Dove Direct Print and Marketing Blog, “Effective Ways to Reach More Customers”

Welcome to the Dove Direct Print and Marketing Blog. Today's post, "Effective Ways to Reach More Customers," addresses how brands and marketers can reach more prospects with personalized communications, thus avoiding the trial and errors commonly associated with sales strategies. While the marketing community is comfortable using digital tactics to target potential customers via emails, blogs, videos, banner ads, pay-per-click choices, social media posts, and communication bots; this form of marketing will only evolve and multiply.

Of course, every organization wants to find more customers while keeping existing buyers happy. We contend that the best way to find more new customers is through direct mail marketing. However, you won't grow your customer list if your target list is not optimized. Further, how you manage a list of potential new customers can be the difference between stagnation and growth.

To reach and engage more prospects, the most successful organizations understand how to use direct mail marketing. Historically referred to as direct mail, this form of prospect engagement has evolved during the digital revolution with new technology, increasing trust, and general acceptance. If you're looking for ways to find new customers, efficiently and effectively, you should work with a print and mail provider whose solutions include data management, variable digital printing, and a certified fully automated MLOCR presort bureau. An integrated solutions provider can help you through the various stages of building a pathway to more customers.

The Right Customers

Identifying and targeting the right customers can be difficult. To make it easier, marketers employ data management solutions that now include a range of variables that feed into digital printing systems, thus integrating specific elements of the individuals or target groups with pinpoint accuracy. These elements that make-up data's variable directives can include demographics, psychographics, region or zip codes, purchasing habits, online behavior, social media posts, product reviews, income levels, education, home ownership, travel habits, and so on, depending on the requirements and the brand's data collection.

Often, potential customers appear in lists that the brand may already possess in-house. Alternatively, brands can purchase consumer or business lists from a data provider in search of the right customer. These providers offer target criteria lists for business, industry, specialty, or some other criteria. Once in hand, you can delineate the mail lists by various criteria depending on the brand's industry and strategic requirements.

While, the right customers are all around us, and given the amount of online data amassed by brands and marketers, many prospect messages will never see the light of day due to the sheer volume of messages funneled through digital tunnels.

To find and engage more prospects, over and above, investing more dollars in digital properties, advertisers can direct more prospects to those online destinations with direct mail marketing solutions.

The Variable Digital Printing Aspect

Any zip code in America can receive a piece of mail; however, mail addressed to a specific recipient with a particular offer is personalized and more effective than an unaddressed document. Merely having a first and last name is no longer enough to generate the level of responses and engagements that result in sales and higher ROIs. In a nutshell, variable digital printing, aka, variable data printing, aka VDP, is the print technology that makes direct mail marketing a direct mail function.

Interestingly, a Google search for variable digital or data printing fails to produce enough search results to register among trending data. Direct mail, direct marketing, and to a lesser extent, direct mail marketing do result in trending data searches. One could make the argument that folks don't want to know what propels direct mail, or its ability to deliver truly personalized messaging. However, that's akin to people not caring about the type of engine that's in their car; yet without the engine, the vehicle is going nowhere. While this is a simplistic view of car drivers concern and their vehicle engine types, it illustrates a level of nonchalance.

Brands and marketers maintain a similar view when they make statements such as, "I want my collateral to reach folks on time." Reaching folks on time is one thing, however; reaching the right people with the correct personalized message, including colors, content, graphics, and a call-to-action is an entirely different ballgame. Variable digital printing is the technology that makes all of those elements possible.

The Delivery

However you choose to assemble your offering, a full-service printing and mailing provider can extend lettershop and fulfillment services, secure lifecycle management solutions, marketing production, and support, as well as, mailing services. An in-house certified mail clerk can ensure that your deliverables are stamped, sorted, tracked, and delivered to the right address with the right offer. This type of mail delivery can represent enormous savings on postage, delivery, and confirmation services.

Timing is everything when it comes to marketing and advertising. Sales promotions, product launches, rebates, transactional billing statements, subscriptions, healthcare plans, insurance, policy changes, and a host of other customer-centric offerings all share a common theme, timing. Once the moment has passed, it's over. Therefore, it is incumbent upon all brands and marketers to focus on the timing aspect of marketing. The timing makes all the difference when direct mail collateral reaches the right targets at the right time. On time direct mail delivery is just as important as the contents of the direct mail piece.

So while people search for direct mail, direct marketing, and other mail-related print terms; the most effective search is for a provider that offers data management, variable digital printing, lettershop and fulfillment, mailing, marketing and production management support, and secure data life cycle management. By having an integrated solutions provider working with you on a marketing project, you ensure that your lists are accurate, the offering is addressable to a target with specific messaging that is deliverable and trackable.

The Net-Net

Using direct mail marketing is an effective marketing tactic that dramatically improves the chances of finding and reaching more customers. Online destination engagements will rise with more product sell through. This helps to explain why 78% of car owner purchases are driven by direct mail, while 73% of consumers prefer direct mail for brand communications. Thanks for reading "Effective Ways to Reach More Customers."

Let's have a conversation about direct mail strategies, printing, print software, transactional documents, variable digital printing, brand equity and unified marketing collateral during our next Open House. We invite you to join us for an hour or two, July 25, from 10:30 am to 4:30 pm. Let us show you how to improve your document processes to optimize your workflow, reduce your costs, and maximize your organization's printing, letter shop and mailing capabilities. Dove Direct does have an official USPS certified bureau located within our offices that will save you time and money. And, if you bring us your files, we will create a demo file for you. For more information call Carla Eubanks at 404-629-0122 or email Carla at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Dove Direct, your Atlanta based print and mail solutions provider offers organizations end-to-end data, printing and mailing solutions: Data Management, Variable Digital Printing, LetterShop and Fulfillment, Fully Automated MLOCR Presort Bureau, Marketing and Production Management Support and Secure Data Life Cycle Management.

If you don't want to wait for the Open House, you can reach Dove Direct today by calling 404-629-0122 or use the contact form for Dove Direct.