6. Direct mail is more memorable and has a greater impact than digital marketing. Online media is overwhelming , from a dumpster-size load of emails to thousands of sites, apps, and communications. Standing out in all of that digital noise causes it to be extremely difficult to make an impression. However, if I mail you a letter with a real dollar bill stapled to the top (one of our control pieces) or some other “lumpy” or “object” mail, like a rubber duck in a box (another one of our campaigns for selling cybersecurity), you’ll take note and remember it. If you then follow up with a phone call, the person is far more likely to recall the “duck in a box” you sent when your sales rep calls. They most likely will not remember an email or LinkedIn message you sent, even if the message and offer is exactly the same. 7. You can reach nearly 100% of your audience with direct mail. When selling IT services, most MSPs will tell you their sweet-spot client is a CEO of a successful, profitable company with 20 or more employees; they can afford IT services and have enough employees that professional IT is a necessity. Those CEOs tend to skew older (45-plus years old) and are not as technologically savvy as the younger CEOs. These CEOs are not always glued to Facebook and LinkedIn, and many don’t use any type of social media at all (the marketing team of their company might, but they don’t have personal accounts they actively use). Even in our company, where our audience is very technologically savvy, we can only match 65% of our clients to Facebook and 87% to LinkedIn. Therefore, if I only used social media, I’d be missing out on a big chunk of our potential market that is not actively on those sites.
8. Direct mail is a more trusted media. I don’t need to tell you how most people are suspicious of emails coming from people they don’t know. Many are hesitant to respond to or click on an email from someone they don’t know. (Yes, clearly not enough or you all wouldn’t exist!) However, if someone takes time to mail a letter, prospects are far more likely to trust them to be an honest, real company instead of a hacker. 9. Direct mail is a way to build your email list. I often hear people saying they don’t use direct mail because they use email. But the question is this: How do you get someone to be on your email list (legitimately) if they have not subscribed or opted in? If you don’t have permission to email or text someone, using direct mail can help you build that permission-based list, as will other offline marketing campaigns, such as trade shows, canvassing, networking events, telemarketing, etc. 10. It’s a way to stay in touch with prospects and clients who have opted out of your email list. The majority of messages sent via email are blocked, bounced, or ignored (unopened). A 20% open rate is considered a success — but that means 80% of the people you emailed never saw your communication. Over time, you will have clients and prospects opt out of your email broadcasts, so how do you communicate with them then? Direct mail has a higher delivery rate than email. Think about that for a minute. Yes, email is faster. Yes, email is cheaper, and you can measure it. But if only 20% of your list is getting the message, you have to send out five times the total number to get the same message delivery as direct mail. Here's the point: I recently consulted with a client who is getting poor and rapidly declining response rates from his email marketing campaigns. He wanted me to give him some ideas for changing his approach so he could get the response (appointments, leads) he wanted. I offered a few suggestions and recommended that he incorporate direct mail and telemarketing to the mix to reach the unresponsive prospects on the list and/ or those who opted out. He said, “I can’t. It’s too expensive.” I asked him what he was comparing that too. He replied, “Well, to sending out emails.” My response was simple. I asked him if he meant the email that was failing to produce any results? I sent him packing with this advice: 1) Learn to think in terms of ROI, not just the expense or cost. There are hundreds of companies that use direct mail very successfully, including many of the MSPs in our community. Of course, as with any media, you have to do it right to make it work , but it absolutely can deliver a fantastic ROI. 2) If it truly is too expensive (and I doubt it if you’re selling IT services), find a way to make the economics work by raising your rates, offering an “A/B” option with “B” being a higher-priced, more profitable option (usually 10%–20% will take that option if packed and presented properly), or implementing upsells and making every client worth more by selling additional services (cross-selling). If restaurants with tiny margins and small, single sales can make direct mail deliver an ROI, an IT services company should be able to do it all day long. ■
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