Direct mail is not dead. However, it has evolved, and grabbing the attention of busy prospects is a bigger challenge than in the pre-digital days.

Using direct mail for lead nurturing can be a great way to improve your direct mail results while delivering useful content to prospects. Here’s how:

Target Your Content Appropriately

In a previous post, we talked about how to create an effective direct mail list. You can use those list segments you created to deliver highly targeted content to your prospects. Customize your message for each segment, so you’re addressing their unique needs, challenges, and worries. This means you’ll need to create several versions of each direct mail campaign, but that extra work results in more customers paying attention to your mail piece. According to Hubspot, leads nurtured with targeted content result in a 20% increase in sales opportunities.

Use an Inbound Marketing Approach

“Inbound marketing” has become a buzzword for a reason: it works. Delivering useful content to prospects to establish yourself as a helpful thought leader positions you as the solution provider in your niche. It also brings leads to you, instead of you having to send hard-sell messaging to them.

But how does this work with direct mail? Largely the same way as it does online. As with any inbound marketing campaign, you start by thinking about what your prospects’ needs, challenges, and fears are. Then, address those concerns with a piece of content, such as a free report. Then, your direct mail campaign can just nudge prospects toward that free, educational content – which they can receive in exchange for their email address.

One great benefit of using direct mail this way is that you can use your inbound marketing strategy for prospects you can’t easily reach online.

Follow Up

When you’re using direct mail for lead nurturing, you want to avoid the hard sales messages – but that doesn’t mean you just let your prospect fade away after they’ve received your educational content.

There are a couple of follow up methods that work great for direct mail lead nurturing campaigns. First, you can use personalized URLs (PURLs) on your direct mail piece. These custom URLs send each prospect to their own landing page (personalized with their name and relevant demographic information). You can deliver additional content via this page to make it attractive. Then, you can target prospects who visited their PURLs for quick follow-up with another piece of content.

Second, you’ll be gathering email addresses from prospects who want to receive the content you offered in your direct mail piece. You can deliver a targeted email campaign that offers further free content dripped to your prospect at regular intervals.

Using these tactics will help turn your direct mail piece into an inbound lead generation tool that nudges prospects along the sales funnel.

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