directmail

Have you heard about the new service offered by the USPS® called Informed Delivery? Believe it or not, over 20 million consumers have! That’s how many have enrolled as of February 2020, and the number is growing daily.

Informed Delivery provides residential consumers with digital previews of their mail before it arrives in their mailboxes. They can log-into their account 24/7 from their computer or mobile device to see what mail is due to arrive and when – or be prompted to do so with a daily email (which is generating a 70% open rate, according to the USPS).

This service has become increasingly popular during the coronavirus pandemic (as seen in the above chart illustrating the popularity of the search term “USPS Informed Delivery” over the past three years, relative to its peak popularity). With stay-at-home orders in place and many companies requiring remote work, consumers are spending more time at home now than ever before and are more attentive to their mail, giving your mail piece a greater chance of being noticed and acted upon. By using Informed Delivery, you can take the consumer’s experience a step further by integrating the campaign with their online account. 

So, what are the benefits to you, the marketer?

There are many. But first, let’s explain the Informed Delivery service a little more. Even if you don’t activate an Informed Delivery campaign, recipients of your mail (who have signed-up for Informed Delivery) see a digital preview of your mail piece. However, what they’ll usually see is a basic greyscale, scanned image generated by the USPS. If you activate an Informed Delivery campaign for your mailing, you can replace the scanned image with a much more colorful and compelling ‘representative image’, as well as an interactive ‘ride-along image’ and campaign URL that links recipients to your website or special landing page.

Now, let’s go back to the benefits:

• First, it provides an opportunity to increase brand impressions, without actually paying for them. The USPS doesn’t charge marketers to create Informed Delivery campaigns, which means you can generate multiple touchpoints from a single mail piece.
• Second, Informed Delivery allows your target audience to respond to your offer earlier – even if they’re thousands of miles away from their mailbox. Although nothing can replace the tactile value of hardcopy mail, the USPS is trying to adapt to consumers digitally-driven lives, integrating even their physical mail into their daily digital routine.
• Finally – and this is the holy grail of direct marketing – Informed Delivery can potentially create a lift in response, resulting in increased ROI (return-on-investment). It’s proven time and again that response rates go up when marketers integrate print and digital strategies. By incorporating an engaging digital element into your direct mail strategy, you can enhance the overall effectiveness of your campaign, while tracking open rates and click-throughs to get an early read on campaign performance.

With Informed Delivery, you create and control a visual experience that serves as a responsive touchpoint with your mail piece. In a digitally-driven world, supporting your print mail with digital assets in your campaign can truly make a difference. This helps add a sense of legitimacy due to you having a strong presence in multiple outlets, digital and physical; and also creates anticipation for the piece to arrive.

As a USPS Full-Service Certified Mail Service Provider and Business Alliance Partner, Hatteras can help you set-up an Informed Delivery campaign and answer any questions you have about postal discounts and eligible mail formats. This is such a critical time for direct mail marketing, and we are here to help your campaign be as impactful and successful as possible.

Digital advertising is still the go-to medium for many marketers because of its simplicity and wide-range of personalization it provides. But with the rise of email and social marketing efforts, many consumers have become numb to digital advertising, and have even taken measures to remove ads from their view.

According to the Data and Marketing Association (DMA), email marketing has a less than 1% response rate, making it one of the least effective advertising channels. So, after several years of relying on digital marketing, marketers are now trying to cut through the digital noise by incorporating direct mail into the marketing mix – all while matching the same level of personalization that digital can offer – and are seeing big results.

How personal can you really get with direct mail?

Here’s how you can use Dynamic Personalization in your next direct mail campaign.

Hatteras recently sent a personalized mailing to our clients, with each piece completely unique from the next, using dynamic personalization. Here’s how we did it:

• Photographs and graphic images are the elements noticed first by consumers since they are the easiest to absorb. So, having an image that truly connects with your customer is extremely important – but you can stand out even more by blending personalized information with relevant imagery.
• Our idea was to create a personalized keepsake using a tri-fold self-mailer, die cut into the shape of a license plate. Each license plate was personalized with the recipient’s last name, and matching to the state in their mailing address.

• Taking our idea one step further – and keeping within the car theme – we also incorporated multivariate designs onto an image of a Volkswagen Bus, uniquely customizing the bus in each mailer. These designs were produced from one larger image using a proprietary application that combines, scales, transposes and rotates the pattern to create limitless variations – giving each recipient their very own VW bus. Pretty cool, huh?

• Lastly, we wanted this mailer to connect on a one-to-one basis with our clients, so we incorporated other dynamic content, such as the recipient’s first name, state name, as well as contact information for their Hatteras Sales Representative in case they had any questions.

Hatteras produced thousands of mailers that were uniquely printed on one of our HP Indigo Digital Presses, die cut, and mailed, all under one roof. We couldn’t be more pleased with the tremendous response we’ve received from our clients. Only with the power of variable digital printing could this level of personalization be achieved.

Each year, the Data and Marketing Association (DMA) performs a response rate study comparing the success metrics for direct mail, email, paid search, internet display ads, and social media ads. While it’s worth digging-into this data to look at specific results, the proof is clear that direct mail outperforms any other marketing channel in terms of response rates by a long shot.

According to the DMA, direct mail has seen significant increases in response rates recently, rising from 3% in 2017 to 5% in 2018 for prospects lists, and from 5% in 2017 to 9% in 2018 for house lists – that’s an 80% year-over-year increase!

There are several reasons for the upward trend. For one, there’s generally a lower volume of direct mail in people’s mailboxes. According to the USPS, total mail volume has declined by nearly 30% since 2006. Less clutter means your chance of getting your marketing message noticed goes up.

But, most importantly to note – after several years of focusing on digital marketing, there’s an increase in the number of marketers incorporating direct mail into the marketing mix. Here’s five reasons why:

1. Better Digital Print Technology. Advancements in digital printing have opened-up a world of opportunities for marketers to be much more flexible and personalized with their communications.
2. Better Lists = More Targeted. No longer can you take a ‘spray and pray’ approach, sending out generic, untargeted pieces that are doomed to produce a low return on investment. Print marketers have become more strategic in their planning with regard to list quality and messaging, making sure to send mail to people who appreciate receiving it.
3. Better Data = More Tailored Offers. Better data and more sophisticated modeling has allowed marketers to send more tailored offers to both customers and prospects. Using the latest digital print technology, marketers have the ability to marry customer data (e.g. purchase history) with specific content (unique imagery or offers) to create a 100% uniquely personalized piece for each recipient.
4. Increased Consumer Trust. Digital channels are being viewed more and more with skepticism due to data breaches, spam, and elevated concerns of privacy. In fact, according to a survey conducted by Marketing Sherpa , 76% of consumers trust direct mail when they want to make a purchase decision.
5. Increased Memory Retention. A number of studies have shown that printed communication (compared to digital media) improves comprehension and increases memory recall. The stillness and physical nature of print, along with other inherent qualities, help to create a sensory experience that digital media can never achieve.

Direct Mail as a Part of the Customer Journey

There are undoubtedly more marketing channels available today than ever before. The digital world has created many, new ways brands can communicate with customers or prospects. But this shouldn’t cause marketers to discount the importance of one channel over another. Every channel can serve a purpose and be part of a strategic marketing plan that guides a consumer through a holistic brand experience.

The staggering results of DMA’s response rate study demonstrate how direct mail can provide a powerful driver of customer engagement, and be an effective complement to digital strategies. In fact, studies have shown that when direct mail and digital campaigns are paired together, response rates increase as much as 118%.

Drive Engagement, Build Trust, and Deliver Results

Whether used as a stand-alone strategy or to complement your online marketing, direct mail is a proven way to get advertising messages into consumers’ hands.

At Hatteras, it is our mission to deliver world-class print solutions. Our innovative technologies coupled with our state-of-the-art production equipment helps marketers leverage data and personalization, enabling them to communicate with their customers on a one-to-one basis supported by the tactile benefits of direct mail.

*Relevant data has been pulled from DMA’s 2018 Response Rate Report.