Every Day We’re Strategising

How to set up your Direct Mail, Door Drop and Partially Addressed Mail strategy: Part I

If you’re contemplating making letterbox marketing part of your overall marketing campaign, you may be tempted to simply stick it onto your current marketing plan. After all, you created a stellar strategy, print should fit neatly on the end, right?  

We say stop! Nothing creates long-term problems like short-term thinking, so building printed communications into your media mix definitely needs a little forethought. Who better to speak to about this, than Suzanne Coleman, MD of Golley Slater and certified letterbox marketing guru? We speak to Suzanne about the importance of setting your long-term campaign goals and the printed communications channels that can take you there.  

So firstly, why do you need to plan an integrated letterbox marketing and digital media campaign?   

It’s really important to have your eye on the future when you’re developing your campaign. It’s not just about planning for the results you want to get now – it’s also about where this campaign will take you. By setting these long-term goals, you can continually boost and invigorate your campaign performance.

This isn’t a case of smashing your media channels together and hoping for the best. Just like building blocks, you need to consider how each channel works with and enhances the others. If you’re looking to create a seamless campaign, then you need to think hard about what role you want printed communications to play in this mix.

What are the three biggest things you should consider when developing your strategy?  

I would always suggest asking these three questions at strategy stage:   

• What does success look to this campaign? What are your success criteria – higher response rates, increased ROI, better engagement? Choose your objective and set measurable goals.

• How can you maximise the responsiveness of this campaign? Consider how you’re going to make it as easy as possible for the customer to reach that final call to action. 

• How can you create engagement and response? Print can be an expensive initial outlay, so it’s crucial to plan how you’ll get your ROI to work positively. Think about what you can do to create print that creates engagement and response – that’s your formats, your messaging and your design.  

So you have your strategy, how do you then decide which letterbox channel is right for your campaign?

The innovative way to approach the three channels is to look at your options, work out which will deliver best results (maybe it’s a carefully curated combination of the three!)  and test your hypothesis.

Option 1 – Direct Mail

Direct Mail is the specialist of the set. It’s super personal, because it’s sent to a specific individual or business. As a result, it grabs attention and builds trust with your customers.

Option 2 – Partially Addressed Mail 

Prefer the best of both worlds? Try Partially Address Mail (PAM) to lend a personal touch, without using specific names. Mail is targeted to households based on demographic or geographic profiling – helping you to expand your reach and grow your market.

Option 3 – Door Drop 

Achieve your growth goals while being budget-friendly. Unaddressed mail like leaflets, flyers and brochures can be delivered to every household within a designated area.

That’s Part I signed off, stay tuned for Part II, where we explore the need to test your strategy is working as hard for you as it possibly can!

See how we did it for SGS

Who knew printed communications could have such a dramatic impact on response rates, plus lead to a 5:1 ROI? We did. See how we created a highly-targeted DM pack for SGS – one that that partnered up with digital to work as part of their broader marketing strategy and build up their customer base.