How to Follow Up After a Direct Mail Campaign

KEY POINTS

• Why following up is a key part of ROI for your direct mail strategy
• 4 Steps on how to follow up after a direct mail campaign
• The easy way to follow up after direct mail advertising

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This direct mail campaign guest post is brought to you by our friends at ReachForce, the leading provider of B2B marketing data quality management services.

A direct mail campaign doesn’t end once your packages get delivered.

The beauty of direct mail and gifting is that they enable you to create more personable, authentic outreaches with your prospects to increase engagement. Where a lot of marketing and sales teams struggle, however, is perfecting the art of follow-up without turning people off.

Even with the most personalized gift you sent, you can’t expect a prospect to immediately follow up with a “thank you” message. People are busy. So you should always come up with your own plan on how you’ll follow up after every direct mail campaign to ensure you see maximum return-on-investment (ROI).

Here’s how you create a seamless but memorable experience that continues the conversation with your prospects.

4 Steps on How to Follow Up After a Direct Mail Campaign

Make sure you use direct mail to its full potential by crafting a seamless, organized follow-up process. Here is a four-step follow-up strategy once you’ve completed your direct mail advertising.

1. Create a direct mail follow-up timeline

After you launch a direct mail campaign, find out the estimated delivery time and then create a task or series of tasks to follow up once it’s received.

Sending a follow-up message the day of may come off as pushy, and many times the recipients haven’t even had a chance to open their package yet (and will not know what you’re talking about if you reference the package in your message). In addition, larger companies often take a day or two to route incoming packages to the right person.

2. Confirm receipt of your direct mail package

Always double-check that the package has, in fact, arrived before you follow up. We also recommend using a data management and enrichment tool to ensure your addresses are properly formatted, up-to-date, and complete so that your packages actually arrive at the proper place. This will save your team time since they won’t have to research the address and update the information.

Using Sendoso’s Send Tracker also allows you to see exactly when your package was delivered and if there were any shipping delays so that you can adjust your follow-up tasks accordingly.

3. Craft and personalize your follow-up email

Don’t just follow up with a generic “Hey, I saw you received the Spurs jersey I sent your way. When is your availability this week to chat?” message. Make sure to always mention why you chose that gift (reference back to a conversation, etc) or launched that direct mail campaign. Take the experience to the next level by following up with a personalized message based on their account and contact data to put your value prop in the context of something they can relate to.

You can even look into which tech tools your recipient is currently using and mention that your product has native integrations with them. Or, check out what industry they’re in and link a relevant company case study that shows your product’s impact. If you don’t have these data points in your CRM, consider ReachForce for contact and account data enrichment to reduce research time and increase sales velocity.

As you craft your messages, remember that direct mail is a more personalized approach to prospecting, so keep that consistent with your follow-up. Make sure your messages are tailored toward each of your recipients and their company’s pain points. And if you don’t know, ask. Make your message compelling!

4. Plan your direct mail follow-up strategy

Even though you’ll receive a delivery notification if you sent the items through a direct mail automation platform like Sendoso, hounding someone the minute their package arrives is a little aggressive. Give your recipient time to appreciate the gift and let it flourish. Who knows? Maybe they’ll follow up with you first!

If your recipient doesn’t respond to your first email, don’t lose hope! Make a cadence of following up at least three times in the span of two weeks and take advantage of the other communication channels out there (phone, LinkedIn, etc). In addition, stay top-of-mind with other account-based marketing tactics, such as following them and their company on Twitter and engaging with their posts. Maybe attend an event they host. You can use automation tools like Engagio to schedule emails within a direct mail campaign workflow.

How Should You Follow-Up on Direct Mail Advertising?

A personalized direct mail campaign is much more than picking out the perfect gift and mailing it off. Without follow-up, all those efforts could be wasted. Whether you send a follow-up email or phone call, following our four steps above can help make sure your direct mail follow-up strategy is in place and customized for your unique business.

Ready to run a direct mail campaign with no hitches? Request a free Data Health Assessment to learn how accurate your data is from the start and how ReachForce can improve your deliverability rates for both mailboxes. Or to learn more about personalized direct mail, grab a copy of Sendoso’s latest guide: Gifting–The Missing Piece of ABM today.

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