Research conducted in the field of marketing constantly demonstrates that effective audience targeting and relevant lookalike modeling lead to increased audience engagement, which ultimately results in increased amounts of conversions. The difficulty, on the other hand, lies in acquiring permissioned data sources that provide insights into the routines, preferences, and actions of an audience.
Direct mail is one option.
Business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers surveyed for the 2024 Direct Mail Marketing Benchmark Report found that the key advantage of mail is the ability to target a qualified audience. This is a significant improvement from the fourth rank placed in the study in 2023. There is a growing appreciation among marketers for mail and offline data as a trustworthy prospecting and reach tool. This is a remarkable alternative to digital targeting approaches, where issues over data privacy continue to gain importance. Experts believe that this increase is a reflection of this appreciation.
Precision in targeting equals growth that is lucrative
Audience targeting is one of direct mail’s strong suits. When constructing audience models, marketers are able to discover and communicate with prospects that are similar to their most successful customers since the data sources they utilize are of a high quality and have been granted permission. The ability to generate extremely accurate predictive models is made possible by detailed transactional and intent data at the person level. As new data sources are provided and factors are modified, marketers have the ability to continue scaling campaigns and discovering audiences with high potential.
Because of these hyper-targeted efforts, the return on investment for mail is higher than that of the most popular digital channels in use today.
The audiences that are reached by direct mail can be onboarded to digital settings, which is a secret that is not exactly a secret.
Increase the effectiveness of your campaign and your digital reach by using offline data.
Cookies from third-party websites are an essential component of successful digital marketing strategies. Despite the fact that Google has recently indicated that it will not be completely cookie-free in the future, advertising experts believe that the industry will continue to look for alternate options. It has already been determined that identity resolution and conversion tracking have been compromised, which has resulted in decreased conversion rates and increased expenditures associated with customer acquisition in digital activities.
In the course of the past few years, digital marketers have experimented with a variety of solutions to the problem of audience targeting and performance reporting. One of these alternatives is the offline data that is provided by direct mail. Offline audiences can be linked to online identities through the utilization of a deterministic identity graph, which eliminates the need for cookies from third-party websites. Because of this, marketers are able to send relevant advertisements across digital channels to a specific audience base.
Measure the effectiveness of the campaign accurately.
An additional significant change that occurred in the marketer data between the years 2023 and 2024 was the rise of “easy to track attribution and performance metrics,” which went from being the fifth advantage of mail to being the second-highest advantage of mail advertising.
Similar to the direct mail channel, the uncommon advantage of onboarding audience lists into digital environments is that it allows you to correctly attribute specific activities or purchases back to a targeted individual. This is a benefit that is only available within digital environments. Another benefit of this prospecting method is that it avoids issues around programmatic ad fraud and lost impressions.
Current and upcoming developments in the merging of direct mail and digital campaigns
Nine out of ten marketers are in agreement that mixing digital marketing tactics and direct mail marketing strategies has a favorable impact on the performance of campaigns. Consider the ways in which you may make use of the offline approaches that have been proven successful in direct mail in the new era of digital marketing in order to achieve more precise audience targeting and greater campaign effectiveness across all direct response channels. Download the complete study here to learn more about the findings about the utilization of direct mail, developments in the sector, and the sentiment of consumers.