Inbound Marketing Methodology for your Direct Mail Campaign

As defined, inbound marketing is a methodology that builds upon meaningful connections with customers by incentivizing prospect outreach to begin the buyer journey.

Essentially, this method prioritizes creating relevant content to for ideal audiences and building upon that exchange rather than businesses performing customer outreach themselves. 

If outbound marketing is like taking pictures of birds you find during an outdoor hike, then inbound marketing would be like setting up bird feeders to take photos of birds in your backyard. While both methods fit within a company’s overall marketing strategy, the distinction lies in the initial customer interaction and who approaches the other first. 

Why the Inbound Strategy Works

One of the major advantages of the inbound methodology is its ability to attract ONLY your ideal audience. This method is highly appealing to marketers, as digital outbound strategies usually market to a large, untargeted audience – leading to low ROI and less qualified customers. 

Not only does digital marketing struggle with finding the right kinds of prospects, but it also fails to engage their audiences into paying customers. 

Companies that overly rely on their digital marketing outreach campaigns often fall disgruntled with less sales – as most users dislike excessive promotional content in their inbox. 

For companies that heavily lean on their digital marketing, direct mail can be a major advantage in the inbound marketing methodology.

By nurturing new relationships with engaged customers through personalized messaging and impactful content, direct mail adds a new element to your marketing framework among your most qualified prospects and customers.

The Inbound Marketing Strategy for Direct Mail 

While direct mail is typically considered an outbound strategy, it is also an excellent tool for a company’s inbound strategy needs. Especially during a time of endless online content, this marketing channel stands out in a prospect’s physical mailbox.

Direct mail offers a supplemental option for those looking to increase prospect awareness and nurture future customer needs. This means using the inbound marketing process to engage with customers from discovery to purchase. 

The inbound marketing content strategy fits into three steps: Attract, Engage, and Delight:

1.) Attract (Turning Strangers into Prospects)

The attract stage in the buyer’s journey consists of incentivizing the right audiences towards your brand – often in the form of digital content such as SEO, video, and social media.

At this stage, your marketing content is “planting the seeds” to attract the right people through industry content, like a large sign outside your store to entice people to visit. 

Perhaps a prospect initially finds your company’s blog post discussing the best type of fertilizer for their gardens. The bottom of the blog can contain a call-to-action (CTA) for a newsletter sign-up, a monthly catalog, or even a paid membership for exclusive home gardening and lawn care content.

2.) Engage (Turning Prospects into Customers)

In this stage of the buyer’s journey, the prospect has identified their pain points and is actively looking for solutions to their problem. When the prospect has reached this step, companies can align themselves as the answer to these challenges through targeted direct mail content. 

For instance, the same gardening catalog can offer insights into proper gardening techniques, but it can also offer solutions for organic pest control with custom netting or how to fix your soil pH with the company’s premium fertilizer. 

The goal of the engage stage is to offer your company as the solution to your audience’s ongoing challenges. If your prospect has built up a trusting relationship (through the attract stage) then they are already more inclined to view your company as the answer to their problems. 

3.) Delight (Turning Customers into Promoters)

The delight stage occurs when a company fosters an ongoing relationship between itself and the customer. This step hinges on how a business plans its content outreach to continuously attract and delight customers even after the initial purchase. 

Re-targeting is an especially great way to keep your audience tied to your brand. A small thank-you letter from a charity, a coupon with a special code, or even a survey could all inspire future purchases and customer advocates for your company. 

And because direct mail is a physical medium with an unintrusive presence within the home, one campaign can be “live” within a house for several weeks – inspiring future company interactions once a customer recognizes another pain point.