Holiday Direct Mail Guide for 2021

The leaves are changing, it’s getting colder, and marketers everywhere are putting the final touches on their holiday marketing strategy. Although this year is unique in many ways, the holiday shopping season is still expected to be strong. With most businesses operating almost entirely online this year, the next couple of months are expected to see heavy investments in online marketing channels from paid ads to email and everything in between. That means this year more than ever, it’ll be hard to stand out from everyone else vying for consumer attention. Direct Mail offers a great way to reach your audience in a less saturated channel, helping your messaging stand out and increasing the likelihood of recipients converting. Plus, you’ll pay a flat cost per piece that doesn’t increase due to higher competition, as it does with online channels.

In short, if you haven’t already, Direct Mail is a prime channel to add to your mix for the holidays and can help you bridge your online and offline marketing efforts. Here’s our DM holiday marketing guide to help you get the most out of Q4:

Use Cases

Prospecting

Poplar’s Lookalike capabilities enable you to quickly build and mail custom Lookalike models based on your customer list.
The expedited modeling process takes only 2-3 days, which means you can get a prospecting send in-home in fewer than 2 weeks, allowing you to still make an impact for the holidays.

Re-engage/Reactivate Lapsed Customers

Target past customers who haven’t purchased in a while - especially previous holiday purchasers.
This is a great time of year to reactivate lapsed customers since they’ll be in the buying mindset and most brands have promotions available to entice them to come back.
Another interesting strategy we’ve seen work in the past is to target gift recipients of your products. These people probably like your company but haven’t purchased for themselves yet, which presents a unique opportunity to convert them as customers who might even be buying gifts for someone else.

Support and promote your holiday sales

Black Friday is obviously a huge moment for the majority of our clients, and we've seen them use the Poplar platform to support their Black Friday marketing efforts successfully in a few ways.
Hype up your Black Friday/Cyber Monday and other holiday sales with a pre-sale mailer that gives recipients early access to the sale. This will encourage more people to hold on to the mailers then shop the sale. You could even give a bigger special discount to mailer recipients.
Email Unsubscriber targeting - send DM to people who have unsubscribed from your emails. This is a good way to convert these people who won't be receiving your sales messaging through the normal email channel during the holidays but can still respond quite strongly to offline marketing.

Messaging & Design

Design best practices for Direct Mail aren’t that different from email or other digital channels: you’ll want to keep the designs simple and focus on major value props, while clearly presenting your offer and call to action.

Just as with designs for email and other digital channels around the holidays, many find success with holiday or fall/winter themes. This could be anything from featuring leaves/snow and fall colors in your designs to calling attention to specific holidays.
Be explicit with your last order date to get deliveries by certain holidays.
Make copy and offers tied to the holiday season (e.g. offers like 20% gift card purchases or codes like “WINTER20”).
Focus on offers - consumers are expecting deals around this time of year. Make sure the offers seem special and are specific to the time of year (e.g. discounts on gifts or winter clothes).
Promote gift giving - If you sell something that can be given as a gift, this can be a strong way to again differentiate yourself from everyone else and help your recipients find the perfect gift for someone on their list.

Timing‍

Traditional Direct Mail isn’t always a great channel for last-minute marketing campaigns, but Poplar allows you to get mailers in-home within as little as 3-5 weekdays. One thing to note is that we do expect delays around the holidays from the USPS because of increased demand, so please allow an extra 5-7 business days right around Black Friday and Cyber Monday for delivery.

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The conversion curve for Direct Mail can be longer than digital channels since it may take some days for people to check their mail and respond. That’s why we recommend erring on the side of sending early to ensure your mailers hit homes with enough time to convert people before the holidays are over. We also do not recommend trying to time a mailer to hit exactly on a specific day like Black Friday since it's extremely difficult to be that accurate with how busy the USPS is during that time period.

Strategy