Despite the immense growth of digital marketing efforts, direct mail still stands its ground in being an effective marketing tool especially when it comes to event marketing. But how do you leverage your direct mail campaign to ensure event marketing success? In this article we reveal all, helping you ensure your invites not only reach your audience but also persuade them to attend. 

• Why is direct mail important for event marketing?

• How to leverage direct mail for event marketing

• Benefits of direct mail in event marketing

• Direct mail for event marketing with DMS

Why is Direct Mail Important for Event Marketing? 

With the digital world being so encompassing, it can be difficult and expensive to cut through the masses, especially when it comes to event promotion. Emails can get lost in inboxes and social media adverts can often be scrolled past. Direct mail, however, offers a tangible, more personal way to reach a target audience, which has been proven to lead to higher engagement rates, with figures showing 95% of mail is engaged with. 

Direct mail can be used to reach existing and new customers and often evokes a sense of nostalgia in recipients, particularly for invites, making your event stand out from the crowd. Recipients will feel special and valued that they have been sent a physical invite to an event and are more likely to engage with the mailer. In addition, direct mail has staying power with studies showing 45% of mailers stay in a household for a month or more.

How to Leverage Direct Mail for Event Marketing

To leverage direct mail for event marketing success, it’s important to understand a few factors.

1. Define Your Objectives

Make sure your objective is well-defined and clear before you start creating your direct mailer. Know what your call to action will be and what you want your recipients to do, whether that be RSVP-ing, signing up for an event online or buying a ticket. 

2. Understand Your Audience

A deep understanding of your audience, their needs, pain points, likes, demographics and interests is the key to a successful direct mail campaign, especially for events. Segment your audience and provide them with personalised and relevant messaging. 

3. Craft Your Message 

Your message is at the heart of your campaign so it should be clear, compelling and actionable. A strong headline will capture attention and the CTA should ensure your recipients know what to do. 

4. Get Designing 

The design is an important part of leveraging your mailer for success. Ensure it is visually appealing, using high-quality images and is consistent with your brand. Personalising your mailer is also a great way to improve engagement. 

When it comes to the types of direct mail you can use for your event marketing campaign, there are lots of options. The most common types include: 

• Postcards
• Brochures
• Invites
• Dimensional Mailers
• Gift Boxes

5. Confirm Your Mailing List 

When you’re ready to send your direct mail campaign, confirm your mailing list. You could use unaddressed mail tactics, purchased data or your own database - just make sure you are compliant with GDPR. All data should be cleaned and checked for errors before sending to ensure a high deliverability rate and that the mailers are being sent to the relevant audience. 

6. Confirm the Campaign Timeline 

Timing is everything when it comes to direct mail especially when promoting an event. Sending it too last minute can mean recipients already have plans, but sending it too early could mean they forget about it by the time it comes around. Therefore finding the sweet spot between the two is key. 

It’s also a good idea to not just rely on one mailer to promote the event. Instead, check in with your audience in the form of reminders in the run-up so that they don’t forget and also to catch any last-minute ticket sales. A post-event follow-up can also be a great way to improve the customer experience and gain any feedback about the event.

7. Testing & Tracking Results 

Before sending the mailer out to your full audience it’s always a good idea to send it to a small test audience to ensure there aren’t any issues and that the audience is responding in the intended way. 

Also make sure to have a way of tracking the campaign, whether that be via a unique URL, QR code or promotional code that recipients enter when buying their tickets, so that you can measure the success of your campaign. This will help you make adjustments and optimisations for future campaigns. 

Benefits of Direct Mail in Event Marketing

There are many reasons why direct mail is beneficial to marketing events. 

Highly Targeted

Easily target specific demographics so that your direct mailer is only seen by those who are relevant to your messaging or event. 

Tangible

Direct mail creates a tangible product for your recipients that forms a memorable and engaging piece of marketing material that has been proven to receive higher engagement rates than the digital alternative. 

Personalisation

Add a personal touch by adding the name of your participant to the mailer as well as other personal info that they can relate to and feel valued. 

Measurable

Direct mail can be tracked and measured just like digital marketing. 

Less-Competitive 

The digital space is so overcrowded that direct mail provides a less competitive environment, meaning your mailer is more likely to break through the crowd, providing a unique opportunity to capture your audience’s attention. 

Direct Mail for Event Marketing with DMS

At DMS, we specialise in direct mail for event marketing. We are experienced in all aspects of direct mail campaigns, from printing and production to postage and data processing and are always excited to take on new creative ideas. We have state-of-the-art equipment and technology that can transform your direct mail designs into something that will surpass your expectations. 

Always happy to help, our expert team are always on hand to answer any of your questions.