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lady smiling looking up at camera in rose tinted glasses

Direct Mail Marketing

Personalised and powerful, direct mail helps brands build vital long-term relationships and boost the bottom line. It engages customers and offers outstanding creative opportunities. It’s where the magic happens.

smiling man looking at direct mail

What is direct mail?

Direct mail is a form of direct marketing. It's addressed marketing mail sent to a targeted audience of customers or prospects to advertise a brand, its products or services. Mail can form an essential part of a marketing strategy, working on its own or with other forms of media. Campaigns with mail in the mix are 52% more likely to report Return on Investment (ROI) benefits*? Campaigns are also 75% more likely to report profit uplifts* and 65% more likely to report market share uplifts* when mail is included. 

* 'WARC Driving Effectiveness with Direct Mail’ 2021

See revenue soar with mail

What are the benefits of using direct mail?

There are many benefits of using direct mail as part of your marketing or communication channel mix. 

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Physical connection

Mail is a uniquely powerful channel for developing relationships with customers or prospects. Mail can physically and personally connect your brand with your audience. It literally puts your brand and message into customers’ hands – and makes it relevant to them.
Create a physical connection

Proven to drive epic results

Leading brands like Google, Specsavers and HelloFresh use mail to deliver strong commercial results . It has even been proven that adding mail to a brand's marketing channel mix improves the performance of other channels used in a campaigns.
See revenue soar with mail

Can be a sustainable choice

Mail can be a sustainable choice. If you make the right, informed decisions.  Done in the right way using the right materials, mail can be part of a circular, regenerative economy.
Create more sustainable campaigns
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Targeted and engaging

Direct mail can be highly targeted. Using data, you can precisely target the right audience to receive your mail campaigns. Making your campaigns work harder, smarter, and more effective.
Learn about targeting options
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Creative and unique

Mail offers unlimited creative possibilities making it a powerful storytelling tool for brands. This can make your brand and messages cut-through, capture attention and become more memorable.
Get some inspiration

Trusted among all age groups

While fake news and misinformation may thrive online, consumers continue to have confidence in mail, building positive brand perception. 71% of people say they completely trust the mail they receive.
The importance of trust in brand building

Examples of Direct Mail Campaigns

Below you can see some direct mail case studies and success stories.

Direct Mail case studies

 

Hello Fresh home movers make a fresh start direct mail

HelloFresh has recipe for winning new customers using targeted direct mail

HelloFresh significantly expanded its customer base by effectively targeting Homemovers with direct mail. Partnering with PSE, they used Royal Mail Homemover data in their September direct mail campaign.

Key to this success were unique QR codes and interactive voucher cards, driving customers online to explore HelloFresh’s offerings. This innovative strategy led to a 64.5% uplift in response rates and a 26% improvement in CPA. This success has made Homemover targeting a year-round strategy for attracting new customers.

Virgin media leaflet

Virgin Media tackles high customer churn with data-driven mail

Virgin Media tackled high customer churn by redefining value through a tailored direct mail campaign. Research revealed that discounts alone wouldn't change perceptions, so they upgraded 91,000 high-risk customers’ packages with extra benefits. The campaign, featuring a distinctive red envelope and the message 'Just because,' effectively conveyed genuine value.

This strategy significantly reduced churn and achieved a remarkable return on marketing investment (ROMI) of 179:1, showcasing the effectiveness of targeted direct mail in enhancing customer retention.

How to create an effective direct mail campaign

A practical step-by-step guide to help you produce a successful direct mail campaign. We have developed this guide to offer you expert advice and practical steps to help you create effective mail campaigns. 

Download the guide

Other formats of mail marketing

As well as direct mail, there are other formats of mail marketing or advertising that brands can use within their media plan. These are listed below.

Door drops
 leaflets and flyers

Door Drop marketing, otherwise known as ‘door drops’ include mail formats like flyers, leaflets and postcards. These are perfect for local and large-scale campaigns. Door Drops are unaddressed, scalable and a cost-effective way to get your brand into people’s homes, they’re even used by 80% of the UK’s top advertisers. Read more

 

 

Partially Addressed Mail

Partially Addressed Mail is optimised and effective for customer acquisition. Rather than targeting individuals, brands can send mail to groups of households based on their postcode and interests. You can either ‘top-up’ customer rich postcodes or target like for like postcodes of similar geodemographic profiles. It's an affordable way to find new customers. Read more

 

 

Catalogues and Brochures

Catalogues and brochures are brilliant for brands because they inspire purchase ideas and effectively convert interest into sales. They foster long-term customer engagement and stand out in a crowded digital landscape, offering a memorable, tangible experience. Read more

 

 

Why leading brands use direct mail

As a marketing channel, direct mail has huge advantages for brands. It offers flexibility, because the format and audience can be tweaked and targeted as needed. You can pinpoint the exact people you want to target using your own valuable first-party data or you can get some help with targeting using trusted third-parties. And it provides exceptional creative possibilities, making it ideal for storytelling.

Direct mail excels at building customer relationships. It becomes part of the home and is engaged with 4.2 times on average. 45% of direct mail stays in households for a month or more. So it’s not surprising that it drives further activity: 33% of direct mail leads to commercial actions, whether that’s purchasing, going online or visiting a store.

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