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How direct mail marketers can improve lead generation
Businesses from a wide variety of industries have taken up the multichannel marketing challenge. What does it mean? Despite the name, it doesn't have a lot to do with television or radio, although those are both kinds of channels that marketers can use to interact with customers. HubSpot gives a fairly concise definition of the practice, narrowing it down to the art of communicating with consumers through online and offline modes, such as email, social media, direct mail and search engines.
The hope of using multiple channels to target customers is to find precisely the right method, or methods, to connect with consumers on a consistent basis. While a lot of the fanfare in marketing is directed at the digital channels available to companies, it's important to realize the many benefits of direct mail, especially when considering a lead generation strategy.
Many companies lack quality leads
Allvoices cited data from 360 Leads finding that nearly 6 in 10 executives indicated their most pressing challenge is lead generation. In fact, out of roughly 80 percent of companies carrying out a lead generation campaign over the past 12 months, only 17 percent of companies have been able to hit their lead generation objectives.
If a company is using one or multiple channels to reach a target audience to improve chances at generating high-quality leads, it needs to achieve some fundamental goals for planning. First, HubSpot suggested creating buyer personas, which represent the ideal consumer a business is trying to attract. The information should come from actual data, including information drawn from existing customers who bring a company the greatest value both in terms of order size but also loyalty and lifetime value.
Another key point to keep in mind when creating a lead generation strategy is to establish a quota, Jennifer Matt explained on WhatTheyThink! In doing so, companies can provide their marketing team with a concrete goal of what they're expected to do on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. This practice is commonly known as developing a waterfall chart.
Follow the waterfall
The premise of this organizational tool is to get the sales and marketing departments to work together to create a realistic appraisal of their monthly lead generation goals and plot out on the X and Y axes where they should be on any given day. This tool helps both groups of people keep within a specified, ideal range so that sales representatives aren't inundated with new leads, but they're aren't in a dry spell either. In fact, if the marketing team generates and captures a surplus of leads, the company can potentially project a lower number for the following month or use the figure to anticipate stronger results and set the bar higher.
In spite of any monthly quota, there needs to be a standard for lead quality that marketers hit to ensure the information for prospective customers that's delivered to the sales team is worth their time and effort. In other words, companies need to score leads before distributing them to the sales reps.
Scoring involves a few steps, including looking at contact information to make sure that it's valid and each piece of information is cross-verified so that there's less of a chance for fraud. Some companies want only to target customers that fall within a specific:
- Demographic
- Geographic area
- Industry
With these strategies in mind, the next step is figuring out how to optimize each channel for maximum effect.
Lead generation strategies with direct mail
According to Dental Economics, direct mail strategies must go beyond simply mailing out massive volumes of postcards. In fact, even with mailing software to automate many of the manual processes in a direct mail marketing campaign, which lowers costs, businesses need to be smart about using their budget through this channel.
Track performance: There are a couple of ways to get clarity into a direct mail effort. For instance, call tracking is one of the most important components because it allows marketers to see where inbound phone leads generate from. Accordingly, each mail piece should have a unique phone number to show a company which direct marketing item generated not only the highest volume of leads, but also the greatest quality. This also helps companies attribute credit to the right source.
