I built a million-dollar online branding agency. And you don’t need me to tell you that we live in an increasingly digital world.

So you may be surprised to learn that some of the most effective marketing I’ve developed involved physical, old-school snail-mail.

There are a few different reasons why “old-fashioned” snail mail still works well.

First, we’re over-saturated with digital marketing. Email, social media, search engines, re-targeting – it’s pretty much impossible to get online without finding yourself bombarded by advertisers.

As a result, engagement is declining. Email open rates and click-through rates are trending downward. Cost-Per-Engagement on most forms of online marketing are increasing. For example, the cost to generate a lead using Google AdWords has skyrocketed over the past ten years. It’s still a profitable channel for many businesses, but not nearly as profitable as it was in the early days.

Second, and this is probably a side-effect of digital oversaturation, people seem to gravitate and appreciate real, physical, tangible marketing more today. Handwritten notes stand out. Real-world events, which create a real sense of community and person-to-person interaction, are more popular than they’ve ever been. That’s one major reason I believe that “snail mail” is making a comeback.

Five Direct-Mail Lessons I’ve Learned the Hard Way

Who you’re mailing to is much more important that what you’re mailing. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your mail campaign is – if it’s going out to the wrong target audience, it’s going to flop. So it’s very important that you’re sending it to the right list.

There are a few different ways to go about this. The most common is hiring a list broker or a specialist to find a list for you, matching your target market as closely as possible. If you’re going this route, it’s important to work with an expert that you trust, because again, mailing to the wrong list is a waste of money.

Second, and this is my preference, is mailing to a list that you’ve built yourself. At Spotlight Branding, I built a list of thousands of solo lawyer mailing addresses over just a couple of years. I did this primarily by using funnels – basically, by offering to send them an amazing free resource through the mail. Once we capture the mailing address, we add it to our list for future mailings. This is my preferred way to build a list because you maintain total control of the process, and you guarantee that the people you’re mailing to have already expressed an interest in your business and your products or services.

But building your own list does require time and effort, so if you decide to use a list that someone else has created, I can’t fault you for that. But it’s critical that you work with a pro that you can trust. You get what you pay for, and it’s worth spending a bit more money to ensure that your message reaches the right people.

Always make a specific offer and create a clear course of action. This is an easy mistake to make. The temptation for most business owners is to include a whole bunch of information and a bunch of “action steps” for recipients to take. Visit our website, call us, ‘Like’ us on Facebook, etc.

Instead, your marketing should include a specific offer – i.e., a free copy of an exclusive report – and a clear way to act on the offer. That could mean calling you on the phone, visiting a landing page on the internet, or showing up at your location. Make it as simple, direct, and easy to follow as possible.

Create urgency. It’s hard to motivate people to take action. By nature, humans are set in our ways and prefer the status quo to making changes. So in order to motivate someone to respond to your direct mail advertising, you have to create compelling reasons for them to act, and you have to create urgency to make them act now. Because if they don’t act now, they’re not going to act later.

Typically, the best way to do this is to make a compelling offer tied to a deadline. And you don’t want the deadline to be a long time off – you don’t the recipient thinking that they have plenty of time to act. Another easy way to accomplish this is to provide a limited quantity of whatever you’re offering – only the first 100 people to respond are eligible, for example.

Don’t let your mail go straight to the wastebasket. When you go to your mailbox each day, what’s the first thing you do? You sort it, right? You throw out the obvious “junk mail” and open the rest.

Well, you absolutely, positively, can’t have your mailings sorted as trash and thrown out.

Postcards are one easy way around this problem. Skip the envelope altogether and make your most compelling offer right away.

Otherwise, you need to get creative with your packaging. One way to do this is to include something with some texture inside your envelope, in addition to the letter itself. I’ve included two-packs of Advil (“Bad marketing gives you a headache,”) small plastic bags full of shredded money purchased from the US mint (“Stop wasting money on marketing that doesn’t work,”) among other things. Check out LumpyMail.com for more ideas.

One of my favorite campaigns involved mailing a full-size poster in a cylindrical cardboard package. The poster was entitled “Ten Ways to Create More Referrals for Your Law Practice” and in addition to the poster itself, I included a sales letter with a strong offer. I guarantee you, 100% of those packages got opened, simply because nobody is going to throw that away without looking at it first. Now, I doubt that anybody put the poster up on their wall, but that wasn’t the point. I was successful in making sure that my message got delivered, and we had a great response rate from the campaign.

Create sequences, not one-off mailings. I found that results were significantly better when we sent our mailings in a sequence, including 2-4 mailings spaced out by about 5 days. Remember, it takes multiple touchpoints to create action in most cases. So your first mailing, no matter how strong it is, is going to be ignored by many recipients. But when the second, third, and fourth mailing show up in their box, they’re going to be more receptive.

As an example, I sent a sequence that began with a strong, oversized postcard. It was followed 5 days later by the poster I mentioned above. 5 days later, another postcard. 5 days after that, a sales letter with some sort of bulky insert to ensure that the envelope got opened. This performed much better than one-off mailings.

For Best Results, Integrate Other Marketing and Sales Channels Into Your Mailing Sequence

In my experience, mail campaigns work best when integrated with other channels as well. Specifically, I’ve used email and phone calls from our sales team effectively. The key is to build a sequence where every step is choreographed and timed.

As an example:

Day One: Postcard Arrives

Day Two: Email Sent

Day Four: Personal Phone Call from Sales Team

Day 6: Lumpy Sales Letter Arrives

And so on. When you hit your prospects through multiple different channels in a relatively short time frame, your response rate will increase.

Bottom line: snail mail isn’t dead. And even if your business is online, marketing offline can still be very profitable. For example – have you ever noticed that Google likes to promote its AdWords service with physical, mailed postcards? Ironic, right?  

Direct mail still works, and it should be a part of your lead-gen strategy.

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As discussed in our previous blog entry, in order to create referrals, you have to create top-of-mind awareness with your network.

That’s why even top brands like Coca-Cola spend billions of dollars in advertising for this purpose. Here are three tools you can use to make this happen in your business.

Referral Tool #1 – Your Email Newsletter.

Every business should have an email newsletter sent monthly if not more frequently. This is an easy, effective, and completely scalable way to stay in touch with your entire network – your clients & customers, past customers, referral sources, prospective clients, and more. Think of your e-newsletter as a way to keep people engaged for months or even years after your initial conversations. At Spotlight Branding, we regularly sign up new clients who we originally spoke to years ago. When we ask them how they heard about us, they say something like “I visited your website a few years ago and I’ve been getting your email newsletter ever since. And now I’m ready to work with you.” It happens all the time. I think of our email newsletter as a fishing hook – once someone takes the bait, sooner or later we’re going to reel them in.

But there’s a big caveat. If your email communications are boring or spammy, your recipients are going to unsubscribe or stop paying attention. So the key to an effective email newsletter is to make it interesting enough to your audience that they stay engaged. And the best way to do that is to pack it with valuable and practical information that they can use to improve their lives while at the same time reminding them of what you do and why it’s so important. So, at Spotlight Branding, we fill our weekly newsletter with practical marketing tips and strategies for lawyers. Our goal is to make our newsletter such a helpful resource that lawyers look forward to getting it each week. As long as that’s the case, sooner or later, many of them are going to consider hiring us. Even if they don’t, they may well refer other lawyers to us.

An email newsletter is one of the simplest, easiest, and most cost-effective marketing tools available, and every business should have one.

Referral Tool #2 – Social Media.

Whereas an email newsletter is a more robust type of communication, social media is ideal for creating a higher volume of very brief interactions. These types of interactions are valuable – research shows that it often takes between 5 and 9 engagements with a brand before a consumer will make a purchase. Social media allows you to create those brief engagements very efficiently.

But you can’t be self-promotional if you want to build an engaged following. The key to building an audience is to provide value for your followers – share content that is practical, educational, and engaging. When your social media channels become a source of legitimately helpful information for your target market, you’re going to be successful.

I recommend that every business have a presence on Facebook and Twitter. If you market to professionals, you should have a presence on LinkedIn as well. (But don’t discount Facebook, even if your audience is primarily professionals. They’re active on Facebook as well, and at Spotlight Branding we’ve had more success reaching lawyers on Facebook than on LinkedIn.) Instagram is a great channel as well, but since it’s a visual platform, it requires a bit more creativity. Channels like SnapChat, Pinterest, and others can also be valuable, depending on your market.

The bottom line is that social media is a great tool for creating and maintaining top-of-mind awareness, which leads directly to referrals. Make sure you’re taking full advantage.

Referral Tool #3 – Your Print Newsletter.

A monthly paper newsletter – printed and mailed – is a great tool for top-of-mind awareness. Some people think that, because of the explosion of digital marketing, that there is no longer a place for “old fashioned” mail. This hasn’t been my experience. In fact, as digital marketing has grown, physical mail has worked increasingly well for my business and for many other business owners that I’ve consulted with.

In fact, I think the explosion of digital communications has created a bit of a backlash – many people now crave and enjoy the simple experience of holding a letter or a book in their hand and reading it. I know I do – at my home and at the office, I have stacks of paper newsletters that I enjoy reading and highlighting.

So if you can put together a monthly newsletter that provides value to your audience, it’s a great way to stay in touch. The same concepts that apply to an email newsletter apply here – make the focus of your newsletter providing practical, actionable information that will help your readers improve their lives or their business.

Of course, print mailings have one significant disadvantage as compared to digital marketing – cost. It can be expensive to print and mail thousands of pieces per month! So a few recommendations – first, work with a print shop that you trust.  I suggest going simple and low-cost – you still need to appear professional and stay consistent with your brand, but there’s no reason to go overboard with the design or the printed materials. Second, because a print newsletter campaign can be expensive, it’s important to closely track your results. Use a dedicated tracking phone number on your newsletter, so that you know when you’re getting phone calls as a result of the newsletter.

Want more marketing tipgs? Click here to sign-up for our exclusive Weekly Marketing Hotsheet. It’s packed with tips and ideas to help you generate more referrals and take your marketing to the next level.