With the increasing demands of digital marketing or social media, many insurance companies need to remember the benefits of using direct mail to achieve success. Although digital marketing is highly successful, direct mail can be an effective tool because it physically impacts potential customers which helps in increasing the business’s presence and conversions.
To ensure you don’t miss out on this crucial marketing strategy, we will show you how you can get more success using a direct mail campaign. If done right, you will see a gradual increase in clientele, lead generation, response rate, and a lot more.
Do Mailers work for Insurance Companies?
It is essential to market your business if you want to generate revenue. But doing so, and how you spend your marketing dollars, is not as simple as you think.
First, decide what you want to be known for in your marketplace. Although it sounds like an “old school” way to spend your marketing budget, direct mail is still a strong and potentially successful tool.
Identifying Your Market Goals
Before you even think of direct mail’s content or format, you should have a clear image of your goals for this particular campaign you are planning to send using direct mail printing and mailing service.
By mapping out and describing what you have to get through direct mail you can focus your message, target audience, and other essential elements to this strategy’s approach more easily.
Some common goals include:
- Increased clientele
- Informing existing and potential clients about a new service.
- Increasing client traffic in-store or on online forums
- Promote any of the particular insurance products
Once you have this goal in mind, make sure to keep a record of it, so you refer to it later. This way, when time passes by and more decisions have to be made, you can refer to your goals and identity if a particular design goes right with it or not.
Whom are you targeting?
Your audience is undoubtedly the most influential factor in this entire marketing operation. You must distinguish who this content is made for before you start writing.
A common direct mail marketing mistake is that direct mail printing companies try to be way too inclusive with the content. As a result, their information is often de-normalised and interests few readers, as they don’t feel it to have some reference to them.
You should have a clear image in your mind of the ideal direct mail recipient. Make sure this recipient’s interests or preferences align with your brand’s goals, so everything remains focused.
The more focused you are in the early stages, the more successful this approach will be, and the less amount you will waste convincing people to avail of your services.
Consider important elements of this ideal recipient of direct mail. Are you targeting specific:
- Age (for ex: convincing Gen Z to start insurance early)
- Demographic (for ex: lower rates of individuals who don’t have insurance within a particular ethnicity)
- Gender (for ex: the gender pay gap in car insurance rates)
- Socio-economic class (for ex: making insurance easier to access or affordable)
You may also want to consider how informative your ideal recipient is about Finance or insurance. If you are trying to target existing clients, you don’t have to be too descriptive about yourself or your business, whereas those elements are significant if you are trying to target new readers to increase clientele.
All of these aspects will affect your message, preferred language, location of direct mail you’re sending out, and many other factors.
Moreover, consider these points:
- Create a clear message (considering who are you writing for, what are you selling, why should they purchase it, when they do need to act, how they can take action, and more)
- Choose the right format
- Create an effective copy
- How to get a mass mailing rate discount
- Be selective with your recipients
Track your Direct Mail Results
Advertising through direct mail is effective, but your company or any of the direct mail campaign companies won’t know this unless they have a proper system to track the direct mail responses or leads they received.
It’s essential when you create the comprehensive goal that you add to measure the direct mail success and to compare your end goal with current statistics. An example goal would be a 10% increment in clientele or 250 sales of a particular policy.
There are a few ways you can track the results of your direct mail, such as:
- Creating a number dedicated to advertising that is equipped with call tracking.
- Include “direct mail” as an option on return slips or online questionnaires that ask how a consumer heard about you or the product
- Build a direct mail campaign landing page with a URL that’s trackable.
- Release discounts or offers exclusive to direct mail recipients
By tracking your direct mail marketing results with the help of direct mail marketing company, you can determine the campaign’s success and if any changes need to be made to either improve or expand its influence.
Stay Dedicated for the long-term
Just like any form of advertising, direct mail comes at a risk. You might print 1,000 postcards or brochures and only 10 of the recipients will respond or take action, helping you achieve your goal. Here, the only solution is not to give up after the first few batches.
Some mailing companies in the USA suggest that insurance companies should mail their content to recipients on a monthly basis for at least 6 months. That way, you will feel recognized as your brand presence and recognition will increase gradually, and you will have enough time to identify what works and what needs to be changed in your content and tactics.
Over time, you will see a gradual increase in responses that will help in increasing your business and allow you to expand your direct mail to more potential leads or receive success. As a result, your brand name will become more identified and even dominate the market potential.
