Direct Mail and Social Media Combine for a Lucrative Marketing Strategy

Direct Mail is now often seen as yesterday’s marketing as compared to email marketing and other marketing technology replacements. Also direct mail is seen as an expensive proposition since you need to mail out a lot of pieces to get a decent response. However, there are web marketing tools and platforms to combine with direct mail which make it much more cost effective on a per customer acquisition standpoint, as well as, increase the response rate.

When you are developing your next  Marketing Plans, be sure to try this deadly combination of Direct Mail and the Web Social Networks. It will really change the revenue structure of your current  Business Planning Process.

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Put a Web Sales Landing Page on the Direct Mail Piece

Think about putting a web sales landing page URL on the direct mail piece which offers a Free product or service, or provides a great discount. Give each mail piece its individual code that the responder has to enter on the web page. This gives you an excellent way to track results and stay in contact with individual respondents.

Incentivize Your Social Media

Now here is how to take it up a notch. Put a Social Networking element in the web sales page by offering an incentive for the respondent to spread the good news through their Twitter, Facebook, My Space and other social networks. Maybe a double discount or two items for free will be a big enough incentive. Make sure to make it easy for the respondent to spread the viral social offer by putting automatic links to all the social networks.

Use Codes to Track

Be sure to offer the social network recipients similar offers of free stuff or discounts so they continue to spread the great marketing offer to their friends and associates. Be sure to keep the code in place so you can track how deep one respondent can send your marketing message virally on the social networks. Also always ask for a name and email so all the respondents and their friends can ne re-marketed to in the future and sent a newsletter, etc.

Exponential Growth

What is the potential here? It is exponential. Say you send 1,000 direct mail pieces. You can leverage that to upwards of 3 times the people through social networking. That is 3,000 people for 1,000 mailers! You will also see your response rate go from the typical direct mail range of .5% – 2%, to pushing 20% – 30%. Wow! And your marketing cost is still pretty much the same provided you can handle the web marketing side in-house. That doesn’t count all the email addresses you have mined for future marketing, which in this scenario could amount to 500 – 600 email addresses!

Here’s an Idea…

If you market to consumers. Target prospect rich neighborhoods by putting the same offer as a Stick Um on a pizza delivery box. This way you get around the clutter of the mail and all the junk mail competition and go straight on the refrigerator of your target market. Throw in the social web viral marketing platform, and you have a killer, cost effective marketing campaign.

Think about all the possibilities! You can really improve the reach, effectiveness and profitability of your Direct Mail offline strategy when combining it with good  SEO Strategy using the Web Social Networks.

About The Guest Blog Writer

Frank Goley works for small and medium size companies in the capability as an experienced business consultant, business turnaround consultant, business plan expert, business plan writer, business coach, small business consultant, business planner, marketing consultant, online marketing consultant, seo consultant, and business plan consultant for ABC Business Consulting. Frank is considered an expert in writing, developing and implementing business plans, business turnaround plans, funding business plans, marketing plans, strategic plans and web marketing plans. Frank offers comprehensive business consulting, business coaching, business turnaround consulting, along with web seo, web development and web marketing consulting, to small and medium size companies. Frank is the author of a business plan book, The Comprehensive Business Plan Workbook – A Step by Step Guide to Effective Business Planning, and he has over 50 published articles and e-books on business success strategies. He also writes the Business Success Strategies Blog and publishes the Business Success Newsletter.