Have you started preplanning your holiday direct mail campaign? 🎁🎉☃️
We’ve got you. (And your paper selection.) 👏
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Do you need a print partner that understands your individual business needs?
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Solo Printing is committed to helping businesses, just like yours, boost brand visibility, increase revenue, and enhance customer retention through print marketing.
Getting Started
With the arrival of Fall, comes the craze of pumpkin spice, beautiful, changing leaves, and, of course, an influx of holiday advertising efforts.
During this time, it feels extremely challenging for businesses to stand out while trying to capitalize on the Christmas mood. Holiday marketing strategies that are successful must really try and develop a closer relationship with their target audience by engaging with customers on an emotional level.
Despite the competition, your business can’t give up! Reports show that US retail/eCommerce sales are expected to reach $236 billion in 2022. So, how can you become a part of winning group? Well, start your holiday/new year marketing initiatives early!
What Can We Expect This Year?
More than 70% of buyers polled in 2021 stated that some type of digital would be used during their Christmas shopping experience.
As a result, holiday marketing trends for 2022 cater to the omnichannel shopper with a combination of online and offline strategies.
With 58% of customers indicating that social media inspires and influences their holiday purchasing, it is clear that social media will continue to play a significant role in influencing consumer choices.
So, Where Do You Start?
Here are a few tips for a successful holiday print strategy:
✔️ Start your campaign early.
✔️ Get your target audience / data prepared.
✔️ Show gratitude to shoppers with custom promocodes.
✔️ Offer incentives and rewards.
✔️ Include intriguing visuals and designs.
✔️ Use quality paper and finishing.
✔️ Always include a clear headline and call to action!
Planning & Printing Your Campaign
More than 51% of consumers plan to start their holiday shopping before Thanksgiving. That’s because more individuals begin their holiday shopping earlier to save time and money on holiday shopping.
It’s important to keep in mind that since 2020, ecommerce has been the chosen route of shopping, online ordering, and virtual services. We all know that this came from the massive shift of purchasing habits and consumer behavior that resulted from the pandemic. Brick-and-mortar stores temporarily closed and people remained home.
In 2022, Brick-and-mortar stores have gotten somewhat back to normal, but the internet still remains the top channel for shopping.
So, like any holiday campaign, you’ll need to start with key objectives, accurate pools of data, and your selected marketing channels.
Think to yourself…
What do you want to share with your customers? When do you want to reach them? What do you want your call to action to be?
Your message should obviously call attention and invoke emotion to the holiday offers your company will be having during the end of 2022 or the start of 2023!
Think back to this past year. Has your business experienced any significant changes? Has your clientele shifted? If so, you’ll need to adapt your holiday content strategy’s messaging to suit your new target audience.
Audience Targeting & Marketing Channels
While some of the younger audience members rely on social media for company offerings, your older audience members will rely on direct mail marketing. Therefore, an omni-channel strategy works best throughout the holidays.
Studies show that 68% of marketing research respondents say the combination of digital and direct mail increases their website visits. In addition, another 60% of respondents shared that the alignment increases the marketer’s return on investment.
By aligning these two channels, your business will utilize an omnichannel campaign that will allow its campaign to further increase its ROI.
When creating your strategy, remember that direct mail is a popular channel among marketers because of its proven ability to generate repeat business and increase customer retention.
This is especially important during the holidays when your business needs to compete with a variety of other businesses offering similar products and services to yours. Why should your customers buy from you instead of them? Create a marketing campaign that shows them why.
During the Q4 period, there is an enormous influx of advertising efforts across all channels. However, only about 50% of companies report using direct mail in their marketing strategies. That means there is still a lot of room to have your message seen by recipients during the holidays, in comparison to digital marketing, which about 84% of companies use.
According to Marketing Charts, direct mail offers 29% return on investment even with the higher postage rates. This closely resembles the return on investment of social media marketing efforts, which remains at 30%.
When it comes to data…
Your target audience is the backbone of your marketing campaign. They will define the success of your campaign.
When creating a campaign, a lot of it comes down to the consumer behavior of your audience. It will affect your design, your timeline, even your budget on impressions. What works for some members of your audience, might not work for others.
That’s why A/B test designs are very beneficial to holiday marketing campaigns.
To begin, your business will need to create multiple attractive advertisement pieces that include a call-to-action message that not only helps you stand out, but lets your customer know they aren’t just one in a million.
How can you do that?
Well, everyone loves a good sale during the holidays and the new year. It can be as simple as showing your gratitude to your customers with tailored promocodes.
Use variable data printing to send them a postcard with a coupon.
For example,
- If your data has the contact information for:
- Taylor Smith
- 1111 Example Street
- City, State, Zip Code
You can have their tailored promocode on their specific mail piece to be: (PROMOCODE: TAYLORHOLIDAY).
Seeing their name statistically improves the chance for purchase.
At the end of the day, your customer is just a regular person that wants to feel recognized by the company that they are considering giving their money to.
That’s why corporate direct mail should always be hyper-targeted and personalized. Don’t just send out mass media hoping to catch a few fish.
Customizing each direct mail piece (whether it’s a postcard or a package) can increase your response rate by 135% (Compu-Mail, 2020).
Offer Incentives and Rewards / Use Intriguing Visuals and Messaging
You can also impress your customers by using your holiday or 2023 direct marketing campaigns to incorporate incentives or rewards.
For example, if you send out an incentive mailer mid-December, you can incorporate into the messaging that if your customers bring that mailer in the first week of 2023, they can receive 20% off their in-store purchase. This helps drive traffic and keeps your business top of mind in the new year.
Another option is including clip-on coupons or rewards points that can be sent out with your retail catalog mailers.
It really all comes down to the design and messaging of your holiday marketing campaign and how your audience will react to it.
Your customers and target audience members only want to hear from your business in a way that feels engaging and worth their time – especially during the holidays.
After your vision and creative copy comes to lift, there is a very important next step to the print marketing design process. Paper stock, paper finishes, and paper weight.
The type of paper you use is just as crucial as the actual design of your print marketing piece. Print marketing tools are representative of the products and/or services that businesses provide to their customers.
Coordinating your paper stock and design will help elevate the final impression that your print marketing piece will leave on its recipient.
Looking to create a print marketing campaign for your holiday offerings?
Solo is fully equipped to satisfy all of your print needs during the busiest time of the year.
Submit a request below and a member of our team will get back to you shortly!
