Even in today’s digital age, direct mail marketing remains an effective way to promote your business. While it must be integrated with other marketing channels, it is still a critical part of the overall media mix. Tangible mail items offer an inherent benefit over e-mail messages—rather than just a simple click to delete, physical mail is something that can be picked up, looked at, and left on the counter for multiple impressions. In a July 2015 study by Canada Post in concert with True Impact Marketing, researchers split a sample of 270 participants into nine groups of 30 to test the impact of printed direct mail versus digital marketing techniques. Some of the key findings are as follows:

As marketers seek techniques to create effective direct mail, technologies like high-speed, full-color inkjet are creating opportunities to produce personalized and customized direct mail items that will truly capture consumers’ attention. At the 2016 Inkjet Summit (held April 18 to 20 in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida), Harte Hanks’ Rick Kegley discussed how to effectively leverage advanced digital printing capabilities. As Senior Vice President and General Manager of Harte Hanks, Kegley is uniquely positioned to share how a worldwide direct and targeted marketing company can quickly and economically deliver variable content. Kegley notes, “During effective campaigns, marketing service providers will continually work with customers to define and then refine their target audiences and messages for optimal response.”

According to Rick Kegley, data analysis fuels growth. He elaborates, “It identifies the things that motivate current customers to act while also pinpointing where and how to reach new ones. To be effective, though, the data needs to be cleansed, enriched, and translated into actionable insights that drive customers to click, call, buy, or otherwise act. You must work with the customer to capture their data, understand it, augment it with additional lists, and then apply it.” Kegley shared a simple example of a pet store direct marketing program to convey how data can be effectively leveraged and mined. The campaign started with client data that included customer names, addresses, locations, pet names, and pet types. The pet store created a photo database with images that matched customers’ pet types as well as a database of coupons with appropriate offers.