With Halloween in the rearview mirror and Thanksgiving just around the corner, marketers are skipping straight to Holiday promotions to boost end of year sales. If you have considered adding a little extra oomph to your marketing strategy, integrate direct mail into your multi-channel approach and break through the digital noise.
Direct mail is a marketing effort to deliver various promotional materials from holiday cards to unique and customized gifts. It’s a great way to acknowledge the loyalty of an existing customer or to seal a big deal, because hey, who doesn’t enjoy receiving something other than a bill or junk mail?
Not convinced?
According to research by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), direct mail achieves a 4.4% response rate, compared to 0.12% for email.
Now that you grasp the power of the direct mail channel, let’s walk through some simple steps to set up your very own direct mail program in Marketo.
Step 1: Create A Direct Mail Channel
Start by creating a new Direct Mail Channel in your Admin section. I’ll keep my example simple with Sent and Engaged Statuses because Marketo has limited capabilities to track direct mail initiatives out-of-the-box, whereas add-ons like Printing for Less can trigger the send of direct mail based on user behavior and track your send to a prospect or customer.
Step 2: Enable Personalized URLs (PURLs)
Your direct mail effort should include some sort of incentive to take your customer or prospect further down the funnel, like a complimentary consultation, how-to eBook, or an attractive discount. Whatever it may be, this experience should be personalized.
This is where PURLs come in handy. When you enable PURLs on a landing page you can automatically append a person’s Marketo Unique Code or Marketo Unique Name to it:
https://go.digitalpi.com/lp-name/maryrouzer.
Once a person follows the link, your landing page should present a unique, personalized experience through the magic of tokens:
“Mary Rouzer, Santa told me you have been good this year and deserve a spa day! Sign up for our weekly newsletter now for 20% of your next 1-hour massage.”
Steps to enable PURLs in your account and on your landing page are available in Marketo Docs.
Step 3: Build Your Direct Mail Program
It is time to build your Direct Mail Program to track success and manage alerts. Remember to record Period Costs!
1. Sent:
Smart List:
Smart List:
Flow:
2. Engaged:
Smart List:
Flow:
Now you are ready to work with your printing company — you can export a list with PURLs from your Program — and ship your direct mail packages.
Look out for part 2 coming next week with even more information about Direct mail and how to integrate it into your automated engagement strategy. And, join us on Nov 15th as we do a webinar with PFL all about corporate gifting and how to get ahead of the holidays!
