How Relevant Are Print Mailings in the Era of Online Marketing

1. Table of Contents:
2. What are print mailings and how are they used?
3. What goals do print mailings pursue along the customer journey?
4. How can you integrate print mailings into your digital marketing automation measures?
5. 6 Tips for a Successful Print Mailing
6. Best Practices in Print Mailing
7. What tools are suitable for creating print mailings?
8. Conclusion: The relevance of print mailings in the digital age

Online marketing is more than social media, sales funnels and personalized emails - even print mailings play a big role. What is that? Advertising by mail! This is back in full swing and can bring many benefits to your business. We'll reveal exactly what these are, how they affect your customer journey, and how you can succeed with them in this article.

Table of Contents:

1. What are print mailings and how are they used?
2. What goals do print mailings pursue along the customer journey?
3. How can you integrate print mailings into your digital marketing automation measures?
4. 6 tips for a successful print mailing
5. Best Practices in Print Mailing
   Example 1: Esprit
   Example 2: Obi
6. What tools are suitable for creating print mailings?
7. Conclusion: How relevant are print mailings in the digital age!

What are print mailings and how are they used?

Print mailings are advertising materials that are sent by mail. This can be postcards, self-mailers or letters. You can decide what your print mailing product should look like - there are many different formats, papers and individual designs that match your corporate identity.

Print mailings are used, for example, to:

• Congratulate customers on their birthday and strengthen customer loyalty
• Give discounts on occasions like Christmas or Black Friday
• Send individual product recommendations instead of mass advertising
• Measure and analyze interactions along the customer journey
• Drive referral programs.

What goals do print mailings pursue along the customer journey?

Just like with other marketing channels, you can also accompany your customers with print mailings on their customer journey and speak to them in a personalized way depending on the phase to satisfy their needs with the right offers.

Here are some goals of print mailings:

You stay in memory

You can pique the curiosity of new customers about your products by telling them more about your brand and vision. This creates an authentic and personal connection. Idea for a use case: Send an advertising letter with a personal message and welcome new customers. In this context, you can also talk about the mission of your company, such as sustainability or social engagement.

You offer personalized and irresistible offers

Send print mailings with personal recommendations, discount codes or exclusive deals that spark the interest of your clientele. This way, you can also reactivate inactive or departing customers. Idea for a use case: If someone hasn't bought anything in 6 months, you can write to them with "Do you miss us too?" and surprise them with a little voucher.

You stand out from the competition

Happy customers like to buy from you regularly and are characterized by the fact that they feel seen and understood by you at the right time. For this, they need to know what makes you unique and how you can support them. Idea for a use case: Use a print mailing to draw attention to your special and unique services that help your customers at the current time of their customer journey. Through automation, you can set the shipping period accordingly personalized.

You promote customer loyalty

If you use print mailings within the loyalty program, you can give your most loyal customers a very special VIP feeling, e.g. with exclusive discounts, family & friends actions or early access to new products. You can also expect that your most loyal customers are real fans of your brand and therefore recommend it – which leads to new customers. Idea for a use case: With a maxi postcard, you ask loyal customers to recommend your products. Offer the advertising person free shipping on the next order and the advertised person a discount coupon of 10% on the first order.

You see: Print mailings have much more potential, than you might have thought. In the next section, we'll tell you how your digital marketing strategy can benefit from it.

How can you integrate print mailings into your digital marketing automation measures?

The integration of print mailings into your online measures is done via your Marketing Cloud or your CDP. You can use the same data you use for your digital campaigns for the personalized control of print mailings. This way, you create a seamless connection between physical and digital interactions, creating a consistent and effective customer experience and can even achieve conversion rates between 4 and 10% on average!

Here are a few examples of what that could look like:

• Analytics and Reporting: You can measure KPIs not only with measures like email marketing, but also with print mailings. How? For example, with a QR code on a maxi postcard that directs customers to a landing page where they can redeem a voucher or something similar. You can then include this data in your overall marketing analyses.
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• Data protection and compliance: You always have to make sure that you act in compliance with the GDPR when it comes to online marketing. Print, however, is a so-called "opt-out channel." If you have a postal address of your customers, you can contact them by post even without prior consent.
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• Automated follow-ups: Did someone put products in the shopping cart of your online shop but didn't order? Then you can automatically send an advertising letter in the form of a personalized maxi postcard, which displays the same or similar products and encourages your customers to complete their purchase. Conversely, responses to print mailings can be used to later send information or discounts by email.
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• Response tracking: You can track responses to print mailings via QR codes or personalized voucher codes to measure and evaluate interactions along the customer journey. With this data, you can optimize both your print campaigns and your cross-channel marketing. Ideally, you increase the response rate of your customers.

This form of software-based and data-driven print marketing is called Programmatic Print. It can be part of your marketing automation strategy and be used as a performance channel. For this, however, you need usable customer data - and that's exactly why print is so attractive for CRM or customer marketing.

6 Tips for a Successful Print Mailing

1. Set clear and measurable goals
   ⁠If you don't know the way, you won't get to the goal. Do you want to increase your sales figures? Increase the second purchase rates? Or maybe strengthen customer loyalty? These and other questions form the basis for a successful campaign.
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2. Define your target group to personalize print products
   ⁠The better you know the likes and needs of your target group, the more specifically you can personalize the content of your print mailings. Advertising for Gen Z must necessarily differ from advertising for an older clientele. Therefore, you should, for example, adjust the design, the tone of voice (TOV) or individual product recommendations accordingly.
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3. Content is King – or Queen: It's all about the content!
   ⁠Of course, it's important that your design is creative and the print is high quality, especially if you want to address a design-savvy target group. In the end, however, you only hold your customers' attention with personalized and relevant content. In fact, you can achieve good results even on a simple DIN-A4 letter in a blank envelope!
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4. Link Print & Digital
   ⁠With cross-channel marketing, you can bridge the gap between online and offline channels, measure successes, and create additional engagement opportunities. For example, you could first send an email and if it is not opened, send the appropriate advertising by mail. Additionally, you can use QR codes on a postcard for direct access to special offers or a landing page.
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5. Integrate a clear call to action (CTA)
   ⁠What should your customers do as soon as they hold one of your print products in their hands? Buy something? Download the app? Or sign up for your newsletter? With concise and convincing wording, you get them to act immediately.
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6. Test and measure your print campaigns
   ⁠The best results come when you already have many existing customers and specifically integrate elements with which you can measure the performance of your print mailings (personalized coupon codes, QR codes, ...). In addition, it is possible to carry out simple A/B tests that test different formats or discount levels against each other.

Best Practices in Print Mailing

Happy Birthday! This is how ESPRIT congratulates its customers on their birthday

Fashion house ESPRIT knows how important the cross-channel approach is for its advertising measures: around 55–60% of customers can't be reached with digital advertising at all. That's why the company focuses on direct mail, sending out classic birthday mailings such as maxi postcards or letters with personalized vouchers. It's hardly surprising, as what is the birthday child more likely to look at - one of countless emails or the chic postcard with personal congratulations that surprisingly flutters into the house a few days before the birthday? Ideally, the voucher will then also be prominently posted on the refrigerator to be redeemed in time. By the way, ESPRIT has completely automated this campaign, since every customer has their birthday on a different day. Technical requirements are a marketing cloud or a CDP system as well as a direct mail automation software integrated into it. An example of such software is optilyz.

Reactivation Plus: OBI's smart segmentation logic

DIY store OBI goes one step further and combines its birthday mailing with a reactivation. The company calls the campaign "birthday mailing", but in the end it's a personal event - "Your first year with heyOBI!" The clever thing about it: The mailing is not sent to all customers, but only to those who are about to churn. This is also called customer reactivation or churn. Two conditions must be met: 265 days have passed since registration at "heyOBI Birthday" and the person hasn't purchased anything for 6, 9 or 12 months. Only then does OBI send a print mailing with personalized imagery, personal address and an individual coupon code that can be redeemed right away. The result? Compared to the control group, the company was able to record 218% more sales per customer and reduce the churn rate by 3%!

What tools are suitable for creating print mailings?

For a successful implementation of your print mailing campaign, you naturally need the appropriate tools. A Marketing Cloud like Salesforce Marketing Cloud, klaviyo, Bloomreach or Emarsys or alternatively a Customer Data Platform with bundled and standardized data are especially important. Then you can connect your Direct Mail Automation Software with the Marketing Cloud and integrate Print seamlessly into your MarTech setup, without having to jump between different systems.

Various Design Tools such as Canva or InDesign, are also useful for designing the print mailings. This is optional and depends on whether your company works with an external graphic design team or produces the advertising materials in-house.

Conclusion: The relevance of print mailings in the digital age

As you may have noticed, print mailings are not outdated or unnecessary, but can enhance your customer journey, influence purchasing decisions and strengthen customer loyalty. In combination with your online marketing measures, you can offer your customers a holistic shopping experience, both online and offline. Companies like ESPRIT and OBI are showing the way - will you follow suit? In any case, we wish you good luck!