Why even Google relies on direct mail
Google is undoubtedly the most powerful online marketing conglomerate in the world – and yet the company still invests in print advertising, delivering it via traditional postal mail. In 2023, the search engine giant generated advertising revenue of around $306 billion USD! And believe it or not, print mailings are still a significant component of this multi-billion-dollar marketing strategy. How does this fit together? We’ll reveal it to you in this article.
Physical mailings pay off!
Why is this offline channel so important that even an online giant like Google can’t do without it? The following reasons and figures speak for themselves:
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- GDPR Compliance: You can reach nearly 100% of your customer base without needing opt-in consent. In B2B marketing, you can easily purchase company data including addresses and use them for prospecting via postal mail. Online, you always have to consider GDPR compliance.
- High Conversion Rates: Print mailings convert at an average rate of 3.7% in CRM marketing. But even in customer acquisition, letters often generate remarkable conversion rates and are also significantly cheaper than, for example, cold calling.
- Longevity & Convenience: Postal advertising is typically retained for an average of 17 days. Especially with complex products, they can be better understood, and your customers will make the purchase when needed or when they can afford it. By the way, 35% of all physical mailings are read by multiple people!
- Cross-Channel Marketing: Reach your customers with targeted advertising messages along the customer journey – both online and offline. If, for example, you don’t get a response to your emails, you can send a postcard or letter with a discount code to encourage offline purchases from existing customers. Such a combination can generate uplifts of more than 106%!
- Automation: With the right automation software, you can reduce the effort for printing and sending your print mailings by up to 80%! Send your postcards and letters at a specific time or to a specific target group – depending on the goals you are pursuing.
So why should your company forego these benefits? Google has long since optimized its direct mail advertising!
That’s why Google embraces intelligent direct mail advertising
Google is not only a pioneer in “data-driven marketing” but also harnesses its power for offline channels such as physical mailings. For example, the company sends out a large number of advertising letters to current and prospective advertisers every year. The company specifically targets businesses that are highly likely to need the core product AdWords or have already registered with Google.
The incentive: Each letter contains a $150 voucher for the first AdWords campaign. Not bad, right? This way, Google can further boost digital advertising revenue with programmatic print. And it’s quite successful! Newly founded companies often receive three to five letters with increasingly tempting bonuses. But that’s not all. Have you heard of the so-called refrigerator effect? We’ll explain what it’s all about.
Whitepapers
Our whitepapers about direct mail, CRM and programmatic print are available to download for you.
Boosted performance thanks to the refrigerator effect
You’ve probably experienced this scenario: It’s Monday morning, you open your email inbox, and you have to delete annoying promotional emails one after another. Who needs that? Now imagine you retrieve the mail from your mailbox in the morning, and you find a colorful postcard from your favorite store. The company personally thanks you for being a member for a year and gives you an exclusive 20% discount that you can redeem online or offline.
You appreciate this nice gesture and pin the postcard to the fridge to remember it – and voilà! That’s the refrigerator effect.And if the postcard even contains a QR code for the credit, you can automatically measure how well your offline marketing is performing online The result? Direct mail campaigns achieve not only the best conversion rates in the media mix, ranging from 4-10%, but also reach a response uplift of 10-50% due to their high relevance!
Automate and personalise your print advertising – with optilyz
optilyz’s powerful platform allows you to use physical mailing campaigns as systematically as your online channels. With just a few clicks, you can target selected segments with hyper-personalized postal advertising and surprise your customers with exclusive offers! Take advantage of our innovative approach and easily integrate letters, postcards & co. as additional touchpoints in your customer journeys. Find out which use cases are particularly suitable for print mailings in our whitepaper.
Do you have any questions or would you like to try our free demo? Then contact our team, and we’ll be happy to assist you!
