How to Integrate Direct Mail With Social Media

With social media an integral part of people’s daily lives, integrating it together with your direct mail can really help drive response. Have you considered adding social media? This will take considerable time and effort to plan correctly, so be ready to work hard. Is it worth it? Check out the case studies below and then decide.

Before you start, think about why you are considering integration. What are your goals? This gives you a guide post on what you need and how to create the campaign.

Let’s look at a couple of awesome examples of campaigns to give you some good ideas:

1. Chick-fil-A (Full Case study click here): They had two objectives — get a customer database and increase store traffic. The direct mail campaign gained unprecedented exposure with viral sharing. Five thousand plastic postcards were sent out, and due to the integration of social sharing, the campaign gained a total response of 14,124, a 279.8 percent response on their direct mail campaign.

2. Stein Mart (Full Case study click here): The objective was to increase store redemption through a referral program. This direct mail campaign gained national exposure with viral sharing. Twenty thousand postcards were sent out, and due to the integration of social sharing, the campaign gained a total response of 30,068, a 150.58 percent response on the direct mail campaign.

As you can see, social sharing can really give your direct mail momentum. Take the time to learn from the great ones before you start your journey. When you have a plan and strategy in place you will start off in a better position to generate great results. So how can you get started?

• Objectives: Carefully define your objectives. The only way to get what you want is to plan for it.
• Market: Who is your best target market? Identify and target them carefully.
• Design: You will need to do your normal direct mail design, but then also design for the landing page and social media.
• Offer: Your offer should be the same for both direct mail and social media. (Remember to incentivize sharing with specials for those who do)
• Capture: What information are you going to capture in order for people to get the offer? (Remember that in order to reward those who share your offer you need to know their social media accounts)
• Tasks: You will need to assign who is in charge of what. This will take social media monitoring software too so be aware of that.

Instead of creating the whole wheel again, use the case studies as a guide. You know it works, just tailor the plan to your needs. Your focus always needs to be on what will drive response from your target market. Will you have coupons, free giveaways or something else? Your offer is extremely important. In order to get traction not only for direct mail but also for social media you need to grab attention with and irresistible offer.

Formula for success: Take your current direct mail that is working well, create landing pages for people to visit, ask them to provide information that you want on the pages and to share it with others to get your offer. That is basically it, although there are a lot of details to fill in along the way. Do you think that these results can only be achieved by food and clothing stores? That is just not true. This formula can work for all types of businesses including nonprofits. Are you ready to get started?