Integrating direct mail with digital technologies to improve response is a strategy gaining momentum for many direct mailers looking to drive better ROI while cutting down on the heavy burden of rising postage and printing costs.
For one university, the goal was straightforward: Montclair Kimberley Academy University wanted to develop and execute a fundraising campaign targeting alumni. The strategy was to build buzz and awareness leading up to one single giving date last October. The effort was marketed with a combination of print, email and social media touch points.
Two postcard mailings targeted alumni who had donated in the last five years and those who had given within the last year. Photographs of alumni from years gone by were displayed on the postcard to revive fond memories of their days at the school and encourage donations.
PURLs, or personalized URLs, drove recipients to a landing page that provided targeted and personalized information. Three email blasts deployed to all alumni that also contained the PURLS. A social media push on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube were also in play. A staggered approach for the mailings and e-blasts meant that alumni would receive communications about the “MKA Day” campaign through a different medium each week. Spectacular results ensued. The University surpassed its goal by 150%, with 460 donors resulting in more than $220,000 raised.
Therein lies the sought after power of combining direct and digital marketing.
“Combining direct and digital marketing is most successful when you play to each channel’s strengths in a cohesive campaign,” says Director of Marketing Ryan Coté at
Ballantine, a print a digital direct marketing company, which ran the “MKA Day” campaign.
PURLS, or personalized URLs, puts the person’s name in the URL and directs them to a personalized landing page where copy and images can be swapped out for a more customized look. A response form on the site can be prepopulated with the data from the mail file. PURLS work best for capturing leads, not necessarily pushing a sale.
“Previously, it was mainly used with direct mail,” Coté says. “Now, it’s more and more common that we do direct mail combined with an email piece both pushing the PURL just to get that extra bump in response.”
For its non-profit client MAG America, Ballantine bridged direct mail and email by announcing the direct mail piece was coming with two email blasts, both driving the recipient to a PURL. One blast deployed the day the direct mail piece mailed, the second one a week later.
An alternative way to use a PURL in direct mail is with a redirect to whatever website or landing page URL the brand or client wants.
You know who visited their PURL and who is actually engaging with that direct mail piece. It creates a list of warm leads,” Matt Coté, director of business development at Ballantine, says.
Marketers can also add remarking code to a PURL landing page. After a visitor hits the landing page, he or she gets tagged with a cookie and then, as a result, they’re shown the brands’ banners as they browse the Internet on sites like Pandora, Forbes and Weather.com.
“They’re going to the website, they might not respond, but they’ll see your banners after they leave and hopefully they’ll click the banner and be retargeted back to your site,” Ryan Coté says.
A new and innovative way to retarget is by appending IP addresses to a direct mail postal file. As a result, you’re not relying on website visitors getting tagged with cookies, instead you’re retargeting the IP addresses. The IP match success rate is currently about 50% and the number of banner impressions that each person will be served can be customized.
“It’s an easy way to give your direct mail a boost, because you’ve got this piece going out and you’re able to serve about 50% of the same people banner ads that reflect the same campaign,” Ryan Coté says.
An important step is to coordinate all of the creative with similar messages, colors and formats for a cohesive theme that becomes recognizable to the target.
Another digital integration to consider is sending direct mail to a targeted niche, like lawyers in a specific set of zip codes and then serve Facebook ads targeting lawyers in those same zip codes.
“You can drill down specifically with Facebook ads to mirror the targeting of the direct mail piece,” Matt Coté says.
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