Direct Mail vs. Digital Marketing — Which One Wins?

When building a marketing plan for your business, you may be pitting two strategies against each other: direct mail vs. digital marketing. Or you may have already considered direct mail down and out.

Direct Mail Is a Modern Advanced Advertising Medium

In recent years, we’ve seen massive technology adoption in businesses of all sizes.

Technology is also playing a massive role in modernizing the tried-and-true advertising form of direct mail marketing. Direct mail advertising will provide an exceptional ROI and incorporates many innovative modern marketing advances around artificial intelligence (AI), hyper targeting, lookalike modeling, augmented reality and detailed attribution which exist in the digital advertising space. Why do dot com direct to consumer companies, such as Casper Mattresses, aggressively use direct mail if they can advertise wherever they want without government restrictions (like the cannabis industry encounters)? It is because it works from an ROI standpoint and is competitive with the results garnered from digital advertising! Direct mail breaks through the clutter, is impactful, utilizes AI generated targeted lists, is hyper targeted and easily measured for effectiveness.

A recent study found that direct mail campaigns generate purchases five times larger than email campaigns.

In addition, consumers respond strongly to targeted direct mail with meaningful relevant offers. A good deal from a reputable company is always a win. People love discounts, are interested to hear about what makes your brand unique and love learning about relevant shopping experiences in their community!

Lastly, people think direct mail advertising is more personal than digital campaigns and it has an impressive open rate of 90%. People notice and engage with direct mail - it breaks through the clutter!

How Can I Utilize Direct Mail to Achieve my Business Goals?

Below are some methods that direct mail can be used to achieve your business goals. What is exciting is direct mail can be used at every sales funnel stage.

1. Building Awareness — For many dispensaries, your customers live in close proximity. A mailer that says, “Stop by our dispensary for amazing selection, great customer service and 25% off” lets potential customers know where they can get products to meet their needs.

2. Consideration — Get your customers to head over to your website to learn more about you and to educate customers on the many benefits of cannabis and your brand differentiators. Provide a link to a unique landing page or QR code so you can track campaigns.

3. Making the Sale — Get customers through the doors. You should offer your customers a discount or provide a call to action they can’t ignore.

4. Follow-up with lapsed customers — Have you lost consumers to competitors? Use a direct mail campaign to reach out to lapsed customers and win them back.

Unlike digital campaigns, direct mail has an additional benefit. Direct mail pieces are often kept in the home for weeks, if not months, for when consumers need products. Customers hang onto coupons, and they love deals.

What Should My Mailer Look Like?

Direct mail pieces can range significantly in style and size based on your budget and preference. As a general rule, make sure any marketing material is consistent with your brand, creates impact, includes legally required content, clearly shows your company logo and brand differentiators, and offers a strong easy to read call to action.

Direct Mail vs. Digital Marketing — Which One Should You Choose?

There is no denying that digital marketing is a great way to reach audiences, connect with your customers, and build brand awareness. From email to programmatic to social media, digital marketing is everywhere. On the negative side, the digital space is cluttered, often annoying to customers, has low consumer recall, is subject to new privacy laws which limit effectiveness and increases costs, and often ends up on low-quality sites with wasted impressions or—worse—digital ad fraud. 

But, these negatives don’t mean you shouldn’t still use digital campaigns. In fact, you shouldn’t be thinking of direct mail vs. digital marketing campaigns, but rather, direct mail and digital marketing. An omnichannel approach for a modern marketing mix. Reaching consumers where they are, at multiple touch points, is the best path to converting them into your customers.  

Here are some ways to combine physical mail with your digital marketing efforts.

1. Make it a Multi-touch Marketing Campaign — Once you send a mail piece to your target audience, follow up a week or two later with a digital campaign to the same 21+ cannabis user list. Physical mail will capture your customers’ attention, prepping them for strong digital calls to action that remind them to purchase.

   Research shows that combining email with direct mail leads to six times bigger purchases than those made by email alone.

2. Use a QR Code — By using QR codes on physical mail, you can provide customers access to special deals with a swipe of their phone. They’re taken right to your website, where they can download contact information or interact with you on social media. In addition, you can explore connecting the QR code to augmented reality features to turn your mailer into a modern interactive marketing tool. 

   
   Pro tip: When using QR codes, make sure your link has a custom UTM code so you can track which customers used it.

The most important thing to consider when pairing physical mailers with digital campaigns is to keep your messaging consistent. This allows your marketing messaging to truly hit home with your target audience.

Digital Marketing Integration

In the ever-changing marketing landscape, there's a continuous tug-of-war between offline and digital advertising methods. The expansive reach of digital marketing, such as social media, search engine optimization, and email marketing, is undeniable. Simultaneously, direct mail's tangibility, quality AI generated data, hyper-targeting, and high engagement rates make it one of the most effective channels. Rather than choosing between these two, combining these strategies offers the best marketing formula.

There's no need to choose only one marketing channel when you can harness both strengths. Integrating direct mail marketing with your digital efforts can help you reach your audience at different touchpoints, increase brand recall, and provide various methods to engage with your audience. Direct mail's precision targeting will drive customers to your website, social media accounts, or landing page, while digital tactics can retarget the same list you use for the direct mail campaign.

In a competitive marketing landscape, you don't have to limit your brand to just one advertising channel. Integrating digital marketing with highly effective direct mail can enhance the success of both strategies.

Direct Mail’s Evolution

You might automatically think of digital marketing when deciding on your brand marketing and advertising. The truth is that direct mail response rates are at an all-time high, and technology has made direct mail a more effective and precise data-driven marketing channel.

When exploring traditional marketing channels, direct mail is the leading channel that can offer precise market targeting as digital. With the advancement of data analytics utilizing AI, you can segment your audience more precisely than ever. Direct mail marketing allows you to build targeted mailing lists by location, gender, age, interests, and many more demographic and psychographic categories, as you would in a data-driven digital marketing campaign. Use this to your advantage by sending personalized direct mail pieces to specific audience segments and reinforcing brand messaging with targeted digital ads. Through this strategy, your impactful offline marketing efforts align with your customer's online experience.

With its enhanced capabilities, direct mail marketing is now one of the preferred channels of today's marketers. Integrating direct mail's tangible impact with digital marketing's capabilities allows you to create a seamless and cohesive multichannel campaign that meets your audience at different touchpoints and drives meaningful results.

Personalization and Data Analytics

One of the most effective ways to boost your business's conversion rates is to personalize your marketing campaigns based on user behavior and demographics. According to data, personalized marketing campaigns can increase your conversion rates by up to 30%.

By leveraging data analytics and technology, your business can collect and analyze customer data. Customer relationship management software (CRM) systems, automation tools, and artificial intelligence algorithms can help your business automate and create highly targeted marketing campaigns.

When you create content specifically for your customers and deliver it on the right channel, the ads are more relevant, increasing engagement and conversion.

Making the Right Decision

When building a marketing strategy for your business, it’s not about choosing one method or another. It’s about creating an omnichannel marketing strategy that connects with customers wherever they are and breaks through the clutter.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is our approach to Direct Mailing?

  Canna Direct Mail provides highly targeted and efficient cannabis direct mail solutions to dispensaries, delivery services, and products. We can build custom mailing lists based on your first-party data or use proprietary cannabis user data and guide your team in creating impactful and dynamic creative to ensure you get the best possible results. Our targeted direct mail campaigns are delivered to actual 21+ cannabis consumers through best-of-class cannabis data practices built through surveys and AI generated lookalike models. Direct mail marketing through Canna Direct Mail offers a targeted, compliant, and effective strategy to connect with your audience, increase brand awareness, and increase sales in a competitive cannabis landscape.

• How can I integrate direct mail and digital marketing strategies for maximum impact?

  Digital marketing and direct mail may be different marketing mediums, but integrating them creates a powerful advertising strategy that drives customers in efficient and impactful ways. The more relevant touch points you meet your customers at, the greater your chances at conversion.

  When integrating your digital and direct mail marketing, ensure uniformity in your brand messaging across different channels. A clear and consistent message reinforces brand identity and leads to stronger ROI. You can employ various strategies that take advantage of this integration, such as QR codes in your mailer copy, custom URLs, and merging direct mail data with your customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Continuous testing and monitoring of your integrated campaigns are crucial in the ever-changing marketing landscape. Adjust your messaging, mailing list, and audience segmentation based on your monitoring results to ensure your marketing efforts remain effective and relevant.

  Direct mail's tangibility, personalized approach, precise targeting, strong tracking and high conversion rate make it an effective way to connect with your audience. Combine this with digital marketing's vast reach, and you get a strong integrated omnichannel marketing campaign!

• How do I measure the success of direct mail and digital marketing campaigns?

  Tracking and monitoring your campaign's status and results are critical aspects of an integrated marketing approach. Various tools and metrics, such as conversion rates, click-through rates, website visits, response rates, and return on investment (ROI), lifetime value, can help you gain valuable insights into your marketing efforts' success and identify areas for improvement. This data-driven approach allows your business to test different strategies, segment your audience, personalize your messaging and measure results for more effective and impactful integrated marketing efforts.