Automation has made many aspects of our lives easier, both professionally and personally. If you’ve ever used dictation to send a text or have separate “home” and “away” settings on your smart doorbell, you’ve likely benefited from automation.
When most people think of automation, they think digital. But automation has evolved to help us in the offline world, where its effects can be felt all the more keenly.
Case in point: Research shows that direct mail messaging has a deeper, more significant impact on our emotions than digital alone, resulting in stronger recall a full week later. Participants in the same study also demonstrated more neurological activity when interacting with direct mail versus online-based ads.
What is direct mail automation, and what can I do with it?
Direct mail automation is a technology that automatically prints and mails postcards, letters or other offline material based on a pre-programmed trigger. It also goes by the names “triggered mail” or “programmatic direct mail.”
Triggers can be programmed from your website, CRM (customer relationship management system), or a third-party source like Zapier, and these triggers can be based on behavior, data or timing — or any combination thereof. Contact details aren’t even required in some cases; the automation handles that for you while protecting everyone’s privacy.
Some examples of direct mail automation:
Ecommerce retailers can target browsers that abandon their shopping carts. The next day, those shoppers receive a postcard from you with a 15% off promotion to nudge them back online to finish their purchase. You can also target all website visitors regardless of whether your website has a shopping cart or not, though I suggest targeting people who spend at least 30 seconds on your site. This is usually called “direct mail retargeting” and works just like digital retargeting, but offline.
A moving and storage company could target homeowners whose homes were just placed under contract. Even inaction could trigger a mailer. Let’s say that as soon as a customer hits the 3-month mark of inactivity, they get a postcard in the mail to remind them to give you a call or make a purchase.