In today’s crowded market, getting noticed can be a challenge—and making a lasting impression can be even tougher. While digital marketing can be easy to implement at scale, it may not be ideal for commanding customer attention.
Because hyperconnected consumers spend much of their waking hours online working, socializing and shopping, digital marketing may seem like an obvious choice. But many consumers may be experiencing digital fatigue—exhausted by the influx of ads and the difficulty of disconnecting. Between spam filters, ad blockers and a skeptical consumer base burned by phishing attempts, digital is often seen as a distraction at best and a nuisance at worst.
To break through the clutter and create campaigns customers actually care about, marketers must think beyond the standard digital framework. Uniquely tangible and easily connected to digital channels, direct mail can be an ideal medium for delivering irresistible brand storytelling that encourages action and stays on customers’ minds.
Incorporating direct mail into omnichannel marketing can open a new world of possibilities, facilitating memorable campaigns that make customers want to engage. In fact, research shows that printed material, such as direct mail, requires 21% less cognitive effort to process than digital media, yet generates stronger emotional responses and higher memory retention.[1]
Although some marketers remain unsure of how to incorporate direct mail into their campaigns, following a five-step process can make it simple to get started.
Step 1Define Campaign Goals
Before getting started with direct mail—or any other kind of marketing campaign—it’s crucial to set campaign objectives, defining the end goal, what actions customers should take and which channels they’ll be led to.
Decide on the target audience, analyzing existing data to segment targets based on demographics (e.g., location, age, income), psychographics (e.g., values, personality, lifestyle) and behavioral factors (e.g., past purchases, prior engagement, content consumed). Strategic segmentation will help in creating the most relevant, targeted campaign possible, increasing the chances of interaction while reducing waste.
Direct mail has been shown to be popular across all age groups, with 72% of consumers regularly looking at ads in the mail. Gen X, at 78%, is the most likely group to look at advertising mailers.[2] Demographics eager for a break from the digital noise and constant stimulation around them are also more receptive to mail, with 58% of parents saying that paging through direct mail is “relaxing,” a figure that rises to 66% for millennial parents.[3]
Whether the objective is raising awareness, cross-selling or customer retention, this is the time to carefully assess the current customer journey and identify any areas for improvement. If there are performance gaps with certain channels, this can be an ideal opportunity to integrate a physical touchpoint such as a mailpiece.
Step 2Incorporate Digital Technologies
Once it’s determined where mail can fit into the customer journey, marketers can begin assessing the best direct mail tactics and technologies for the campaign at hand. The latest innovations offer a range of options for building uniquely tangible, interactive campaigns that also allow for easy integration with digital channels.
For example, with augmented reality (AR), brands can create vivid 3D experiences that blend the physical and digital and transport customers to a memorable, immersive branded universe. By placing a smartphone over an AR-enabled mailer, recipients can launch digital content that superimposes right over the mailpiece.
For an automotive company, this could mean sending a mailer with a beautiful image of a new car model; when recipients place their smartphones over the mailpiece, an AR experience could take them on a tour of the interior of the car, highlighting key features, safety enhancements and exciting new options. To encourage further exploration and lead recipients to other channels, the AR experience may also contain linked “hotspots” they can tap to be led to other digital content, such as a company’s website to find a dealer near them or a way to set up a test drive.
Incorporating AR capabilities into direct mail can enliven campaigns and get distracted customers engaged. In fact, 66% of consumers agree that AR helps them shop in new and exciting ways.[4]
Virtual reality (VR) can offer similarly sophisticated digital experiences, allowing customers to embark on 3D sensory digital journeys via an easily assembled cardboard headset included in a mailer.
For a resort, this could mean sending an eye-catching postcard highlighting the luxurious accommodations available. Simply by placing a smartphone into the headset, recipients can embark on a virtual tour of the property. As with AR, hotspots can be included that allow users to dive deeper, whether viewing details on different lodging options or launching an interactive quiz to help them choose.
Other advancements, such as near field communication (NFC), offer marketers a more affordable, accessible option for connecting digital and physical marketing. With embedded NFC tags in mailers, customers can easily access digital content just by tapping their smartphone to the mailpiece. This can be a seamless solution for various applications—whether leading people to an online store or landing page, serving up rich content such as videos or how-tos, or delivering event invitations, coupons and calendar prompts.
For many consumers, making use of time-saving tech is imperative. For instance, digital voice assistants have increased in popularity year over year, with the number of users in the United States expected to rise to 157 million users by 2026.[5] Voice-enabled mailpieces can elegantly bridge the gap between the digital and physical worlds and make it quick and easy for customers to keep exploring.
By including a simple code or keyword in a mailer that recipients can simply say aloud to their voice assistant, customers can get right to the information they’re after, rather than having to type out a URL or launch an internet search. Consumers can use these voice-enabled mailers to launch webpages and digital experiences, book appointments, access product details and even make purchases.
Step 3Develop Effective, Eye‑Catching Creative
While digitally enhanced mailers can excite customers and encourage further exploration, the first challenge is getting customers to notice a mailpiece. Deciding on format is key.
Postcards offer an accessible, affordable way to get a message across quickly, while trifolds give more space to shape a narrative. The best format for a campaign will depend on the goals; if a brand is getting the word out about a limited-time sale, a bold postcard may be best for getting as many eyes as possible on the promotion.
Design should be eye-catching, relevant and memorable, with a clear directive and a quick, easy way for customers to respond or act. Typography should be easy to read and aesthetically appropriate for the message being conveyed. Consider what the intended audience will gravitate toward.
For a campaign advertising a luxury item, customers may be drawn to sleek, minimalist imagery that exudes sophistication. Incorporating multisensory elements—such as pop-ups, metallic or light-reflective inks, embossed lettering or velvety textures—can add dimension and encourage handling and interaction.
Keep copy clear and concise, with a strong, pithy headline that lets recipients know right away what the campaign is about, and a short, clear call to action (CTA) that makes it easy for them to take the next step. In most cases, less is more. Some campaigns, however, such as those promoting nonprofit or political causes, may benefit from long-form, educational messaging.
Be sure to give copy and design room to breathe—too much crammed into too little space can become overwhelming and difficult for busy consumers to digest at a glance. Some basic online research can help marketers gain inspiration and identify popular trends in imagery, messaging and CTAs.
While the upfront costs involved in designing mailpieces are higher than those involved in digital efforts, returns can be much higher. Within the same study by Zhang, tests were run in parallel across the various marketing channels used by a single retailer: Direct mail showed a return on advertising spend (ROAS) of 55%—significantly outperforming three of the most popular online ad platforms by more than 30%.[6]
Step 4Integrate Direct Mail into the Larger Omnichannel Toolkit
With many of the same tools able to be leveraged for digital as well as physical marketing, integrating mail into the larger omnichannel toolkit is easier than ever. Web-based design tools can be equally as useful for designing mailpieces as digital ads, with easy settings to adjust dimensions and aspect ratios, ensure consistent spacing, choose the ideal typography and color scheme and more.
Existing customer relationship management (CRM) systems and customer data platforms can also be leveraged for direct mail, allowing marketers to collect and manage large amounts of data that can then be used to personalize and automate targeted direct mail campaigns.
For example, if a CRM is set to register a specific customer action, such as online cart abandonment, this can then trigger a direct mail automation tool to send a postcard reminding customers of the item and perhaps offering a discount to inch them toward a purchase.
A specialized print and mail application programming interface (API)—code that makes data and protocols from one software system available for use in other systems—can be integrated into a CRM to make this kind of automation easy. APIs can fetch customer data in seconds, create personalized mailpieces and set triggers to automate the entire direct mail process. This means customers receive relevant, timely marketing that resonates with their needs while brands receive valuable data in real time.
Coordinating digital and direct mail can help significantly with long-term brand-building, with studies showing that when customers receive something in the mail and then see the same thing online, they’re up to 44% more likely to remember it.[7]
Step 5Track and Measure Success
To track direct mail performance and understand how customers are responding to campaigns, establishing attribution metrics is key.
These metrics don’t need to be complicated. A scannable QR Code®[8] is easy to include on mailpieces, allowing customers to launch digital content just by scanning the code with their smartphones. This creates a seamless pathway to other channels while providing marketers with concrete data on how many recipients scanned the codes, what they did once on the digital channel and how they interacted with it.
Personalized URLs (PURLs) are also easy to implement. These URLs are personalized to specific customers, often with their first names in the URL, and can lead to customized landing pages with product recommendations, videos and other content tailored to their exact preferences, past purchases and behaviors. For recipients who did not use the included URL, it’s best practice to run the direct mail list against customer data, helping to account for all opt-ins and making it easier to assign indirect conversions to a lead source.
On the more advanced end of the spectrum, AR, VR and NFC all can be leveraged as sophisticated tracking tools. With AR and VR, marketers can first assess how many customers actually launched the experience and then determine which of the interactive hot spots were most popular. As with QR Codes, NFC allows companies to easily see how many people scanned mailpieces to open digital content and how they interacted with that content.
Once attribution metrics are defined, key performance indicators (KPIs) should be set to accurately measure direct mail performance and gather insights to help optimize future campaigns. With the right KPIs in place, it will be easier to see what’s working and what’s not.
Some of the most common direct mail KPIs include response rate, conversion rate, cost per acquisition and ROI. Fully integrating direct mail platforms into existing analytics will make it easy to continually track and monitor these KPIs, bringing in real-time campaign insights that allow marketers to optimize as they go.
Key Takeaway
To cut through the digital noise and leave an impression that lingers, today’s marketers need to engage customers beyond the screen. Though digital marketing can be implemented quickly and at scale, it often leaves customers uninspired or even annoyed. With the rise in phishing attempts and the continual stream of digital ads, spam filters and ad blockers have become the norm, and customers have become weary.
With a physical medium such as direct mail, brands have the opportunity to deliver a uniquely memorable and tangible experience while seamlessly connecting customers to their digital channels.
Footnotes
keyboard_arrow_down- [1]Dr. Jonathan Zhang, “Maximizing Marketing Impact: Why Direct Mail Deserves a Place in Every Multichannel Strategy,” 2025. arrow_right_alt
- [2]Lauren Ashcraft, “Banking customers enjoy direct mail marketing when it’s done correctly, survey finds,” eMarketer, July 1, 2024. arrow_right_alt
- [3]Ibid. arrow_right_alt
- [4]“Augmentality Shift: Global Report,” Ipsos, commissioned by Snap, 2022. arrow_right_alt
- [5]Federica Laricchia, “Number of digital voice assistants in use worldwide 2019-2024,” Statista, May 22, 2024. arrow_right_alt
- [6]Dr. Jonathan Zhang, “Maximizing Marketing Impact: Why Direct Mail Deserves a Place in Every Multichannel Strategy,” 2025. arrow_right_alt
- [7]Mike Patterson, “Unlock the Hidden Power of Direct Mail with Neuroscience – Part 1,” Direct Mail Alert, Oct. 14, 2024. arrow_right_alt
- [8]QR Code is a registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORATED. arrow_right_alt
