3 huge reasons why you should use direct mail marketing

Direct mail can be annoying. It’s true. It can also be incredibly effective for finding new clients and improving sales.

If direct mail was always annoying, then it wouldn’t still be a common practice in successful advertising. So there must be a correct way of doing it. Don’t be swayed by bad examples.

(image courtesty: The Agency Ltd)

64% of Direct Mail recipients visited a website in reaction to direct mail.Click To Tweet

Here are a few reasons why you should be using direct mail for your real estate marketing:

1. Effective audience targeting

The main reason why direct mail can be annoying is because it’s something you don’t want.

That’s usually the result of poor (or cheap) targeting. Direct mail has great capability when it comes to targeting specific audiences. Depending on the level of effort and money you want to go through, you can be very specific with making sure your advertisements get to the people who are most likely to become your clients. It can be difficult to get that level of targeting through most other mediums.

Targeting starts with asking yourself what kind of people are most likely to become your future clients.

Based on your business model, what type of clients are you looking for?

What is their income level?

What geographic areas are you growing your business?

Do you want more buyers or sellers?

These questions will help you narrow down your target audience for each campaign so that you can get the most out of your dollar. Don’t be the annoying direct mailer.

It’s also important to note that your targeting can change between campaigns.

For example, perhaps you want more buyers because you have a very high number of listings. You decide to target buyers over sellers then. Your messaging and mailing lists should reflect that decision. When you’re more comfortable with how many buyers you have, then perhaps you’ll want to switch to targeting sellers. Again, your messaging and mail lists should change to reflect that.

2. Better response than digital

A study sponsored by the U.S. Post Office proves that physical ads lead to greater emotional engagement and recall.

Compared to individuals exposed to digital ads, the study says, “individuals who were exposed to physical ads experienced heightened excitement as well as a greater subjective valuation and desirability for the items advertised.”

There’s something to be said about holding something tangible versus seeing it on a digital screen. You perceive the greater effort involved and feel valued. For an industry driven by relationships, real estate can benefit strongly from this.

Lucidpress guide on real estate marketing provides the following:

“40% of people will give new business a chance after receiving direct mail”

40% of people will give new business a chance after receiving direct mail.Click To Tweet

“54% want to receive mail from brands they’re interested in

54% of people want to receive mail from brands they're interested in.Click To Tweet

“56% believe print marketing is the most trustworthy form of marketing

56% of people believe print marketing is the most trustworthy form of marketing. Click To Tweet

3. Easy to get started

If this is something you’ve never tried before, don’t worry. It is a process of trial and error, but doesn’t take much to get started.

You can use a flyer creator to design something attractive. Quality is especially important in direct mail because it reflects the quality of your business. It also needs to stand out against the clutter of other mail that people receive.

Try figuring out how you can target potential clients. It’s smart to focus on geographical areas, especially neighborhoods where you have already seen success.

Next, you need to distribute it. If you’re starting out with a small list, you can probably mail your advertisements independently. With a larger number of recipients, you’ll likely need to do a media buy with a delivery service or use a mail marketing agency. If you go with an agency, they can even take care of design for you, in case you don’t currently have the bandwidth for that.

Final thoughts

Is it right for every real estate agency? Perhaps not. Determining factors will be based on the effectiveness of your current marketing, costs, and ability to create quality content. It certainly is a force to be reckoned with in the real estate industry though. Make sure to have a good call to action in each campaign. To make this effective, you need to motivate recipients to contact you in some way.

Best of luck! Please comment below with your direct mail successes and tips.

Author Bio

Christina Sanders is a marketing expert with 7 years combined experience in digital marketing and communications. She is currently associate manager for Lucidpress a design and brand management platform. She has spoken on marketing analytics at multiple conferences including the eMetrics Summit in Milan, Italy and the SMX conference in London.