B2B Direct Mail Guide

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Introduction into B2B Direct Mail Marketing

Have some highly relevant accounts in your list and don’t know how to convert them? Well, the answer is crystal clear – Marketing. But how? What marketing channel should you use, and how to get the best out of it?

First, let us be clear about what B2B marketing is; it basically comprises marketing activities conducted by B2B companies – those who sell to businesses. B2B marketing is different from B2C marketing (wherein a company’s products and services are advertised directly to customers).

The best way to reach out to your corporate customers is direct, which is why direct mail marketing is your best choice. Businesses can use direct mail as a lone marketing medium or by collaborating with other forms. Many marketers think that direct mail marketing is still expensive, untrackable, and difficult to conduct. However, with new direct mail practices, these things are turned into mere myths. 70% of direct mail recipients think direct mail makes them feel special. Using direct mail, B2B businesses can establish strong relationships with their clients and increase ROI drastically.

We have put together a B2B direct mail guide to understand direct mail better and all the possibilities you can explore.

Best Practices for B2B Direct Mail Marketers

Direct mail marketing becomes easier when you clearly know what things you are supposed to do. Moreover, by understanding these things, you can improve your chances of getting responses and driving conversions. Find below the best practices for you to incorporate into your B2B direct mail marketing strategies:

1. Align Marketing with Sales and Define Prospect Profile Carefully

In B2B marketing, you target a company that is most likely to be converted into a customer. It is important to note that employees of your prospect company can shift positions or leave the organization. Your direct mail activities can go to waste if you send mail to an employee who has already left. Hence, it is vital that you align your marketing efforts with your sales team to guide you about the concerned persons and add them to your mailing lists.

Always take notes from your sales team and then mail accordingly. Furthermore, define your prospect profile clearly and target the right ones.

2. Include a Straightforward CTA

Your call-to-action should be no mystery to your direct mail recipients. Hence, include a straightforward CTA, which can be completed by them easily. Including a CTA in your direct mail pieces is very important as it fulfils the main purpose of the campaign.

Tell your customers about what is expected of them. Sending a mailer without any CTA can never get you any responses as the customers are not directed towards the next step. Therefore, always include a CTA; it could be anything from signing up on your website or requesting a demo.

3. Step Into Your Prospect’s Shoes

You should be aware of your prospect’s preferences, life stages, likes, dislikes, lifestyle habits, and needs. Only then will you be able to know what they exactly want. Advertising to the right audience is simply reaching out to people who actually require your products or services. Companies should make sure that their direct mail is curated in a manner that answers their prospect’s questions.

Avoid complicated language and explain about your brand in a way that appropriately suits their needs and can induce them into buying your product.

4. Personalize Your Mailers

Sending plain mailers with no personalization can lead to campaign failure. Personalization can be used in any manner – you can do as little as insert the first name of your prospect on the item. This simple step can help you connect with the person instantly. Sending personalized direct mail to existing customers also helps in retention and repeat business. Always make your customers feel special as it results in increased brand loyalty and reputation.

5. Get Creative

Creativity can do wonders. Advertising is all about grabbing attention and nothing can do that better than an eye-catching and appealing direct mail item. Get as creative as you can and send mail pieces that do not miss any eye.

You can add your logo, include some jaw-dropping graphics, draft a persuading copy, and use bright colours. The right combination of these things can make your direct mailer a conversion driver.

6. Follow Up Regularly

Sending a mail just once and waiting for a response won’t help it. You need to follow up and know what is in the minds of your audience. An email after receiving your mailer is the first step of follow-up. Further, you can send another mail piece or even call them up. B2B marketing requires strong and frequent follow-ups. You might have to invest a little more in sending follow-up mail, but it is worth it.

B2B Direct Mail Use Cases

Direct mail can be used for a number of things like increasing customer engagements, driving online traffic, and more. Keep reading to explore the opportunities that direct mail marketing offers to B2B marketers.

1. Reach Out Directly

Create a concise yet attractive direct mailer to be sent out to your prospects. You can directly reach out to your prospects and secure a one-to-one connection with them through direct mail marketing. With the help of targeting, you can reach out to the right people with the right message, which will surely get you somewhere.

2. Grow Your Network

Whether it is growing your network offline or increasing your social media followers, calling out to people to know about your brand is an excellent strategy for any business. Especially in B2B business, companies are focused on growing their contact lists and inviting more and more people to know them.

Companies can send direct mail to people engaged with their business through social media platforms as they already know about their brand and are more likely to be converted.

3. Engage New Customers

Getting new customers is one of the most important use cases of direct mail marketing. It is because sending direct mail to someone who has never heard of you can help such people know you, ultimately increasing brand awareness. However, it is needed that you first study your audience, personalize your direct mail, and then launch a campaign. Reaching out to someone for the first time with an impressive mailer that solves their queries and offers a solution to their needs or problems is something you can root for using B2B direct mail.

4. Keep Your Audience Updated

It is a great idea to keep in touch with your audience and side-by-side promote your new product launches, services, discounts, season sales, and any events or conferences hosted by you. This twin approach to keeping your audience updated by educating them on the latest affairs and advertising your brand can help you engage more and more people. Some people might not be interested in your new product but might want to participate in your contests and vice versa. B2B direct mail marketing enables you to develop new ways of communicating with your prospects and luring them into completing the desired CTA.

B2B Direct Mail Examples

• Trustpilot used large-sized letters with popping colours and an eye-catching format to induce their audience. Their letters were simple but had an appealing message.

• CAT used B2B direct mail for promoting their events and special offers. They kept the colours consistent with their brand for easy brand recall. The most intellectual part of their campaign was that they added an excellent offer that was very persuasive against a CTA.

There are two popular direct mail items that any B2B company can use. Both of these items are highly professional but at the same time have attention-grabbing features.

1. Postcards

Postcards are both concise and appealing. They can communicate your message to your prospects in short and simple messages and in a very professional manner. Undoubtedly, postcards are appealing, and many people tend to collect postcards – which offers your brand more exposure when you print your logo on them.

Nowadays, postcards come in various sizes and types. There are dual-fold and tri-fold postcards available that companies can use as per their messaging. Pop-up postcards are also getting popular. Hence, postcards offer great versatility and are also very cost-effective.

2. Letters

Letters can be hyper-personalized according to the requirements of your prospects. You can simply put out their whole range of needs and offer solutions to each one of them. Such letters can change the whole game as they are capable of commencing a deep personal bond with a person. The talks through letters are down-to-business and straight-to-the-point. Like postcards, there are some variations in letters as well. You can either use single-page or multiple-page letters. Some companies also use oversize envelopes to stand out from the crowd.

Things to Take Care of While Conducting B2B Direct Mail Campaigns

1. Take and Implement Customer Feedback

Don’t forget to collect customer feedback and implement the same in your upcoming campaigns. You can ask your direct mail recipients about what they liked and disliked about your direct mail items and what they are exactly looking for. Such reviews or feedback can be really valuable as they give you an outsider’s view of your organization that can be very helpful.

2. Add Inducing Offers Against Your CTA

Asking for a favour in return for nothing seems dull and will not land you anywhere. If you expect your prospects to complete the CTA, you should provide something in return. Like we said earlier, CAT’s B2B direct mail campaign was successful as they offered a great deal in return for a CTA.

3. Always Test and Measure Results

In order to have an idea of what your audience likes, send out some test samples and measure the results. Launching a large-scale campaign without any research and testing can lead to great losses. Instead, test and learn first, then you can proceed to launch a big campaign. It can help you save a lot of money, time, and effort. PostGrid’s direct mail automation solutions can help you test and measure results through detailed campaign analytics and insights.

How to Track Your B2B Direct Mail?

There are a lot of trackable features that you can include in your direct mail pieces. Adding such features in direct mail is very important as they form the base to measure your campaign results.

1. PURLs

PURLs are personalized links that take your prospects to a personalized landing page. This page might include their name or other aspects specific to them. You can also include their name in the customized URL, like www.xyz.com/steve-matthew. Such links make it easy for you to record your mailers’ open rates and make your prospects feel special.

2. Trackable Phone Numbers

Always insert a contact number that is unique to your campaign and easily trackable. You can create a dedicated phone number and use it for a particular campaign. Hence, every time you get a call on this line, you know it was prompted by your direct mailer. Measuring campaign results this way is easy and highly productive. You can also record all the calls on this line to trace respondents and follow-up accordingly. Make sure that the number is toll-free.

3. QR Codes and Coupons

Adding coupons and scannable QR codes is the easiest way to track your B2B direct mail marketing campaigns. Whenever a person scans a QR code, it will take them to a landing page where they can complete a CTA. The coupon codes also offer companies a way to track results as every coupon is redeemable on either an online purchase or by taking it to an offline store.

4. Automation

Direct mail automation solutions like PostGrid can help you track results, get timely reports and insights. They can help you measure everything appropriately and design your future campaigns accordingly.

Be it including pURLs or trackable phone numbers. You can do it all through a direct mail automation API. PostGrid’s API is completely designed to suit your B2B direct mailing requirements and makes it easy for you to design, launch, and track your campaigns. With PostGrid, you can:

• Create or design your direct mail items using in-built templates
• Get them printed and mailed on-time
• Track the progress of your mail items
• Manage user permissions
• Get timely reports and campaign insights
• Integrate with your CRM so you can get rid of manual data entry
• Ensure data privacy and confidentiality
• Build new mailing lists and segment them according to certain demographics
• Verify and validate addresses speedily

Conclusion

B2B direct mail marketing is the most impactful way to reach out to your corporate customers and convince them to try out your brand. PostGrid’s direct mail solutions can help you conduct successful direct mail campaigns capable of driving results and boosting sales.

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The post B2B Direct Mail Guide appeared first on PostGrid UK.

source https://www.postgrid.co.uk/b2b-direct-mail/

Direct Mail Statistics

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Direct Mail Marketing Statistics

We now live in a world where the majority of our interaction happens online. In fact, the dependency on online channels has increased so much that we no longer go online to take a break from life, but it is the other way around. With the boom of online mediums and the continuous presence of their target audience in such mediums, the marketers were quick to make the digital medium their priority. As a result, now marketing is predominantly focused on the online medium.

Direct mail, which made up for a significant part of offline marketing, was ditched by many industries except for a handful of industries. Today, digital spaces, including social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, are filled with ads or promotions of one kind or another. But, too much of anything is never a good thing, and it is the same for marketing. For many customers, there’s nothing more infuriating than getting bombarded with one ad after the other.

Furthermore, most of the digital marketing campaigns may be hyper-targeted, but they still fail to be personalized the way direct mail is made. You could send a virtual postcard and a physical postcard to your target audience, identical to each other, and yet be sure that the recipient will appreciate the physical one much more than the digital one. The feasible nature of the direct mail or postcard makes it much more personal than the digital ones.

Direct Mail Is Not Dead, It’s Evolving

Many marketers may be overlooking direct mail as a marketing tool. It is not just its ability to generate a response from the recipient but also its significantly higher ROI. When compared to some of the advanced digital marketing campaigns, direct mail still manages to beat many of them in terms of ROI. This is why the industries that never gave up direct mail marketing still hold on to it despite the majority of businesses switching exclusively to digital marketing.

 Also Read: Tips to Maximize Direct Mail Response Rates and ROI

It is also worth noting that direct mail has evolved over the years and the direct mail campaigns now incorporate online mediums for effectively communicating with the target audience. In addition, businesses now have access to advanced direct mail automation tools like PostGrid that allow them to automate the entire process from personalizing to printing to delivering the Mail. In other words, direct mail marketing is not strictly speaking an offline marketing method but a hybrid one that gets the best of both worlds.

This article discusses some of the most intriguing direct mail statistics to help you understand exactly how beneficial direct mail marketing can be for your business. The article does not merely discuss the direct mail statistics but also attempts to explain how it is relevant for businesses and how they can make the most out of it. By helping you better understand the direct mail statistics, we hope to give you an idea of how you can apply them to grow your business’s reach.

22 Statistics About Direct Mail Marketing Campaigns in UK

1. In The Last Ten Years, Advertising Mail Volume Has Increased By 87%, And Expenditure Has Increased By 118%.

The fact that the use of direct mail for advertising has significantly grown in the last ten years implies that more and more businesses finally realize the untapped potential of direct mail. It is also worth noting that the huge mail volume increase over the past ten years has happened during a time where technology has practically taken over all aspects of our life. More companies are now willing to spend more of their capital on advertising mail because of its higher ROI.

2. Advertising Mail Delivers, On Average, £14 Return On Investment For Every £1 Spent.

Many companies are not aware that the direct mail marketing success rate is significantly higher than many of the advanced digital marketing strategies. For every £1 you spend on direct mail marketing, you can potentially get £14 as the return on investment or ROI. As you can see, the ROI in the case of direct mail campaigns is significantly high, and not tapping into such immense potential of direct mail could be the worst mistake a marketer can make.

3. Advertising Mail Grew 42% In The Last Five Years Whilst The Advertising Market As A Whole Grew By Just 16%.

In the last five years, the advertising mail is said to have grown 42%. But, what’s even more interesting about these direct mail statistics is that the advertising market as a whole has grown by only a mere 16%. This implies that the direct mail market is growing faster than the advertising market itself. It is up to the marketer who still hasn’t yet made a move to apply their marketing efforts on direct mail campaigns to get the ball rolling quickly.

4. Consumer Advertising Mail Is Estimated To Generate Nearly £27 Billion Worth Of Business A Year.

According to a DMIS Response Rates Survey, the consumer advertising mail is all set to generate close to £27 billion worth of business in a year. Although this is a 2.3 increase, £27 billion is a mind-boggling amount, especially for business returns from a marketing strategy. Again, it must be reiterated that the sooner that businesses adopt direct mail as part of their marketing efforts, the better the result. Marketers and business owners must ensure that they adopt the direct mail approach before it gets too mainstream. ṭdium, With 60% Of Consumers Ever Responding And 37% Responding In The Last Twelve Months.

Perhaps the most enticing direct mail statistics as far as marketers are concerned is that direct mail is the most responsive advertising medium. Direct mail has a response rate of 60%, which is significantly higher than the new and advanced marketing strategies that are in use today. Most businesses depend predominantly on online mediums for their marketing efforts, and it has become so frequent that many customers don’t even bother to open emails or text messages sent as part of a marketing campaign.

On the other hand, direct mail is not easily ignorable because it is feasible and is generally capable of creating enough curiosity inside the recipient that they will at least open it. Once the direct mail is opened, if you are able to make an offer that the recipient is genuinely interested in, then converting them to customers is not hard. Furthermore, the survey also states that 37% of the target audience responded in the last twelve months, which is a clear indication of the effectiveness of direct mail as a marketing tool.

5. 60% of Consumer Advertising Mails Are Opened, And 40% Are Read.

As we have already discussed above, 60% of direct mail is opened by the recipients, but that’s only half the story because, as we know, conversion does not automatically happen once the Mail is opened. The next step after the recipient is to make them read it, and while this may be hard to do using other mediums, it’s relatively easier using direct mail. With 40% of the direct mail recipients reading its content, direct mail gives you the best chance of communicating with your audience effectively.

6. 56% of Consumers Have Purchased After Receiving Advertising Mail

The Response Rates Survey by DMIS further states that 56% of consumers purchased direct mail. This also means that direct mail works best if the target audience is already familiar with your brand or if they are past customers. It is relatively easier to convert a consumer if they trust your brand, and it also means that you will have a better idea about what the consumer needs based on his previous purchase. The 56% of consumers who have purchased after receiving the direct mail is too big a number to be ignored by any marketer.

7. The Experience of Buying Products Driven by Advertising Mail is a Satisfying One For 82% of Consumers.

Unlike text messages or emails that we don’t even care about opening and receiving, direct mail is somewhat exciting to the recipients. This feeling of satisfaction when we receive and open a direct mail that is personalized for you is further extended to the last stage, where you actually make a purchase. According to the DMIS Response Rates Survey, a whopping 82% of consumers find satisfaction in the experience of buying a product that is driven by direct mail.

8. Business Managers Open 82% of The Advertising Mail They Receive.

Although direct mail might have been replaced in personal communications with modern communication channels, they are still one of the most widely used modes of communication for business correspondence. The most important documents are typically sent via postal Mail, and business managers almost always open the direct mail they receive and do the same for the advertising mails. In fact, according to the DMIS Response Rates Survey, a huge 82% of the direct advertising mails are read by the business managers. This essentially makes direct mail the best mode of communication for B2B target audiences.

 Also Read: Best Practices for B2B Direct Mail Marketers

9. 36% Say That They Find Mail Very or Quite Useful When Compared to Other Advertising Media.

Compared to other mediums used for advertising, direct mail is often considered more useful than the others. Sending a mail or a text message can often feel more like a nuisance than something useful. But, on the other hand, direct mail, including advertising mails, is often perceived to be useful by the recipients, especially if you are providing them with a value offer relevant to the target audience. Furthermore, direct mail can also be used for pitching new products or services that the audience may find useful in the future. This is probably why 36% of the people find direct mail to be either very useful or quite useful compared to the other advertising media.

10. 32% of Managers Say They Always Open Their Mail, And 30% Say They Open it if it Looks Relevant.

Managers often receive a lot of postal mails, and usually, most of them are opened if found to be relevant by the manager or whoever is in charge of the business communications. The DMIS Response Rates Survey states that at least 32% of managers admitted that they always open their Mail. It is also worth noting that the survey also found that 30% of managers said they would open direct mail only if it looks relevant to their business. This direct mail statistics further reiterates the significance of direct mail in the B2B industry.

11. 36% of Managers Have Responded to an Advertising Mailing in The Last Month And 22% in The Last Six Months.

Response rate is yet another part where the direct mail shines, and the survey carried out by DMIS further found that 36% of managers had responded to the direct mails they received in the last month before the survey. The survey even tracked the response rate of managers for the last six months and found that 22% of them responded to the direct mails. The number may seem relatively small for someone inexperienced, but a marketer would know that these are indeed very promising ones and that they are superior to most of the digital marketing strategies that are widely used today.

 Also Read: How to Target Your Audience for Maximum Response Rate

12. 12% of The Managers That Responded Spent £200-£500 And 1% Spent £5,000 to £10,000

Just above, we talked about the response rate of managers towards direct mail. Now, a response from the target audience doesn’t necessarily mean that the target will get converted to a customer. However, the target responding to the direct mail is still a big deal and brings you a lot of the way inside the conversion funnel. The survey of DMIS also concluded that 12% of the managers that did respond to the direct mail spent £200-£500. Similarly, 1% of the managers who responded spent £5,000 to £10,000 on marketing using postal Mail.

13. The Average Response Rate For Both B2B and B2C Was 11.6%.

A survey of 3,942 advertising mail campaigns revealed that the response rate for direct mail in B2B and B2C sectors was found to be 11.6%. The survey further found that after excluding campaigns that achieved an exemplary response rate of 30% and more, the average response rate was reduced to merely 6.7%.

So the major takeaway should be that if you manage to get your direct mail campaigns just right, then it is possible for you to achieve exemplary results like a 30% response rate for your direct mail campaigns or even more. Furthermore, even getting an average response rate of close to 11.6% can be extremely beneficial for your business, especially if it is a B2B one considering that they often deal with large capital purchases.

14. The Average Response Rate for B2B Campaigns Was 10.9%.

After closely examining the direct mail campaigns that were exclusively conducted on B2B business, the survey by DMIS revealed that the average response rate for B2B direct mail campaigns was 10.9%. Like the case we discussed above, the survey also considered the average response rate of B2B direct mail campaigns after excluding the exemplary response rates of 30% or more.

After excluding campaigns with a 30% or higher response rate, the average response rate of the B2B campaigns was brought down to 6.2%. Considering that the B2B businesses often deal with big orders and, ergo, big capital, even the low 6.2% response rate could do wonders for the business. Therefore, if you can generate a 10.9% response rate for your direct mail campaigns, you potentially bring in major changes to the business.

15. The Average Response Rate For B2C Campaigns Was 12.1%.

The survey of over 3,942 direct mail campaigns after categorizing the B2C campaigns found that the average response rate for B2C direct mail campaigns was 12.1%. As you can see, the average response rate of B2C direct mail campaigns is slightly higher than the average campaign response rate of B2B, which comes in at 10.9%. This implies that the direct mail campaigns work slightly better for B2C businesses than the B2B, at least in terms of numbers.

Similar to the two cases we have already discussed above, the survey also made it a point to remove the high response rate that ranged anywhere north of 30%, and the new response rate was calculated. The reduced response rate was found to be 7.1% which is again greater than the reduced response rate that we observed in the case of B2B direct mail campaigns which came in at 6.2%.

16. Consumers Aged 45-54 is The Demographic-Group Most Likely to Respond to direct mail Pieces.

The Data & Marketing Association gave the direct mail statistics that the consumers falling in the age gap between 45 and 54 are most likely to respond to direct mail pieces. This is a piece of important information for a marketer to have as it will enable them to better target their direct mail marketing efforts. Furthermore, it is also worth noting that individuals aged between 45 and 54 have a response rate of 14.1%, which is by far the highest average direct mail response rate you can hope for.

17. 18% of B2B Marketers' Budget is Assigned to direct mail Marketing And Print Advertising.

As we have briefly mentioned earlier, B2B marketers or businesses often depend on direct mail for their communication. HubSpot recently revealed that 18% of B2B marketers’ budget is allocated to direct mail and print advertising marketing. This is largely due to the fact that the B2B industry still uses printed ads and catalogues and sends them to its clients/leads. The high response rate of direct mails has stopped the B2B companies from dropping the offline marketing channels entirely.

18. Advertising Mail is Kept in a Household for 17 Days on Average.

According to the data released by Mailmen, the advertising mail is kept in a household for an average of 17 days. This is a piece of very important information that all marketers must be aware of because the mail piece could be passed around the house or just pasted on the refrigerator during this time. The point is that all the family members have plenty of time to look through it, and if the product/service is really something they need, then it is relatively easy to get a conversion.

19. 50.9% of Recipients Say They Find Postcards Useful.

The Data & Marketing Association has said that half the people who receive postcards find them to be useful. The small size of the postcards and their ability to accommodate attractive pictures or infographics make them stand out from the other mailpieces. Furthermore, postcards have a limited area, which means that there won’t be too much boring content stuffed into them, and the concise information is easier for the recipient to read and keep in mind.

20. Only 44% Of People Can Recall A Brand Immediately After Seeing A Digital Ad Compared To 75% Of People Who Receive Direct mail.

According to Marketing Profs, barely half of the people who have interacted with your brand in a digital ad can recall themselves having done that. On the other hand, a whopping 75% of people who receive direct mail can immediately recall the brand. Therefore, establishing trust in the target audience’s minds is easier with the help of direct mail campaigns and reinforces the brand’s credibility in their minds.

21. Direct mail Requires 21% Less Cognitive Effort To Process Than Email.

Canada Post recently released data that revealed that direct mail requires 21% less cognitive effort as compared to the effort taken to read an email. This essentially means that it is easier for the consumers to read a direct mail than an email, even though they may have the same content. This is because the emails sent to the customer can often be distracting as they are bound to have other tabs open, or an ad could pop up randomly from one of those tabs. However, when we come to direct mail, the entire focus of the reader is on that one piece of paper.

22. 57% Of Email Addresses Are Abandoned Because The Users Receive Too Many Marketing Emails.

Marketing Profs claim that more than half of the people who receive too many marketing emails tend to abandon their email addresses. We have all experienced being overwhelmed by the number of marketing mails in our inbox that it is practically impossible to find that one email between all that. At some point, we will get tired of the overflowing inbox that it is just easier to abandon that email and keep it dormant forever.

Conclusion

Direct mail marketing is fast gaining popularity as a marketing channel everywhere around the globe, especially since the widespread use of marketing content on digital channels in our day to day lives. This is clearly evident from the direct mail statistics we have discussed in this article. Direct mail has one of the best response rates as far as marketing strategies are concerned. If optimized well using advanced automation tools like PostGrid, then it has an extremely high ROI potential.

Ever since the automation of direct mail was made possible new opportunities turned up and enabled the marketers to make the most out of their direct mail campaigns. Automation is essential in order to ensure that the direct mail campaign reaches its destination without delays. PostGrid makes this direct mail optimization possible through advanced features that include bulk address verification, personalization, access to superior analytic data and many more features. Effective optimization of direct mail campaigns is not possible without the help of an automated system like PostGrid.

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The post Direct Mail Statistics appeared first on PostGrid UK.

source https://www.postgrid.co.uk/direct-mail-statistics/

Transactional Printing Companies and Services

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Transactional Printing Companies and Services

Though emails work just fine for sending order confirmations and invoices for small purchases, you might have to look for another solid option to deal with your more important communications. We have seen how direct mail marketing has always proved effective and result-bearing, so why stop at marketing? Companies can consider sending transactional mail to communicate with their clients or customers. Invoices, order confirmations, bills, receipts, and statements are all considered transactional mail.

Emails are likely to be ignored and forgotten. But, sending something in the mail creates an impact. It makes people open and read the mail content attentively. Moreover, it builds trust among parties.

What Is Transactional Printing?

Transactional printing is the process of creating and printing official documents. But it is not that simple. Such official documents contain sensitive and confidential information. Hence, security, data privacy, and accuracy are all to be taken into consideration. The best way to go about the process is by using the services of a transactional printing company.

Unlike regular mail, transactional mail uses customer data based on transactions known and initiated by the customers themselves. It is the exact opposite of marketing mail, where you are still in the process of convincing prospects to initiate a transaction. Transactional printing uses a common format and then auto-fills the variable data pulled from a system.

Examples of Transactional Mail

Transactional printing is also called statement printing by many companies. It may seem limited to printing documents that summarise transactions, but indeed the scope of transactional printing is quite large.

Order Confirmations

Order confirmations, as the name goes, are meant to close deals and confirm purchase orders. Also known as purchase receipts, they are sent out to buyers right after they place an order. Usually, order confirmations are printed and mailed when the orders could take some time to complete, and the transactions are done on a credit basis.

Account Statements

Banks are not the only type of firms that print account statements. Businesses keep a record of all the purchases and payments made by their customers and clients. It is mostly drafted in the form of a ledger. Account statements are used to give a consolidated view of all the transactions taking place between the company and the customer.

Invoices

Invoices state all the details of a particular transaction, such as the customer name, date of purchase, amount, payment terms, and particulars. Invoices are sent to customers after they purchase something so that they are aware of their dues and clear them as per the payment terms.

Policy Updates

The introduction of new policies or changes in the current ones should be communicated to all the related parties. Companies can use transactional printing solutions like PostGrid to print and mail professional policy update letters.

Printing of notices, explanation of benefits, debt-collection reminders, and all other official documents can be counted under transactional printing.

How Can Transactional Printing Companies Help You?

Data Privacy and Security

Transactional printing solutions like PostGrid offer exceptional security and data privacy throughout your print and mail process. Being compliant with GDPR UK and the Data Protection Act, 2018, you can be assured that you are lawfully printing and mailing your documents while also ensuring your own security.

Incorporating Modern Technology

Transactional direct mail is popularly used by several organisations. However, it can truly grow as only an industry when it is combined with today’s technology. Variable data printing, envelope printing, digital colour printing, including QR codes to scan and pay, and other such technologies are all part of modern technology that transactional printing companies help you use.

Designing

PostGrid’s print and mail API can help companies integrate with their system and start printing right from there. You can also select from among the pre-built templates and use them for drafting your transactional mail, taking off the pressure to look for a designer.

Print and Mail

Transactional printing companies can help you get your documents printed in high quality through reputed printers. They can assist you in printing compelling and attention-grabbing mail items along with saving costs and time. You can make your choice about the paper stock, ink, envelope, and such things.

Not every transactional printing company provides mailing solutions, but PostGrid does. Getting printing and mailing both done altogether can help save a lot of effort on your part, plus improves the overall efficiency.

Transpromotional printing

It is not a hard and fast rule to only communicate about a transaction or about something official through transactional mail. Smart marketers have started using transactional mail as a means of marketing too. It is referred to as transpromo or transpromotional printing. Printing marketing messages on transactional mail items can help you do two things at the same time. Sometimes, it even attracts repeat business and quick clearance of payments. For example, printing “get a discount of 10% on your next order” on all your order confirmations.

Bulk Printing

Businesses require transactional printing solutions regularly, and sometimes they also need to print in bulk. A transactional printing company can help you with both on-demand and bulk printing. Hence, it doesn’t matter if you need to send out one invoice to a client or a thousand policy change notices.

CRM Integration

You can integrate PostGrid’s transactional print and mail API into your payroll, human resources management, marketing, or accounting software. Thus, you will be able to pull the required details speedily, plus create, print, and mail directly from your system.

Record-Keeping and Reconciliation

Once you send mail through PostGrid, you can track everything through your dashboard. By integrating, you can also have the reconciliation with your accounts are taken care of. PostGrid can help you keep complete records of sent mail, follow-ups, and more.

Address Verification

As we said before, transactional printing requires security and accuracy. Therefore, you cannot afford to send transactional mail with sensitive information to the wrong addresses. Using PostGrid’s print and mail API, you can also have access to its address verification solutions.

Benefits of Outsourcing Transactional Printing

Ensure Data Privacy

Avoid data breach risks by outsourcing your transactional printing activities to a trustworthy solution provider like PostGrid. It can help you comply with all direct mail laws and can protect your data privacy under any circumstances.

Reduce Print and Mail Costs

Not only does a transactional printing company provide printing at lower rates, but it can also help you avail of huge postal discounts from Royal Mail.

Get Repeat Business

Transpromotional printing can really help you get your customers hooked to your company and keep purchasing from you repeatedly. PostGrid can help you plan and print marketing messages smartly on your transactional mail.

Skip Inventory Stocking

While printing in-house, you would need to purchase a high-quality printer, other sorts of equipment for sorting and labelling, and perishables like paper, ink cartridges, stamps, and more. By outsourcing, you can skip through purchasing and maintaining anything.

No More Manual Effort

Drafting transactional mail regularly and getting them printed one-by-one on your printer is extremely monotonous and time-consuming. Not to mention, it is prone to mistakes. You can prevent all that by simply outsourcing transactional printing.

Wrapping Up

Transactional mail is mostly used by healthcare, banking, insurance, and other heavily regulated industries. However, companies of almost all sectors have been using transactional mail for quite some time. Transactional printing solutions like PostGrid can help businesses streamline their transactional printing activities and carry on with them with much more flexibility, precision, and efficiency.

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The post Transactional Printing Companies and Services appeared first on PostGrid UK.

source https://www.postgrid.co.uk/transactional-printing-companies-and-services/

What Is Postal Code Targeting?

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Postal Code Targeting

Every business wants to put the best marketing strategies in operation for targeting prospects and customers and increasing conversions. Smart marketing methods are based on a lot of factors like a targeted database, creative ideas, personalisation, and more. It is essential to find and reach out to the right prospects who match your customer profile rather than indulging in general or blanket marketing.

Most marketers conduct direct mail marketing campaigns to target customers specifically. But what about acquiring new customers? Moreover, how do you get the details of your prospects to mail them? On what factors are you going to target them? Royal Mail helps you answer such questions with its unaddressed mail solutions. Using this method, you can target prospects without having their personal information like names and addresses.

What Is Postal Code Targeting?

As the name goes, postal code targeting simply means targeting prospects in certain postcodes. Basically, postal code targeting is a service offered by Canada Post to help businesses target and saturate specific postal codes. It is the biggest form of targeted marketing in Canada. In the UK too, Royal Mail offers similar services. With the help of door drops and partially addressed mail, it allows marketers to reach out to potential customers even without possessing their personal information.

Royal Mail has a database consisting of about 29 million postal addresses and more than a million postcodes. By availing of its services, you can not only target better but also have access to its huge database.

Door-to-Door Direct Mail

The door-to-door mail service provided by Royal Mail is all about sending out unaddressed door drops like postcards to specific households. Royal Mail helps you target households that match your customer profile. Marketers can choose to target local or national households as per their requirements and preferences without using their personal data. It means that you don’t address individuals; rather, you address households.

Door drops are an impactful addition to your marketing plans. They help you target both prospects and existing customers. Find below some statistics that convey the importance and effectiveness of door-to-door direct mail:

• 83% of door-to-door mail items are opened and read and even sometimes filed and stored by the recipients.
• Door drops are super affordable. You can target up to 8,000 households in just around £500.
• 80% of the top advertisers in the UK use door drops for marketing.

It doesn’t matter if you are a small-scale or large-scale business, newly established or running for decades. You can avail door-to-door mail service anyway to reach out to the right households and communicate your message.

Some of the prime benefits of door drops are:

• You can easily drive prospects and customers to your website and other digital platforms by sending them door drops. It is reported that 59% of recipients actively visit company websites after receiving such a mail item.
• Door drops help companies increase sales. 67% of door drop recipients are prompted to purchase something. This way, you know that your direct mail campaign is actually working and producing amazing results.
• People like to retain door drops. Most of the recipients stick them to their refrigerators or simply pin them on their boards. These things increase your brand visibility and further improve your brand image.
• You can select from among 30 million houses all across the UK to target. With such a huge database and the means to target households relevantly, marketers can be assured of great results.

Partially Addressed Direct Mail

Partially addressed mail enables direct mail marketers to print and mail to generic recipients that share common traits or characteristics. Usually, such type of mail is personalised as far as the title is concerned. For example, “Dear Parent,” “Dear Cambridge Resident,” “Dear Car Owner,” and so on. Partially addressed mail helps you narrow down your target audience using certain geo-demographic factors.

It allows you to target on postcode levels, similar to postal code targeting in Canada and EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail) in the US. Typically, there are 15 households under every postcode, and with partially addressed mail, you can saturate these postcodes.

Find below some statistics regarding partially addressed mail:

• 88% of such mail items are engaged with by the prospects. Naturally, partially addressed mail gets high open, read, and response rates.
• Using partially addressed mail, you can reduce your postal charges up to 20%.
• It is around 165 times more targeted as compared to door drops. So, though door drops also offer great results, you can always go for partially addressed mail for better targeting.
• Your existing customers are excluded from your mailing lists so that you can focus on fresh acquisitions.

How does partially addressed direct mail work?

• You will be targeting postcode levels. Hence you can use the postcodes where your existing customers reside. This way, you can target all the customer “rich” postcodes combined with geo-demographics to identify prospect’s “look-alikes.” This process is often referred to as “topping-up.”
• It helps you achieve greater penetration in those postcodes or areas where you already know that your products or services have been or are being used.
• Using this method, marketers can optimise customer targeting and cover maximum prospects.

Marketing at Scale

Want to conduct a large-scale direct mail campaign without customer data? Royal Mail can help you with that too. You can contact them with your volume requirements. Marketers can create a tailor-made marketing strategy for mailing in bulk.

Using PostGrid’s print and mail API, you need not go anywhere or do anything manually. It can bring all the Royal Mail services to you and assist you with everything. From detailed segmentation to personalisation, it can help you conduct highly targeted direct mail campaigns that have the ability to perform exceptionally well.

Connecting With New Prospects to Generate Fresh Leads

Before conducting any campaign, marketers are supposed to determine whether they want to target existing customers or new prospects. In case you choose to acquire new prospects, the best way to do that is through door-to-door and partially addressed mail, as we saw above. By employing certain demographics and geographics, it becomes easier to identify prospects. With such precise targeting, companies can connect with their audience easily and maximise ROI.

Conducting targeted marketing with Royal Mail is actually pretty straightforward and simple. Moreover, with PostGrid, you can simplify the whole process even further. The main mechanism is to filter and identify postcodes where most of the residents match your buyer persona. This way, you can get so many steps closer to your prospects. Further, you can design, print, and mail out attractive and convincing direct mail items to catch their attention and make them respond.

Targeting prospects through their residing postcodes means that you don’t have to send out the same mail items to everyone, and there is a scope for personalisation. You can offer exciting discounts and cashback. These offers can persuade them to buy from you, hence increasing your conversion rates.

You can always combine your own data with that of Royal Mail to get the best results. PostGrid also offers address verification solutions for you to verify and update your database and put it to use.

Conclusion

Postcode targeting is affordable, simple to conduct, and effective. It offers marketers a chance to conduct direct mail marketing campaigns even when they don’t have any mailing lists of their own. Not just that, Royal Mail provides these exceptional targeting and segmentation services at all-included rates with their unaddressed mail services.

Automate printing and mailing of postcards, letters, and cheques with PostGrid. Our direct mail API can help you conduct campaigns of any volume with exceptional efficiency and no manual effort.

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The post What Is Postal Code Targeting? appeared first on PostGrid UK.

source https://www.postgrid.co.uk/postal-code-targeting/