Streamowrks Blog
Modern growth marketing requires companies to adopt a multi-channel marketing approach.
Even in the era of digital marketing, a Marketing Sherpa study found that 76% of customers trust traditional offline advertising channels.
That is why building trust with direct mail marketing is still a reliable strategy. However, you can further complement your direct mail campaigns using digital marketing channels like social media.
It may seem like social media marketing and direct mail have different objectives—however, both channels aren’t mutually exclusive and can help improve results together.
In this article, we’ll go over five ways you can utilize social media marketing to complement your direct mail campaigns.
5 Ways Social Media Marketing Can Boost Direct Mail Efforts
When you run social media-backed direct mail campaigns, you take advantage of the direct emotional appeal of direct mail, supporting it with the targeting and high-engagement potential of social media.
Let’s say you run an automotive repair shop service. If you run posts about your mobile mechanic business on your social media channels, it will help engage customers. That engagement will improve the appeal of receiving direct mail from your business and improve recall.
Direct mail boosts digital marketing efforts by hitting certain customer touchpoints that digital misses. Similarly, social media marketing helps develop broad-scope awareness, thus improving the success rate of direct mail campaigns.
Furthermore, here are five ways to utilize social media marketing in direct mail campaigns:
• Use social media to pretest mail campaigns.
• Target low-traffic industries more efficiently.
• Generate awareness and buzz for direct mail offers.
• Encourage social media sharing in your mail efforts.
• Utilize user-generated content and online reviews in mail content.
Keep in mind that these tactics help both your marketing channels.
Use Social Media to Pretest Mail Campaigns
It’s easy to do A/B testing for digital marketing campaigns— however, any sort of testing in direct mail campaigns can drain considerable time and resources.
In this case, social media marketing can help you pretest direct mail campaigns, allowing you to properly optimize them before launch.
Let’s say your mail is supposed to have a catchy CTA and you have two good options. Here’s what you can do:
• Choose two target audiences.
• Run a small social media campaign with both audiences. Make sure the campaign is similar in all aspects, except the CTA.
• Check which campaign does better and choose that CTA for your mail.
Similar to the example above, you can test mail copy, offers, and more on your social media channels.
Target Low-Traffic Industries More Efficiently
When you’re working in a low-traffic industry, marketing efforts need to be more targeted. More importantly, they need to have higher conversion rates to make them worth it.
Let’s say you provide automotive salvaging services in Philadelphia. You’re looking to expand your reach. You can run a direct mail campaign marketing Philadelphia salvage yards.
However, since this is a relatively low-traffic industry, you’ll have to build some awareness first. Local social media marketing efforts can allow you to build that awareness.
If you run targeted ads with good copy and content, you can generate not only awareness but also word of mouth.
Once that’s done, you can begin your direct mail campaign, offering your services.
If you can successfully manage to keep your brand name on your target audiences’ minds, your direct mail campaigns will yield better results.
Generate Awareness and Buzz for Direct Mail Offers
This point ties to the previous one but with a different objective.
Your mail is likely to include an offer, promotion, or discount. To ensure your customers are excited about those offers, you can generate buzz and awareness online.
Creating hype for upcoming offers is a great way to ensure customers take advantage of them.
Let’s say you provide mechanical services and are looking to provide discounts on oil changes. If you start a direct mail campaign, you’ll most likely get customers that only need oil changes during that time.
However, if you start a social media campaign and run some ads that mention next month’s oil change discount, you’ll receive a greater turnout. People who were looking to go for an oil change will wait for your discount to come around.
Others who were delaying an oil change will take advantage of the discount and convince others around them to do so too.
Therefore, you can use social media to spread the news about potential offers for better turnouts.
To accurately measure the success of this tactic, you can do a small test. Mail offers only to one area and utilizes social media campaign-backed mails in another. Then, compare the results of the direct mail campaign in each area to determine what’s more successful.
Encourage Social Media Sharing in Your Mail Efforts
Your direct mail needs to include your social media icons and handles. The idea is to get people to your social media profiles.
However, you can do a lot more with this. You can encourage social media shares by including conditional offers.
For example, if you’re offering a 10% discount on your services, you can add an additional offer to bump that discount to 15% if the customer shares your offer on their social media profiles.
As a result, you’ll have an exponentially larger impression volume with each customer that decides to take advantage of the conditional offer.
This can help you reach a much wider audience online using a simple direct mail campaign.
Utilize User-Generated Content and Online Reviews in Mail Content
Customer reviews and client testimonials are powerful tools that can help build trust. Good reviews can be the final deciding factor for customers.
It’s fairly easy for customers to leave reviews on social media platforms. You’ll find plenty of direct reviews on platforms like Facebook.
However, you can also find praise for your services online. For example, if someone Tweets positively about your business, you can use that to your advantage.
Incorporate these reviews and comments in your mail to build credibility. It helps to reserve a small section for these reviews, relevant to the campaign you’re running.
Furthermore, you’ll find tons of user-generated content on social media. It can be anything from memes to other sorts of content that can help your image.
You can utilize that content in your mail (with permission, of course). It will help potential customers get an idea of what existing customers think of your business.
Final Thoughts
Picking the right marketing channels for your business can be tricky. However, the secret is to develop omnichannel marketing strategies that complement each other.
Using direct mail campaigns to target local audiences works because of the emotional appeal. However, you can always improve that appeal and its reach using social media marketing.
In the end, you’ll see a better return on investment on your efforts, along with better conversion rates and brand retention.
Looking for more ways that you can improve your digital marketing strategy? Sign up for our FREE Education Email Series on Digital Marketing and receive monthly emails on ways to improve upon your existing marketing efforts.
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Ellie is a Digital Marketing Specialist and expert writer for Gym Rescue with several years of experience working in social media, direct mail, and gym marketing.
