5 Proven Ways To Use Direct Mail to Drive Customer Satisfaction

There’s a lot more time spent talking about how to measure customer satisfaction than its value. And the amount of time spent is cut dramatically when the topic is how to use direct mail to drive customer satisfaction.

It’s a shame, especially when you consider that:

• • Customers who consider themselves to be “totally satisfied” have a repeat-purchase rate three to 10 times higher than that of “somewhat satisfied” customers, according to InfoQuest;
  • Two-thirds of customers who had a good customer experience will keep patronizing that company, (per Retention Science);
  • According to crazyegg, existing customers will spend 31% more and will be 50% more likely to try new products compared to new customers; and
  • Half of all B2C customers will not patronize a business after a bad customer experience, and two-thirds of B2B customers will do the same (per getfeedback.com).

Satisfied customers are your best customers, and they do eight big things for your business, according to Kaizo:

1. 1. Reduce customer churn
   2. Boost customer loyalty and recurring revenue
   3. Improve efficiency and productivity
   4. Increase employee satisfaction
   5. Encourage brand advocacy
   6. Help you stand out from the competition
   7. Provide upselling and cross-selling opportunities
   8. Benefit other departments

You want this. And direct mail can help you achieve it.

Here are the ways effective direct-mail campaigns can benefit your business by improving customer satisfaction:

• • Providing meaningful contact
  • Serving as the linchpin for loyalty programs
  • Delivering powerful calls to action
  • Distinguishing you from competitors
  • Upselling your best customers

These are all great things that can benefit any business’s customer-satisfaction and customer-retention programs – but let’s consider them one at a time.

Providing meaningful contact

Let’s face it: an email is an email is an email. It has a subject line that strives to be personal, and some copy (but not too much) and a link, and that’s about it.

It’s hard for a business to stand out when the components of an email have been chiseled so firmly into digital stone.

Direct mail doesn’t have those constrictions. While it can and should be personalized, the personalization options are much greater.

To give you a comparison, a personalized email is like the birthday card you get from your HR team. A personalized direct-mail piece is like a birthday card from your mom.

You have so much more ability to speak directly to a good customer with direct mail. What do you say? That’s up to you – but a good direct-mail specialist can help you find the best ways of delivering the message.

One more thing about direct mail and its ability to deliver meaningful contact: No piece of direct mail ever got caught in a spam filter.

Think about that the next time you send an email and get the feeling that your message just got cast into digital purgatory.

Serving as the linchpin for loyalty programs

A loyalty program is a rare marketing win-win – a program that provides your customers something of value (offers and free stuff) while providing you with something of value as well (data on purchasing habits, particularly the purchasing habits of your best customers).

Loyalty programs are a great business move; the problem is when your loyal customers don’t join the loyalty program.

Why don’t they join? There could be a variety of reasons, from lack of tangible rewards to unwillingness to share personal data to pure laziness. However, one of the most important reasons is one of the simplest: They haven’t been properly asked.

We’ve stated multiple times that nothing makes a favorable impression like direct mail. With so much at stake in getting your best customers to sign up for a loyalty program, using mail to deliver a personal invitation seems like the perfect tactical use of this powerful medium.

If you have big plans for your loyalty program, use direct mail at crucial times to buoy enrollment, deliver offers, maximize personalization, and much more. Given the importance of these communications, direct mail seems like the perfect medium.

Delivering powerful calls to action

Not to beat up on email too much, but what are the usual calls to action you see in an email? “Learn more”; “explore our site”; “buy now”; “find the deals.”

Nothing wrong with these calls to action; they just seem to be a little … ordinary.

Now, consider the calls to action you can deliver in a direct-mail piece. You can:

• • Create a personalized offer – a highly personalized offer, if you have data from your customer-relationship-management system (CRM) feeding into your direct-mail program;
  • Send people to a PURL;
  • Use a QR code to deliver personalized content; or
  • Send an invitation with personalized content, highly designed and exquisitely printed, stimulating many more senses than any digital experience can provide.

Customer satisfaction starts with the feeling that your company really knows, understands and values them – and nothing shows your level of understanding like a highly personalized message with an equally personalized call to action.

Distinguishing you from competitors

One more time: Everyone sends emails because they’re easy to program and cheap to send. Never mind that huge percentages of these emails get caught in spam filters and that another big chunk gets deleted without being read because it’s just so easy to do.

Your competition is probably sending emails. So why do what they do? If you want to stand out, use direct mail for your messages. You will have a channel of attention all to yourself. What you do with it is up to you, of course, but a good direct-mail specialist can help with that.

Part of keeping your satisfied customers is keeping them away from your competitors. Direct mail is an important tool in that struggle.

Upselling your best customers

Remember that statistic we introduced to you at the start of this blog, the one that found that existing customers spend an average of 31% more and are 50% more likely to try new products?

Take advantage of those numbers by sending your best customers personalized or specialized offers via direct mail.

Not only will they appreciate the way you make them feel special (because direct mail is one of the best ways to make your customers feel special), but the more of their business you can retain, the less likely that they’ll buy from anyone else.

Remember that customer satisfaction isn’t a one-and-done thing. It accrues in a sort of “bank account” of customer goodwill. You always want to be making deposits into that account in advance of that rainy day when withdrawals may have to be made.

Direct mail is one of the most valuable and important ways of making deposits into that account.

Looking for innovative ways to build goodwill among your best customers? Contact us; we have ideas that have been tested and proven with businesses like yours.

 

By Dan Topel 6/6/22