Double Your Impact: 5 Proven Ways to Fuse Direct Mail & Email

Should you choose direct mail or email when planning your next marketing campaign? Sometimes, the answer is: “Use both!” The best marketing often happens when you use direct mail and email together. Here are five ways to combine the two channels and achieve great results.

1. No email address? No problem. Businesses often send emails to their customers and prospects first, but what happens when you don’t have an email address or the email address has changed? Use direct mail. Direct mail doesn’t require opt-in, so think of these campaigns as giant fishing nets. “Fish” for potential subscribers, catch them and then encourage them to opt into future email communications.

2. Use print for opt-outs. People who love your brand may still unsubscribe from your email list. Email is a great channel, but sometimes people get overwhelmed by flooded inboxes. Identify those who have unsubscribed, then send them a beautiful direct mail piece saying you miss them and offer them an incentive to come back.

3. Nudge email non-responders. If you use direct mail for every promotion, it can eat up the marketing budget. Start with an email to gather the low-hanging fruit, then send postcards to non-responders.

4. Create anticipation. Use email to get people excited about what’s coming in the mailbox. Blast your email a day or two before the mailer hits. Send teasers, hints, and reasons not to miss out. When your mailer arrives, recipients will be excited to see its contents.

5. Maximize USPS Informed Delivery. Every piece of mail that goes through the U.S. postal system is scanned. USPS Informed Delivery is a free service that takes those scans and delivers them to subscribers’ inboxes by email every morning. This lets subscribers know what’s arriving in their mailboxes “soon” (usually that day). Businesses like yours can add free hyperlinks and “representative images” so recipients can respond to your promotion immediately, even before the postal mail arrives.

Hopefully, these five examples will inspire you to think about how your direct mail and email can work together to further your marketing goals. While both channels can be highly effective standing alone, they can pack an even more powerful punch with an integrated strategy.