If you don’t know what Account-Based Marketing is, where have you been? Account-Based Marketing (ABM) in our eyes is ‘Zero Waste Marketing’, where sales and marketing work together to target key personnel in your key targeted accounts, rather than individuals. This allows for the overall focus being on having full visibility about your buyer needs and building with specifically targeted accounts that generate greater revenue.
With ABM we group leads based upon the account, resulting in more focused leads, which ultimately lead to conversions. Personalised messages to the right people at the right time means more targeted efforts, which result in higher conversions.
Why Direct Mail?
Now, one of the key elements of ABM is the creation and use of , tailored and specific touch points to engage with your target audience on their terms. We’ve been doing ABM for some time now and whenever we can, we see direct mail as a key tactic in any ABM approach. Why? Because it’s tangible, which can allow you to make more of a human connection and drive higher response rates. For Instance:
- In these times of social, economic and political change, it’s more important than ever to build trust using reputable, respected communications and channels in your marketing.
- Today, 87% of consumers rate messages delivered by mail as believable, compared to 48% for email. And 65% feel confident the contents of their mail remain private. People trust mail.
- The average lifespan of a direct mail piece is 17 days, whilst an email is only 2 seconds.
- 44% of people could recall a brand directly after seeing a digital ad, whereas 75%could after receiving direct mail.
- 79% act on direct mail immediately when compares to 45% from email.
The above stats reinforce why direct mail is still a great marketing tactic to use where relevant. When it comes to ABM it’s just one tactic that should be used as part of a multi-touch and channel outbound campaign. Remember that you want to engage with your audience and to do this you have to cut through a lot of noise, so by using a multi-touch and channel approach you are identifying the best way to cut through the noise and direct mail is a great door opener.
But wait, there’s more. Here at BPI we take a collaborative approach to everything we do, and when it comes to ABM we’re no different. My CEO James Edwards will give you some insight into the psychological benefits of using direct mail, whilst our creative director Aled Griffiths will cover how to make your direct mail look good.
How Does the Brain React to Direct Mail?
As Sud mentioned earlier direct mail allows you to target your audience with something tangible, a physical marketing touch point, which in today’s digital world is rare. But why is this beneficial? Well, in a recent consumer psychology test by Millward Brown, they saw how the brand reacted when viewing digital communication and physical copy. They found that the physical piece left a much deeper footprint on the brain. This suggests that physical material is more ‘real’ to the brain, so it has meaning, purpose and a place, which results in emotional triggers that can create a connection to your marketing touch point. Direct Mail can:
- Spread brand awareness across your target account
- Create memorable connections with your accounts
- Improve engagement rates
- Accelerate sales pipeline
- Improve the success rate of your ABM strategy
Making Direct Mail Look Good
That’s enough of the boring side of marketing from James and me, It’s time to get creative. My Creative Director Aled Griffiths has a question a few questions for you. When it comes to direct mail what do you think One of those yellow envelopes from a PPI company? How about a golden ticket to inform you about the millions you have won? Or how about the calendar you get from an insurance company you used 10 years ago? Just like any medium in marketing, direct mail is what you make it and at BPI ROK we’re all about making things look beautiful, delivering your messages in a unique way to help you stand out from the crowd!
Sending direct mail is a fantastic opportunity to be creative and think outside of the box. It can bring your brand to life and pitch your product or service directly to your target audience demonstrating your point of difference. Putting something tangible in people’s hands humanizes the experience, which can be much more impressive than a simple bland email allowing you to grab their attention and deliver your sales message in a compelling and engaging way. A good direct mail piece not only grabs attention but motivates a response or action, driving the recipient to take the next step along the journey to ultimately becoming a SQL or a customer.
But in order for your direct mail piece to do its job, it has to be opened in the first place and we have a few techniques we use in order to achieve this. Everyone has built-in cues that signal whether a piece of mail is worth opening. You can replicate these cues to give your mail a better chance of being opened, for example, hand writing the name and address on the envelope and using a physical stamp makes your sales piece look like personal mail.
This level of engagement is proven as 80% of people say they can remember advertising mail that was sent to them in the last 4 weeks.
Final Word
It’s clear that direct mail is anything but dead. It’s alive and kicking and the benefits of this marketing communication tactic are clear, we’ve just been kind enough to point a few out on this blog.
