Direct Mail Marketing Automation
Why Use Direct Mail Automation?
The efficacy of direct mail marketing is the reason why 63 percent of brands continue to invest in this strategy. Whether it is a letter or postcard marketing, direct mail is a proven way to establish strong relationships with prospects and existing customers. Apart from delivering an impressive ROI, direct mail cuts through the digital clutter.
While the material costs of direct mail are justified, the time investment may not be. Manually designing a direct mail campaign is cumbersome and can take your team's focus away from core business tasks. If you are looking to eliminate manual processes in your direct mail marketing, automation may be the solution you need.
TIP: You may also want to simply consider all the benefits and what to look for when outsourcing your direct mail to a bulk mailhouse service provider.
What Is Direct Mail Automation?
Direct mail automation refers to software that takes over the process of sending direct mail materials such as postcards, letters, catalogs, or newsletters. Marketers frequently use these tools to track events and triggers that enable the creation of direct mail.
The software also personalizes the direct mail and tracks the results. The software monitors individual customer data such as shopping history, online behavior, or cart abandonment to print catalogs or postcards through a digital press.
These pieces can be created based on multiple customer behavior 'triggers' or sent to a targeted list of customers based on demographic criteria. This can include age, location, pets, home, and so on.
Send Targeted Direct Mail
For instance, a real estate agent can send postcards to people within a certain radius when a home is vacant. Or a grocery store can send a catalog of products based on the customers' additions to their cart 
on the e-commerce store.
Direct mail automation is a type of Software as a Service (SaaS) tool and features:
1.) Cloud-based software
2.) Marketing Automation Integration
3.) Letter or postcard editing tools
4.) Personalization tools
5.)Triggered direct mail
Send Corporate Gifts
Marketers are also leveraging direct mail automation to send corporate gifts, plants, handwritten notes, baked treats, wine, and other freebies. Direct mail automation can be used, for instance, to send a conference kit that includes branded pen, notebook, mints, conference schedule, and so on. This makes direct mail marketing campaigns very effective in onboarding B2B (business to business) clients, lead generation, customer retention, and sales conversion.
Omnichannel Marketing
Many brands today combine offline and online marketing methods to get the best results. If your brand has an e-commerce store, for instance, you can leverage direct mail automation to gather data on your customers' purchase history and cart abandonment. This data can be used to automate the creation of a personalized postcard with offers on the products the prospects have shown interest in.
If you include QR codes, redemption codes, or VR technology in your direct mail materials, you can also track the response rates for your campaign. Direct mail automation also allows you to scale up your campaign when your business is growing by streamlining the design and printing of direct mail materials.
Combining direct mail automation with an accurate and updated mailing list is the perfect way to achieve your marketing objectives.
