Ep. 295: How Dave Fink Is Reinventing Direct Mail for a Digital World

Bridging the Gap Between Direct Mail and Digital Marketing

Who should listen: Any marketer who wants to be smarter about how they plan, execute, and track their direct mail campaigns.

Key idea: With new technologies, direct mail is becoming increasingly sophisticated with capabilities to predict and respond more quickly to lead-generating opportunities.

Action item: Find opportunities in your sales process that you can identify as trigger signals, and follow up on them by sending a piece of direct mail.

If you engage in any direct mail advertising, whether it be sending postcards, one of ReminderMedia’s personally branded magazines, catalogues, newsletters, or another piece of print advertising, then you know that direct mail marketing and real-time analytics aren’t terms you would normally see in the same sentence—until now.

According to Forbes, “As technology continues to innovate, direct mail marketing is evolving to provide businesses with real-time marketing analytics to help improve targeting and cut marketing costs.”

As effective as direct mail is in generating leads and converting prospects, it’s been a challenge for marketers to reliably know beyond broad-based measures how their campaigns are performing. It’s been beyond their technological grasp to capture the dynamics that would tell them which messages should go to which audiences and when for the best results at the least cost.

But today that’s changing.

Track, measure, and execute direct mail campaigns with ease and accuracy

With the US print advertising industry expected to spend $53.5 billion this year, you probably already know that traditional print advertising and direct mail marketing are very much alive (although there are mistakes that can kill your campaigns).

What’s more, direct mail has unique advantages that make it immune to the fickle nature of online platforms that drives marketers to distraction. (Unlike online channels, direct mail doesn’t change algorithms.)

And now, Dave Fink, who is this week’s Stay Paid guest and the owner of Postie, is helping marketers hurdle the obstacle that has driven many to reduce their direct mail marketing in favor of online advertising. He and his team have melded software, technology, and a user interface to:

• Leverage customer data so that businesses can make more informed decisions about what messages to send, which audiences to send them to, and when to send them for the best returns.
• Improve production and operations management when sometimes manufacturing millions of pieces of direct mail and enhance the logistics that get those pieces delivered to mailboxes within a defined period.
• Bridge the gap between the broad-based measurement of mass mailings and the one-to-one accuracy of digital marketing to figure out if what marketers are doing is working.

Dave positions Postie as the technology layer between print and digital marketing that allows advertisers to interact with their direct mail channel like they do their digital marketing platforms. It’s a technology that is changing the game.

Use signals to trigger mailings

During his interview, Dave talks about why you need clear objectives with each direct mail campaign, how to build an audience, and when you might expect to see a return on your investments. (He also shares what he thinks is the coolest piece of direct marketing he’s seen. 😎)

But another point he makes is about using website visits or signals to trigger mailings to specific consumers.

Imagine if every time a prospect filled out a form to download lead magnet A, your marketing was programmed to send postcard A that same day. Or every time someone purchased product B, your marketing triggers fired off a brochure about a product or service related to product B.

Dave argues that having systematic processes to send specific pieces of direct mail to specific individuals based on their interaction with your website will produce significantly more leads that you can then continue to nurture.

Listen to this episode and you’ll walk away with a new appreciation for direct mail marketing, how easy it is to scale, and how it can help to grow your business. When you’re done, we’d appreciate it if you would give us a five-star rating and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. (Not sure how to leave a review? Click here.)

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