Every marketer’s dream is to develop loyal brand-to-audience relationships. But what can we do when we reach our ideal target? Direct marketing might seem like a commercially-driven method at first sight, but can be, in fact, a reliable source of valuable content and trustful communication. But to choose direct marketing for your next strategic campaign, you need to understand what are the benefits it can provide to you.

What is direct marketing?

When the goal is to communicate directly with your customer to build a personal relationship, direct marketing can be the best choice. That is because it allows you to avoid intermediates and communicate directly, thus improving your audience outreach. Another aspect that defines direct marketing is personalized content. Personalization helps advance customer relationships, as supported by 98% of marketers and enlisted by Hubspot. Moreover, 78% claim it has a“strong” or “extremely strong” impact. 

There are plenty of reasons why experts don’t overlook direct marketing when distributing their marketing budgets. The only thing left would be to establish what type of direct marketing suits your brand’s objectives and your audience best.

Types of direct marketing

Whether be it direct mail, telemarketing, or email marketing, there is no doubt that a successful campaign requires alignment. Your brand’s goals, identity, and audience’s needs and expectations should meet each other in the planning and creation process. And even though there are no real limitations on whether you can pursue one form or all of them, we invite you to understand their effects and benefits, as well as discover the trends surrounding them.

Direct mail

Direct marketing entails delivering personalized packages to your audience’s home or office. And while we have to acknowledge the higher costs and duration, we cannot retain from emphasizing the impact it has on your audience. 82% of millennials place greater value on printed promotional materials compared to digital mail. They acknowledge the time it took to create, print, and send out direct mail, unlike emails that can be created quickly and sent out in mass, according to Compu-Mail. Furthermore, direct mail increases response rates and ROI when integrated into multichannel marketing campaigns, as stated by PFL.

Telemarketing

When thinking of telemarketing, we think about calls, which might make us susceptible to misjudging its effectiveness. But telemarketing is exceeding the forecasts, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) being two of the revolutionizing additions to direct marketing as we know it. Moreover, there is a growing interest in Conversational AI technologies, with 80 percent of one survey respondents reporting measurable improvements in customer satisfaction, service delivery, and contact center performance, as reported by MIT Technology Review Insights. Higher customer satisfaction means enhanced revenue performance and customer lifetime value.

The benefits of telemarketing revolve around providing a more interactive brand-to-audience experience and immediate responses. It also represents an opportunity to offer clarifications when needed and measure your messages and efforts’ effectiveness in real life through direct feedback.

E-mail Marketing

E-mail Marketing doesn’t need further depiction since e-mail is one of the most appreciated and used channels for marketing. Its advantages are numerous, but the most notable are the high effectiveness and visibility, reduced costs, and the favorable impact that personalization has on your audience. In this regard, 95% of marketers found that their email marketing strategy was effective in meeting business goals in 2021, according to Hubspot’s The State of Inbound Marketing Trends 2022. In addition, B2C brands are more likely to find email marketing to be impactful. 

For those who report results from their marketing strategy, the experience of conducting e-mail marketing campaigns is not the only thing in common. They have well-defined objectives that they desire to achieve. Without a purpose, e-mail marketing can prove futile and even perceived as intrusive by your audience. Some of the possible outcomes of your campaign, as described in Hubspot’s report, regard improvement of customer loyalty and retention, revenue/sales increase, leads and website traffic generation, and brand awareness.

Why does the value of content make the difference for direct marketing strategies?

Even though the concept of direct marketing has been long associated with selling, you must refrain from thinking commercially when developing the strategy. Whether you choose direct mail, telemarketing, or e-mail marketing, your focus should be on how you communicate. You should still refrain from addressing self-interested CTAs or designing messages that lack the intent of actually catering to your audience’s needs. 

Brand-to-audience communication must offer useful insights and content regardless of the chosen channel. This way, it can retain your audience and transform their interest into loyalty. This is the reason why there is a growing interest in newsletter consumption. In the words of Forbes, newsletters contain helpful information about your company, as well as content designed to appeal to your audience’s goals and pain points.

How can Account-Based Marketing enhance your direct marketing strategy?

ABM, known as Account-Based Marketing, flips the traditional lead-based marketing and sales funnel into an account-based one. This activates the collaborative potential of marketing and sales teams, according to CMSWire. The purpose exceeds audience segmentation as it focuses on customizing your approach to individuals for a higher outreach. And you can achieve that by gaining personal insights of your audience members. These will help you to create valuable content and answer their real, identified needs. 

Conclusion

Direct marketing should not be overlooked when establishing your future marketing strategy. It can even suit your goals better. But to efficiently integrate your direct marketing into your next campaign, you need to understand its purpose and benefits. In addition, you must choose the format that aligns with your objectives and your audience’s needs best. And most importantly, remember that, regardless of your chosen approach, the key is to deliver valuable, relevant content.

If you want to create your own successful content strategy, book a call with us here.