct mail pieces. You can leverage that to upwards of 3 times the people through social networking. That is 3,000 people for 1,000 mailers! You will also see your response rate go from the typical direct mail range of .5% – 2%, to pushing 20% – 30%. Wow! And your marketing cost is still pretty much the same provided you can handle the web marketing side in-house. That doesn’t count all the email addresses you have mined for future marketing, which in this scenario could amount to 500 – 600 email addresses!

Here’s an idea…If you market to consumers. Target prospect rich neighborhoods by putting the same offer as a Stick Um on a pizza delivery box. This way you get around the clutter of the mail and all the junk mail competition and go straight on the refrigerator of your target market. Throw in the social web viral marketing platform, and you have a killer, cost effective marketing campaign.

Think about all the possibilities!

Resource: Here are some Marketing Articles I have written which may be helpful for you…

Cost Effective Marketing Strategies (has a section on Direct Mail)

Profitable Online Marketing Methods and Strategies

Resource: Here is a Video on Understanding Social Media…


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Posted in Business Internet Strategies, Business Marketing Strategies.

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