3 Simple Ways to Generate Leads With Direct Mail Postcards

From QR codes to personalized postcards and letters, today’s printing technology gives direct mail marketers incredible scope to target and optimize their marketing message.

Whether as a standalone effort or part of an integrated marketing campaign, direct mail can be used to generate meaningful, engaging and – most importantly – highly effective results for your business. 

Many business owners would like to add direct mail to their inventory of marketing tactics, but don’t know where or how to start. In this guide, we’ll share three simple tips that you can use to start generating leads for your business using direct mail. 

Use direct mail postcards to send people to your website 

Today’s top marketers know that Twitter, Facebook and other social platforms are here to stay. As such, they spend a lot of energy interacting with customers online, as well as driving new customers to their online assets. 

Directing online customers to your company’s website, Facebook Page or Twitter feed is simple. Driving offline customers online, on the other hand, is far more of a challenge. 

One of the best ways to engage offline customers and direct them to your company’s online presence is through direct mail. A targeted direct mail postcard can mobilize your company’s offline audience and: 

• Guide them towards your Facebook page to increase social media followers for your brand
• Inform them of upcoming webinars, recently published white papers, new blog posts and other online content published by your company
• Ask them to provide feedback about your business via a digital survey or your company’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Yelp pages
• Direct them to an online discount coupon or special offer that helps them further engage with your company

Instead of thinking of direct mail as the be all, end all of marketing, think of it as a building block to online engagement. Once you’ve brought customers online, your ability to market to them – whether through video, email or text content – grows.

Pre-qualify leads using a postcard direct mail campaign 

Ask any salesperson if all leads are equally valuable and you’ll get an extremely fast answer: “No!”  

The key to separating great leads from bad leads is getting as much information as possible. The more you know about your prospects, the greater your ability to see which are worth following up with (and which aren’t) becomes. 

Direct mail is a great way to garner more information about your leads and learn which are the most valuable to your business. A small incentive – such as a coupon or discount – is often all it takes to get the data you need to pre-qualify a lead. 

A study carried out by Coupons, Inc. confirms this – they discovered that upwards of 70% of people submitted information like their name, email address and answers to questions for a $2 discount coupon. 

Your incentive doesn’t necessarily need to be a coupon. From a whitepaper (if your campaign targets B2B prospects) to a discount on your product, giving your target audience something for free is a great way to generate valuable lead data.

Keep your brand and product in the minds of prospects 

When it comes to branding, visibility is king. The more often your brand appears in front of your target audience, the more likely they are to think of it when they need your product, offer or service. 

In the age of endless digital advertising and inexpensive email marketing, online exposure is cheap. But not all exposure is equal. The personal touch of a direct mail piece has branding value far beyond that of an email newsletter or online banner ad. 

Far from being useful only for direct marketing, direct mail is also hugely valuable for branding. Targeted, personalized direct mail postcards can warm prospects to your brand and make them more likely to become customers. 

From sending birthday and holiday emails to develop trust to priming prospects via direct mail before an important sales call, carefully timed direct mail can play a very important role in your company’s lead generation strategy. 

Learn more about lead generation using direct mail 

Would you like to learn more about how your business can generate highly qualified leads using direct mail? Find out how QuantumDigital used direct mail to develop an integrated, multi-touch marketing campaign with a 51% response rate.