By sending high quality printed materials to homes that have visited your website, you have a second opportunity to impress and gain the sale that didn’t happen when they visited your website.
So, you know which home addresses have been to your website.
Well, hopefully you do, but if you’re not aware of how you can identify households that have visited your website, then please check out my page showing how to see the home addresses of your website visitors.
What you gain out of that home address information depends on the quality of how you reach out to them.
These are people in identifiable houses that have been to your website already.
That makes them hot leads that haven’t made contact with you yet.
Hot leads may not be ready to buy or there may be other people involved in the decision-making process.
So it makes sense to send them something in the post to help them make the decision to contact you.
I’m not talking about a basic letter or tatty flyer that doesn’t make them feel special.
I’m talking about something that they receive in the mail to their house and that impresses them enough to contact you.
Here are my recommendations on how to approach the topic of impressive printed material sent to people that you know have been to your website …
Whether it’s a glossy brochure or something else printed, it needs to have an immediate impact to avoid it going into the bin.
From the choice of paper to the imagery throughout, to the all-important words used within the materials, you are sending out a message that your customers should expect a quality service or product from you.
These people have been to your website already but haven’t made contact (for what could be one of many reasons).
Your printed materials, sent to their address, should be giving people every possible reason to make contact, giving you a second chance to impress the potential customer.
Printed materials often include a few testimonial comments from clients.
What the potential customer is looking for are LOTS of testimonial comments to prove how great your business is.
It may take up more pages or space within your printed materials, but the extra cost will repay itself over and over.
How many printed communications do YOU receive that have 50+ positive testimonials within them (sometimes backed up with imagery where appropriate)?
Probably none.
How would you feel if you saw that level of positive testimonials within something you receive?
You’d probably be impressed enough to make contact to find out how you could be a future customer providing a testimonial.
Strong printed materials not only impress recipients but are often shared with other decision-makers in the household.
While some types of purchases are for one person only, many others need joint decisions. For example:
…. the list goes on.
The people in that house may have looked at your website independently and not shared the information with each other.
Your brochure/printed materials give you an opportunity to impress all decision-makers within that house.
Not everyone is ready to buy short-term and some buying decisions require:
Amidst digital clutter, quality printed materials stand out as tangible reminders of your business and if the quality is substantial enough then they will stay in the house.
This physical presence ensures that your products or services remain top-of-mind, increasing the likelihood of potential customers reaching out to you when the time is right for them, resulting in a more lasting impact compared to website visibility.
There is a cost to sending printed materials to the houses of people who you’ve identified have visited your website.
Whether paying for postage or hand-delivering printed materials, you will incur a cost per mailout, so you need to ensure that you get a strong return on investment.
This means that your brochure, or accompanying letter, needs to include something unique (and therefore trackable) that people are compelled to quote when they make contact with you.
For example:
By encouraging recipients to quote the special offer or discount code when they make contact, that enables you to gain valuable insights into how many leads were generated through the printed material. This data-driven approach helps you measure the success of your marketing efforts and make informed decisions for future campaigns.
Furthermore, you could make your call to action time-limited, which acts as a powerful call-to-action, motivating potential customers to take action and initiate contact.
By creating that time-limited call-to-action you create a sense of exclusivity and urgency, as they know that by quoting the offer, they’ll unlock unique benefits or savings. If including time-limited offers though, it’s best to include them within a covering letter instead of the brochure itself (which you may print many of and don’t want a time-sensitive offer that’s soon out-of-date within hundreds or thousands of brochures!). For more help with getting good results from covering letters, please see the page what to include in a brochure cover letter.
You don’t have to get thousands of brochures printed.
You just need enough, probably digitally printed, to test this method of reaching out to people who you know have already been to your website.
Yes, you will have to invest in someone to design the printed materials that will impress your future customers, but once that’s done it can be used over and over again.
I recommend testing 100 initially and tracking the outcomes.
Here’s how that works:
With GDPR protecting the privacy of individuals, you may question whether it’s OK to send brochures to peoples homes.
The good news is that it is legal as long as you’re not using personally identifiable information.
A house address does not personally identify a person, but if you knew the name of a person at that address and addressed your brochure to them, then you’ve wandered into dodgy territory.
I recommend that you address to ‘The Homeowner’ or ‘The Householder’.
Find out more about how to stay on the right side of GDPR when sending brochures to home addresses.
People in identifiable homes have been to your website, but not made contact with you.
High quality printed materials (e.g. a brochure) sent to homes provides you with another opportunity to impress people.
Using discounts and offers you can measure the outcome from the marketing activity.