Maximise your EDDM^® ROI

Introduction

The advent of radio, television, the internet, and social media have led to overwhelming density when advertisers are developing marketing strategies. There’s no singular “optimal” plan for all types of businesses to follow.

Yet local advertising remains an integral part of any successful marketing strategy for small businesses, large businesses with regional locations, nonprofits, and political organizations. And while innovative technologies continue to push the reach of every person, consumers are still searching on a local level.

According to Google and Blue Corona, 46% of all searches on Google have local intent.¹

For the majority of small businesses, the core factors of success pertain to identifying the most effective local marketing strategies that generate traffic and leads while maximizing ROI.²

That's why this document will be focusing on:

1. The problem small businesses and organizations face.
2. The Solution: Every Door Direct Mail^® (EDDM) marketing.
3. The formula for a successful EDDM^® campaign.
4. How to maximize EDDM^® ROI.

The Problem

For the vast majority of small businesses, leaders are unaware of how to effectively market to their local audience. That foundational flaw permeates into other factors leading to failure or an inability to achieve growth, including cash flow, attention penetration, and more.

Time Spent On Marketing

Out of all small businesses in the United States that have employees, 5,305,960 have between one and 19 employees. The average number of employees for those businesses is 10.³

Based on those statistics, it’s fair to say that most small businesses are run by a small team. In most cases, that team is dedicated to serving customers and otherwise running the business, leaving little time for marketing. That’s why roughly half of all small businesses spend less than two hours per week on marketing.⁴

New Technologies

According to a 2019 SalesForce report and SmallBizTrends statistics, 59% percent of small business leaders express difficulty implementing and rolling out new technologies.⁵ When it comes to picking out new technologies to use as part of a marketing strategy, both ease of use and finding a trustworthy vendor are among the most important factors for small business owners.

Cash Flow

Roughly 20% of small businesses fail in the first year of operation. 34% of small businesses fail during the second year of operation. That’s more than half of all small businesses that fail within the first two years of operation.

By a wide margin, the single most prevalent reason for small business failure is experiencing cash flow problems, which is identified as a core reason for the closure of 82% of small businesses.

Marketing Noise

Consumers are constantly bombarded with advertisements through multiple marketing mediums, including television, radio, digital marketing, and more. According to the most current available data, "Digital marketing experts estimate that most Americans are exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 ads each day."^{7 8}

How is a small business or organization supposed to cut through all that marketing noise and grab the attention of their target market?

Marketing Expense

Both outright expense and wasted marketing dollars are a significant issue for small businesses. Establishments that choose to engage in mass media marketing often see their marketing budgets disappear through the booking of a relatively small amount of radio or television ads, much of which is wasted on consumers who don’t fit the business' target demographic.

Small businesses don’t have a great deal of confidence in their own ability to achieve success through channels such as social media. 61% of small businesses believe they break even or lose money on their investment in social media.⁹

Marketing Complexity

According to Blue Corona, 47% of small businesses run their marketing entirely on their own.¹⁰ The problem here is that most small business owners and managers aren't professional marketers. As a result, many small businesses find themselves out of their depth when attempting marketing strategies.

Most small businesses aren't capable of handling the complexities of marketing campaigns, from identifying a target audience to developing creatives to evaluating results and more.

Lack Of ROI Knowledge

According to a 2020 HubSpot report, Only 35% of marketers said that understanding the ROI of their campaigns is "Very Important" or "Extremely Important."¹¹

Yet ROI is the single most important measurement in determining the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. That's where direct mail reigns supreme over digital marketing.

With a median ROI of 30%, direct mail can boast a higher ROI than both paid search and online display ads. And direct mail’s response rate of 5% is even higher than email!

So, how do small businesses and organizations cut through the noise and achieve the ROI that leads to success and growth?

How do small businesses and organizations employ positive marketing campaigns with limited budgets and time allocated to the marketing process?

The Solution

Every Door Direct Mail®, or EDDM, is a service provided by the United States Postal Service (USPS®) to help small businesses and organizations reach a specific audience in a particular area. USPS® Every Door Direct Mail lets businesses send geographically and demographically targeted direct mail to households across the U.S.

In addition to location, this USPS® direct mail service allows you to target an audience based on:

• Age
• Household income
• Household size
• And more

When using EDDM^®, all households on the USPS® route that fits your targeted profile will receive your mailpiece. So, a small business can use EDDM^® to get a physical marketing package into the hands of their local target audience.

Let's explore why EDDM^® marketing is the perfect solution for small businesses and organizations aiming to increase ROI, generate more traffic, and achieve growth.

Advantages Of Direct Mail

Ad Density

In its own right, traditional direct mail is a viable marketing medium. And despite the growth in popularity of digital marketing, direct mail can deliver results other marketing mediums can't.

A significant portion of that success can be attributed to the density of digital marketing. The average person sees approximately 1,600 ads per day, 98% of which are digital.

On the flip side, only 454 direct mail pieces are seen per person each year.¹²

Attention Penetration

According to an ongoing study fielded by NPD Group, direct mail was alive and well in 2019. When those surveyed were asked how often they read or looked at advertisements that come in the mail, 69% answered "always always or most of the time."

Response Rates

In a society that's becoming increasingly obsessed with the digital world, it's easy to expect direct mail response rates to fall. According to a late-2018 report from the Association of National Advertisers, that's not the case. At 9% to a house list and 5% to a prospect list, direct mail response rates are at all-time highs¹³

Brand Recall

Researchers studying the neuroscience behind the response to marketing found that brand recall is higher for direct mail than digital advertising. Those researchers believe the boost for direct mailers stems from the fact that direct mail is more memorable because it involves multiple senses and is easier to absorb and process.¹⁴

Higher Return On Investment

According to a recent study, your best marketing return on investment comes from direct mail marketing at 29-30%. That's over paid search advertising (23%) or online display ads (16%). That’s why the fastest-moving brands are using direct mail marketing to grow and prosper.

Much of that impressive ROI stems from the trustworthiness and consumer control of direct mail. 73% of American consumers say they prefer being contacted by brands via direct mail because they can read it whenever they want.¹⁵

An Inexpensive Alternative To Traditional Marketing Methods

EDDM^® helps small businesses and organizations save money on direct mail. How? Because the audience will be generated based on filters for ZIP Code and demographic characteristics, there"s no need to purchase or compile a customer list.

By mixing the lack of list cost with the fact that postage can be as little as 18.9 cents per piece when mailing something like a postcard, EDDM^® marketing yields a significantly lower cost per lead than other marketing methods.¹⁶

Digital marketing strategies, such as display advertising, can cost as much as $71 per lead on average.

Hyper-Targeted Reach

A survey completed by PrintPro found that 79% of consumers act on a brand's direct mail piece immediately, and 56% found printed material to be the most trustworthy out of all media channels.

USPS's Every Door Direct Mail® service builds on that foundation of trust and engagement through hyper-targeted reach. In addition to vital demographic filters, EDDM^® allows small businesses and organizations to target based on zip codes and carrier routes.

This delivers another level of geographic control and guarantees that your message will reach the consumers only in the areas most relevant to the business.

Plus, EDDM^® includes the option of a mapping tool, which allows you to search for your ideal audience and filter your audience based on audience type and address type.

Armed with this specific and penetrating reach, businesses and organizations can get their marketing message into the hands of their most relevant consumers. Rather than battling with all kinds of businesses that advertise through television, radio, and all types of digital marketing, EDDM^® geo-demographic targeting is more likely to gain the attention of the audience you seek.

Formula for a Successful EDDM^® Campaign

Audience Targeting

The more you know about your ideal audience, the better you can A) identify similar prospective consumers, B) speak to their pain points, and C) build a relationship that will keep your audience coming back time and time again.

With the help of data-powered analytics, your small business or organization can dive beyond the surface filters of household income, age, and the like. To develop a successful EDDM^® campaign, you need to define your perfect consumer, then target every iteration of that perfect consumer within a particular area.

Proximity

We all know that EDDM^® is a powerful tool for local marketing, but just how important is proximity for small businesses and organizations?

According to an Access National Consumer Study Summary, 93.2% of consumers typically travel 20 minutes or less to make their everyday purchases. BizReport says the average person spends 85% of their disposable income within five miles of their home.

So, while you may find segments of your target audience all over your County or State, remember that targeting those within the closest proximity to your business or organization will have the best results.

Engages All 5 Senses

Researchers studying the neuroscience behind the response to marketing found that brand recall higher for direct mail than digital advertising. Those researchers believe the boost for direct mailers stems from the fact that direct mail is more memorable because it involves multiple senses and is easier to absorb and process.¹⁸

That's why successful EDDM^® campaigns include marketing material that leverages engaging elements, such as samples (i.e., perfumes or candy), sound clips, raised lettering, die cuts and varnishes, and more.

Constant Result Evaluation

While you may have your ideal audience figured out right now, your audience may change over time. Sociological, economical, and other factors can alter who your customers are and where to find them.

In order to ensure that you’re consistently reaching the ideal audience, constantly measure the results of your USPS® EDDM campaigns. That includes engagement, response, subscribers, purchases, repeat purchases, store traffic, and more.

Doing so will inform your planning process by telling you where to scale back or expand your marketing efforts.

Maximizing EDDM^® ROI With Geofactor
Powered By Logicsense^®

Geofactor is powered by Logicsense^®, a team of committed and capable individuals who have a deep understanding of small businesses and organizations like yours. These experts have decades of experience across various disciplines of marketing, and a specialized focus on direct mail marketing.

The Logicsense^® team understands that small businesses and organizations are forced to place a premium on their time and resources. They saw local establishments struggling to survive as their ability to reach their local consumers was drowned away by the big budgets of large corporations with marketing and design departments.

Even when armed with the targeting ability of EDDM^®, small businesses and organizations remain handcuffed by a number of obstacles:

• An inability to create high-converting marketing material.
• The need to work with mailing houses to print and mail.
• Having to spend days or weeks developing a campaign.
• Limited means of evaluating the campaign’s success.

So, Logicsense^® brought in a brilliant technology team in order to build a platform that caters specifically to the needs of small businesses and organizations. This platform, called Geofactor, is built from the foundation of Every Door Direct Mail.

Yet Geofactor goes well beyond basic EDDM^®, delivering unrivaled features that allow businesses to maximize ROI.

Advanced Audience Selection

Bolstered by best-in-class data, Geofactor's advanced audience selection adds another layer to the geo-demographic targeting process. This feature allows you to dive deeper in order to target only your most relevant audience, thereby saving you from investing marketing dollars in unqualified consumers.

Logicsense^® believes in the power of obtaining actionable insights from data. Their best-in-class data-powered intelligence provides you with information to make better audience selection choices, leading to a better ROI.

The Problem

By a wide margin, the single most prevalent reason for small business failure is experiencing cash flow problems, which is identified as a core reason for the closure of 82% of small businesses. Cash flow problems stem from inefficient marketing. For example, 61% of small businesses believe they break even or lose money on their investment in social media.

The Solution

In addition to the cost benefits of EDDM^® (i.e. low postage rates and no need for a list rental), Geofactor’s advanced audience selection means you’ll market only to highly-targeted local consumers. This injects maximum efficiency into your marketing efforts.

Optimal Evaluation

With Geofactor, small businesses get an Order and Analytics Dashboard that enables frequent use and purchase while allowing you to evaluate direct mail campaigns in real time.

Measuring a campaign's success happens on multiple levels:

• Engagement
• Response
• Subscribes
• Purchases
• Repeat purchase
• Store traffic
• And more

The Geofactor platform allows small businesses and organizations to track those measurements, thereby giving them the advantage of accurate information with which they can inform future campaigns.

The Problem

According to a 2020 HubSpot report, Only 35% of marketers said that understanding the ROI of their campaigns is "Very Important" or "Extremely Important." Yet ROI remains the key measurement for any marketing strategy.

The Solution

Geofactor delivers the tools needed to properly evaluate every campaign. This allows small businesses to determine precisely how effective their EDDM^® marketing is. And by leveraging that information to inform future campaigns, small businesses are able to consistently increase their ROI.

Easy-To-Use Design Studio

Geofactor gives you everything you need to launch a campaign, including the tools you need to create effective marketing material that speaks directly to your target audience. If you need assistance, the platform offers real design experts who are prepared to help you develop material that will convert.

Work from templates, upload your own material, or take advantage of expert advice and service to engage with your target audience and encourage action at the highest level.

The Problem

Consumers are constantly bombarded with advertisements through multiple marketing mediums, including television, radio, digital marketing, and more.

The Solution

Through direct mail, small businesses avoid competing with 98% of the ads the average consumer sees on a daily basis. And Geofactor’s easy-to-use design studio helps small businesses create effective, well-designed marketing material that appeals to all five senses and grips the attention of consumers.

Streamlined Scheduling

The Geofactor platform includes an easy-to-use workflow, allowing small businesses to deploy campaigns within minutes and schedule future campaigns that meet their business objectives and your budget. With this scheduling control, small businesses and organizations have the ability to place their direct mail marketing on autopilot.

The Problem

Half of all small businesses spend less than two hours per week on marketing.²²

The Solution

With Geofactor, two hours per week is enough when you're powered by Geofactor. This innovative platform allows you to develop and deploy highly-targeted direct mail campaigns in 10 minutes, not 10 days.

All-In-One Solution

There's no longer a need for printers, mailing list brokers, mailing houses, or creative agencies. With Geofactor, you have everything you need to create, develop, launch, and evaluate your direct mail campaign.

That's how Geofactor is helping small businesses and organizations launch EDDM^® campaigns that get their marketing message in the hands of thousands of relevant consumers in 10 minutes, not 10 days.

The Problem

59% percent of small business leaders express difficulty implementing and rolling out new technologies.²³ And according to Blue Corona, 47% of small businesses run their marketing entirely on their own.²⁵

The Solution

Geofactor is an all-in-one platform that guides you through the EDDM^® campaign process, making it easy to leverage this powerful marketing strategy with ease. There’s no need to hire marketing agencies or outside help when Geofactor is driving your marketing forward.

Geofactor's Three-Step Plan for GEO Powered Marketing

1. 

   Step 1

   The platform identifies geo-demographic targeted audiences to ensure the message reaches the people most likely to respond to that marketing.

2. 

   Step 2

   Through an online Design Studio or with the help of design experts, businesses can create engaging and creative direct mail content that converts.

3. 

   Step 3

   The optimized and easy-to-use workflow allows businesses to deploy campaigns within minutes and set schedules that meet their business objectives and budget demands.

Through this straightforward, efficient, and highly-targeted approach, Geofactor is helping small businesses and organizations limit costs, increase response, and maximize ROI.