When it comes to effective customer engagement, quality dominates quantity. Consider this—with digital marketing, your business can reach a wide audience in minutes. But, it can also feel so impersonal that customers may scroll right past your message. Customers interact with businesses and products that they feel connected to. If you’re looking to increase your customer engagement, consider reimagining your strategy with direct mail.
Direct mail may seem old-fashioned, but this approach turns your message into a tangible object that customers can interact with and bring into their homes. Direct mail automation allows you to meet your customers where they are and cultivate a personal relationship.
Curious to know how to do so? Keep reading this guide and learn how to strengthen your customer engagement strategy.
So, what is customer engagement, and why is it so important?
In short, customer engagement is how your business communicates and interacts with your customer base. A businesses' customer interaction may occur through a variety of different channels as a way to build that relationship. High rates of customer engagement mean:
When you’re engaging customers, every aspect of your business improves. But, getting engaged requires a strategy based on your customer’s wants and needs.
In today’s digital age, people are bombarded with hundreds of emails a day. With direct mail, you can bypass the competition vying for their attention and put your message directly into your customer’s hands.
The benefits of this strategy include:
If you want to see high rates of customer engagement, then you need a marketing strategy that lets you keep in touch with customers consistently.
Despite many companies switching to digital, paperless business, direct mail still plays a role in business. It’s proven to be an invaluable form of marketing. Why is that?
It’s important to look at it from the customer’s perspective:
Customers value businesses that value them. As long as the content is easy to read, concise, and personal, they are more likely to engage with it all the way to checkout.
Curious to know how you can implement direct mail into your marketing strategy and boost engagement?
Don’t underestimate how much customers value receiving mail. With mail volume in decline since 2004, your customers’ mailboxes aren’t cluttered with junk and spam mail anymore. Take advantage of that available space with personalized direct mail messages.
Send customers happy birthday messages through the mail. If the goal is to build relationships and engage customers, then they’ll appreciate the birthday wishes every year and feel a stronger connection to your brand. It’s also a great opportunity to show your appreciation for customer loyalty. Plus, they’ll appreciate a special discount offer or coupon.
Personalized messages don’t have to be creepy. Instead, they can be an example of how your brand values and treats its customers. This can boost customer satisfaction and be representative of quality customer service.
The main appeal of direct mail is that it creates a personalized experience. This invaluable form of marketing allows your business to get as creative as you want. Customers are more likely to engage with your business if they feel as if the content was created personally for them.
Interested in more ways to do so? Here’s a quick list of things you can do to individualize your customers’ mail:
Use direct mail’s inherent personal features to your advantage and connect with your customers on a new level.
It’s easier to engage your customers when you know what their needs are. Once you have engaged customers, you should focus your efforts on learning how to increase conversion rates. You can do this by adjusting your marketing strategies and business operations to fit their concerns and wishes.
Use direct mail to get a better picture of your customers and receive their feedback on your products and operations. Just remember to:
The primary goal of customer engagement marketing is to build a long-lasting customer relationship. So get to know them a bit better, starting with what you send them.
For the best results, it helps to tailor your campaign to fit the customer segment you’re addressing. Strategically choose between a physical or digital experience for your customer base. Different customers may receive different types of direct mail. It depends on the purpose and your relationship with those customers. Each type of direct mail serves a slightly different purpose.
Two common types of direct mail include:
Strategize your campaign to fit the customer segment as a way to increase engagement.
You can learn a lot from the customer interaction measurements of your campaigns. Direct mail makes it easy to measure engagement, understand customer behavior, and see how well your products perform.
Send a special promotional offer that customers can bring to your store in person to redeem.
One big aspect of an effective customer engagement model is communication. The only way to increase your engagement numbers is to know how to communicate with your customers.
So, how can you do so effectively? Here’s a list of valuable skills to develop to help:
Customer satisfaction goes hand-in-hand with a positive customer experience. Provide memorable, efficient experiences and that’s how customers will remember your business. If they believe that your brand has the above skills, then they’ll keep returning because they know you offer quality service.
When you run an e-commerce business, abandoned carts are a frustrating aspect of the industry. But, with direct mail, you can send special messages to customers who leave items behind in their carts.
Now, customers abandon their carts for a variety of reasons, such as:
Your personalized message can address any of these concerns. Offer a discount on the items that they were looking at. Or, inform them why your products are better than the competition.
Either way, when you can address a customer’s concerns, you can guarantee that they’ll want to engage with you.
Customer engagement is an important goal for any marketing strategy. Direct mail lets your business physically express to your customers how much you value them. But, creating a rich, personalized experience for all your customers can take some serious work.
The good news is that you don’t have to do it alone. At Poplar, we’re happy to help you curate an individualized customer experience while keeping operations smooth and efficient. We make it easy for your business to build those relationships so you can see higher engagement rates without sacrificing unnecessary time or energy.
Our tools and resources make it easy to set up and launch your direct mail campaigns quickly. So, if you’re interested in implementing a successful direct mail strategy, check out our different services today.
Sources:
1. Small Business Trends. Direct Mail Marketing Statistics for Small Businesses. https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/01/direct-mail-marketing-statistics.html
2. Statista. United States Postal Service - mail volume 2004-2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/320234/mail-volume-of-the-usps/
3. Forbes. The Secret Sauce Behind Direct Mail’s Resurgence. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2019/05/03/the-secret-sauce-behind-direct-mails-resurgence/?sh=6459b110cf69
4. American Express. Which Client Engagement Skills Can Help Your Team Boost Sales? https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/business/trends-and-insights/articles/which-client-engagement-skills-can-help-your-team-boost-sales/
