This is out of the ordinary, I know. Me… a guy who achieved success in retail from being an early advocate of Internet lead management, video, and digital marketing… talking about the benefits of a traditional marketing medium. Stranger things have happened… 

Just because I believe in the power of online influence in the retail sales industry doesn’t mean I turn up my nose at traditional mediums, such as direct mail. As a matter of fact, I’ve seen some clients generate a solid return from their direct mail campaigns, but only when those efforts are digital. Let me explain.

Direct mail marketing is one of those things that is either ignored, or works incredibly well. There is no third result. Direct mail is viewed as either noise to the public or an opportunity to the consumer. However, a good friend of mine always said, the best thing about the Internet is that it’s quantifiable. For a long time, direct mail wasn’t truly quantifiable. Not until you layer digital marketing on top of it. If you want to place paper inside mailboxes around your PMA, here are 7 ways to make your direct mail digital.

1)   Dealer-branded Landing Pages
This isn’t uncommon. Many direct mail providers create landing pages for their clients, but they must be dealer-branded, and not offer-branded. There needs to be very limited things for the recipient/shopper to do on the site, but I’ve seen it work well when the end-user enters a special code on the page, and it immediately shows them all of their own personal information. This builds credibility that your dealership knows the customer and it isn’t solely a spray and pray piece of marketing fluff.  If the direct mail piece is for the common trade buy-back, this landing page should ask them to reconfirm their personal trade information as it creates legitimacy in the offer.

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