What are the benefits of direct mail?

In this blog, we take you through what it is, and the benefits it can offer you.

First of all, it’s important to understand what direct mail and fulfilment is. At NPS, we provide a full-scale printing service, and our products are known for their innovation and high-quality finish.

But once they’re printed, where do they go? With this type of service, we’re able to take your mailing list, then print, close, fulfil, and send your mail. The hassle is out of your hands.

It is a specialist service because it requires specialist equipment and skills. Without it, you’d have to source envelopes, manage mailing lists, utilise mail merge software, and warehouse your printed marketing products on your own.

What are the benefits?

Turning to a professional print company like NPS for your direct mail and fulfilment needs not only saves you time, money, and resources but also offers several additional benefits…

Environmentally friendly

Direct mail and fulfilment is an environmentally process if controlled correctly. You can provide us with GDPR compliant data – also referred to as “clean data” – to reduce the amount of print necessary to target the customers interested in your company.

You can also partner with NPS for your print – we are a carbon capture certified company and consistently take steps to ensure all of our processes are carbon neutral.

No opt-in required

To give consumers more control over how their data is used, the GDPR introduced a double opt-in requirement. This means that if you have someone on your mailing list, you need to double check that they want to receive emails. Great for consumer control, not so great for maximising the reach of your email campaigns.

You don’t need a recipient’s permission to send them correspondence. Of course, they can choose to be taken off your physical mailing list, but this is a great opportunity and bypasses the far stricter rules involved in email marketing. Email marketing 0, direct mail and fulfilment 1.

Won’t end up in the spam folder

Direct mail won’t infect your computer with a virus, ask for your bank details in order to transfer you a princely sum, or try and steal your information. It’s designed to be seen, and although some mail is sorted through by a gatekeeper, approximately 70% of direct mail is opened, whilst 79% is read for one minute or more.

Can’t be deleted

A great advantage of direct mail and fulfilment is its longevity. Some recipients will leave your mailing sat on their doormat for weeks until they chance to sort through the pile, others will tack it to their fridge, and if you find your print sat in pride of place on someone’s desk – well, you’ve outdone yourself.

The point we’re making here is that people tend to keep direct mail items around for longer than they would an email, which can be deleted as soon as it’s opened.

You can link direct mail and online marketing

Ever heard of multichannel or omnichannel marketing? Both are buzzwords floating around in the marketing sphere at the moment. Basically, customers are expecting a seamless experience across all channels – whether they visit you in store, log onto your website, tap into your app, or receive a coupon through the door.

As part of a multi-channel marketing strategy, you can use direct mail and fulfilment to provide your customers with completely integrated customer experience; transcending the barriers between print and digital. Direct mail and fulfilment sets the standard for all communications with the recipient thereafter and gives your customer a bit of your brand to keep.

In an age where consumers are bombarded with marketing emails and notifications day in, day out, being able to link your online and offline strategy offers you a significant advantage.

Choosing a direct mailing and fulfilment service allows you to distribute high-quality, personalised print in a professional manner, ensuring the same high standards are kept across all areas of your business.

Personalisable

Perhaps one of the most important benefits of this service is that it gives you the option to personalise the products you’re sending out. Using mail merge software, for example, we can correspond sections of your design with fields of your mailing list.

You can personalise things like names and locations, or other information provided by the customer and stored within your mailing list database. This advantage goes underrated – after all, customers are far more likely to hang onto a piece of print with their name on it than they are a generic copy.

Take our work for Elf for Christmas, for example. With our help, the Big Little Toys company is able to send out completely personalised advent calenders as direct mail products to children all over the world each Christmas.

Orders go through their website, where the customer is able to personalise the product by filling in details such as the child’s name, the elf’s name, the location, and who the child lives with. The product is printed and fulfilled by NPS and sent by Royal Mail to the customer.

The products receive 5-star reviews every year, and are a prime example of how direct mail can offer efficient, personalisable, and high-quality results for complex applications. You’re able to send out highly targeted materials that really grab the attention of your recipients.

Better results

Though we print and fulfil Big Little Toys’ products for their customers, you can use similar tactics to create impressively creative mailings as part of your marketing strategy. The possibilities are endless – forget postcards, plain-looking letters, and boring leaflets!

We can get creative with cut-outs, foldouts, spot colour printing, and all manner of special finishes to make your mailings stand out. The reality is, using direct mail properly gets better results, especially if you’re targeting your mailings to the right people, and using the right content to speak to them.

At NPS, our direct mail and fulfilment service is designed to be flexible, professional, and cost-effective. We work with you to make sure your message gets into the right hands, so you can rest assured you’re communicating as effectively as possible.