Solve Your Most Common Email Marketing Problems with PRINT MARKETING

Email marketing continues to increase, which is hurting its effectiveness, according to Ascend2's most recent email marketing study. Of the brands polled, over 70% are increasing the emails sent. Ironically, only 38% of respondents said their email marketing was successful. A big part of the reason for this is the volume of emails. We are all overwhelmed with more and more junk coming to our email box, and it's easy to delete emails just to clean up your inbox.

The top three email marketing challenges from the Ascend survey are as follows.

1. Competing for attention with Increasing email volume

2. Reducing SPAM complaints

3. Improving personalization

One way to help your email campaign is to combine it with print marketing. Print can address all three of the challenges mentioned above.

Where you might be competing with hundreds of other email messages in your prospect's email box, there is far less competition in the physical mailbox. Secondly, you won't have to worry about your print marketing being considered spam. Sending something in print causes you to be viewed as more credible and trustworthy. Plus, it is tangible. Over 65% of human beings are visual learners. Sending a direct mail piece is visual.

Although you can personalize email, it's not nearly as impressive as when you personalize printed material. Sending someone a birthday card, or anniversary card, or thank you card, in their physical mailbox, definitely stands out a lot more than  sending them an email with the same sentiment.

Direct mail also has staying power. When people get a direct mail piece that gets their attention, they often save it with the intention of future follow-up. It might even get buried in a pile on their desk and forgotten. However, there's a chance they could rediscover it at a later date and still respond. It's nearly impossible for someone to rediscover an email that was sent to them months ago.

Lastly, it has been proven time and time again that mailing a physical newsletter is far more effective than sending an email newsletter. If you do a good job with compelling content and mail it monthly, you will find newsletters to be a very effective customer retention tool.

I'm not suggesting that you stop email marketing. I'm simply recommending that you add print marketing to your arsenal to get your prospects and customers to recognize and respond at a higher rate.