Direct mail and your CRM would seem to be incompatible, as direct mail has traditionally been seen as an offline channel with workflows that are disconnected from the core CRM systems that most organizations are deploying today. New innovations are changing this dynamic.
As modern marketers, we rely heavily on our CRM and Marketing Automation systems for managing communication with our database. Many of us lean towards digital marketing channels like email because they are quick to setup and easily measured through our CRMs. In addition, we see the value of direct mail campaigns but have always considered traditional channels to be separate from our digital efforts and our CRM.
Watch A Direct Mail Automation Demo
New automation tools that connect direct mail and your CRM have changed the game.
Postalytics has built out various integrations along with API Documentation to help our customers connect their CRM and Marketing Automation systems with their direct mail marketing efforts. This integrations include Hubspot, SalesForce and Zapier. Zapier allows for integrations with over 50 of the top CRM and marketing automation tools such as Infusionsoft, Zoho, Green Rope, Active Campaign and many more.
These integrations allow for:
- List imports and field mapping
- Direct Mail sends when triggers occur in 3rd party systems
- Direct Mail performance analytics to be fed back into these systems
Here are a quick 3 wins for how you can easily setup and measure direct mail campaigns through your CRM and/or Marketing Automation systems.
WIN #1 – Triggered Mail Via Custom CRM Field
This quick win is a great way empower your sales reps with an easy way to trigger a direct mail piece to a specific contact in their CRM. Sending out an immediate mailer after a qualified sales engagement can be a great way to compliment your follow up and differentiate from competition. Giving a proactive salesperson this tool allows them to not wait on marketing to put together a campaign that requires additional time and strategy and brings another stakeholder into your effort to connect direct mail and your CRM.
The setup only requires two things:
1. Create a custom field within the contact record that is designated for triggering direct mail.
Above is an example of how we deploy mail through our Hubspot CRM. Within the contact record, there is a custom field labelled “Send Postcards & Letter Samples”.
Our sales reps are able to send out a 6×11 postcard after a qualified call or web demonstration by just choosing ‘Yes’ from the dropdown.
2. “If Send Direct Mail = Yes, then…”
The next step is to set a condition in your CRM or Marketing Automation that will trigger off the mail. The condition, rule or “tag” can all be a little different depending on your CRM or Marketing system. You can check out our Integration help articles HERE.
This is a simple one step trigger that doesn’t require the full strategy and setup of a complicated data-driven workflow. It’s so simple a salesperson can use it (From the sales guy)!
Personally, I like to set up at least 3 mailers to go out over 8 weeks when I trigger this simple workflow to help stay top-of-mind as my opportunities are going through their evaluation of our platform.
WIN #2 – Transactional Mail Triggers
Transactional triggers are similar to Custom Field Triggers as they require a minimal setup in your CRM or marketing automation. The condition to trigger these mailers comes from a single behavior or “Transaction” from your contacts. Here are a few examples of transaction triggers:
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- Became a customer – Send a thank you letter from your company CEO or President. This trigger can come from a transaction in an E-Commerce platform or a condition within your CRM that marks contacts when they become a customer. Along with the thank you note, maybe there are more products and services that your new customer can purchase. Either way, saying “thank you for your business” with a physical mailer is a great way to show appreciation.
- Booked a meeting – Send out a reminder when someone books an appointment with your team through a web form. This is a great tool to review the agenda of that meeting, set expectations and increase the chance of attendance.
- Renewals – Send a reminder for your customers to “Re-Up” on recurring orders or payments. Sending out a mailer can be a good way to offer Autopay or a discount on their next purchase. This setup requires an initial delay on the transactional behavior and then the mail trigger to go out when appropriate.
WIN #3 – Segmented Mailing List Import
CRM and Marketing Automation tools are great at segmentation. The ability to put together lists that can be used across marketing & sales activities and campaigns is unparalleled.
Sometimes the quickest way to connect direct mail and your CRM contacts is to take advantage of the powerful segmentation tools and import lists into a direct mail automation tool. When you add a List in Postalytics, you can use the list repeatedly across multiple campaigns, or multiple drops within the same Smart Send Campaign. You can import unlimited lists and there’s no additional costs involved in list import. You can have as many lists in Postalytics as you want and use them anyway that makes sense.
Note: When you import an Excel or .CSV list into Postalytics, we’ll check each record to make sure that it has the minimum necessary fields for proper mailing, we’ll also set aside invalid contact list records. The minimum fields are:
- First Name (20 characters, alpha numeric) and Last Name (20 characters, alpha numeric) AND/OR
- Company (40 characters, alpha numeric)
You may have either First Name and Last Name or Company Name or both. They will be printed on two separate lines above the rest of the address.
- Address 1 (64 characters, alpha numeric)
- City (200 characters, alpha numeric)
- State (2 letter state short-name code “MA” or valid full state name “Massachusetts”)
- Zip code (5 digit numeric “02370” or 5 dash 4 digit numeric “02370-1234”
Connect Direct Mail And Your CRM
With the advent of direct mail automation tools, you can easily plug your direct marketing into the CRM that you’ve invested in. To learn more: