Savvy marketers know that personalized print and digital communications are symbiotic. Creating compelling, immersive, and engaging customer experiences requires reaching audiences via multiple touchpoints that combine print with myriad digital media. Success with such a multichannel approach requires that the channels be connected—not siloed. It takes the right amount of each of the components in an omnichannel marketing campaign to drive success.
Understanding and articulating print’s role in the modern marketing mix is paramount to delivering the most impactful campaigns—ones that effectively boost brand awareness, enhance audience engagement, increase response rates and elevate the overall customer experience.
Below are some points to keep in mind when developing your next multichannel campaign:
Print Speaks to Millennials
This fact is important because millennials are estimated to have around $1 trillion dollars in buying power today, according to Futurum Research.1 And – though it might surprise you – 87 percent of millennials enjoy receiving direct mail according to the USPS.2 Generations born in the digital age value the tactile quality of paper, and research reveals that millennials spend more time with physical ads than digital ones.3 In one survey of Millennials, 62 percent of respondents said they had visited a store in the past month based on information received in the mail—more often than Gen Xers or Boomers had.4
Print Provides a Welcome Reprieve From Online Fatigue
If you’ve experienced digital oversaturation, you’re not alone. Like many things, digital media is best in moderation, and when overdone creates a consumer boomerang effect back toward direct mail, which cuts through the digital clutter to reengage with customers in a fresh way. If your marketing strategy is executed solely online, chances are your messages are getting lost among the digital noise.
Print Pairs Well With Social Media for Effective Market Penetration
What better channel than social media to create awareness and build anticipation around upcoming direct mail campaigns? Marketers can easily tease and generate excitement via social media that builds trust and breeds familiarity with a brand. Social media can also offer insightful analytics into what content resonates with specific demographics most, allowing for more intelligent, data-driven decision-making when fine-tuning direct mail messages and target audiences.
Hyper-Personalized Print Drives Brand Loyalty
New technologies are emerging to help marketers utilize data in more meaningful ways, drive efficiencies in communications and target particular audiences. Add to this the consumerization of everything—individuals expect and appreciate targeted, content-specific direct mail that speaks to their individual preferences. Personalized mail makes consumers feel more valued and significant, which helps to create a stronger brand connection and establish brand loyalty.
As we continue to move toward increased personalization for all types of marketing, digital inkjet solutions are ideal when it comes to print. Most recently, Sepire added a second RICOH Pro VC70000 continuous feed inkjet platform to our technology mix, which produces extremely high-quality output quickly and helps ensure our capabilities expand along with demand so we can continue to scale as we grow.
Automated Direct Mail is Good for Business
Modernizing your direct mail campaign through automation can take your omnichannel marketing strategy to the next level. Automating direct mail also saves time and money, improves accuracy, enables personalization and customization at scale, improves mass mailing, and builds deeper customer connections.
The Role of Print is Evolving, and it’s Still a Star
Used alone or—ideally—in tandem with digital media, print captures attention, drives engagement, bolsters credibility, and contributes to a consumer’s overall experience with a brand. The evolution and expansion of communications options, formats, and channels are constantly in flux and provide marketers with a multitude of choices to reach customers more personally and effectively and to enhance the customer experience with their brand. Print plays a critical role in this journey.
If you’re unsure of how to effectively integrate print into your multichannel marketing campaign, reach out to your business partners to source advice. They may have tips to help you maximize the return on your marketing investments and increase response rates using print as part of your next multichannel campaign.
1. Marketing to Millennials, Futurum Research
2. Enhancing the Value of Mail: The Human Response, Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Postal Service
3. “Advertising Effectiveness and Age,” USPS Office of Inspector General, Feb. 25, 2019.
4. “Millennials and the Mail,” USPS Office of Inspector General, Jul. 30, 2018
The author, Michelle Steinberg, is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sepire.
