On October 6, QuickPivot, a Vericast business, announced a new integration with Direct Mail Manager, a fellow Vericast business. We are thrilled to work with Direct Mail Manager, an organization which sees the future of multichannel marketing very similarly to us.
We spoke with Liam Oliver, the general manager of Direct Mail Manager, to learn more about this unique solution we’re able to bring to market because of this integration. Here's what Liam had to say about how the combined forces of QuickPivot and Direct Mail Manager will change the on-demand printing game.
1. What is Direct Mail Manager?
Liam Oliver: Direct Mail Manager is a software platform that makes it easy to send targeted and personalized postcards that are mailed in 48 hours or less. It seamlessly integrates into your pre-existing marketing software so that targeting, design, and tracking is easy.
The software includes address verification to ensure your postcard is delivered to a valid address, and real-time postal tracking is available on-demand so that you know when it arrives. It makes giving your prospects or customers a postcard to physically hold in their hand easier than ever before.
2. Why do you think makes the QuickPivot and Direct Mail Manager integration so powerful?
Liam Oliver: Sending direct mail can be an arduous process. Historically, marketing teams have had to work with multiple designers, printers, data hygiene vendors, and mail houses. It was slow, expensive, required minimum volumes, and it was complicated to personalize the postcards.
Now, with the Direct Mail Manager integration, QuickPivot users can send postcards with the same level of targeting, personalization, and speed that you have with email campaigns. It's no longer necessary to wait 1-2 months to see the results of a direct mail campaign. Precise and timely measurements of a postcard campaign are closer to the reporting cadence of email or digital ads, making it easier to tweak and iterate on campaigns in real-time.
What we’re most excited about though is the fact that brands using the QuickPivot customer data platform store so many critical customer insights in the platform that can be used to personalize their postcards. The depth of information that these brands have really gives them a leg up when it comes to creative possibilities. Overall, we see conversion rates for targeted postcards that exceed 5%.
3. Can you share some examples of ways brands can use QuickPivot with the Direct Mail Manager integration
Liam Oliver: The sky is really the limit when it comes to the ways QuickPivot users can incorporate postcards into their marketing strategy. It’s a total change in mindset, but marketers really should approach this new capabilities with the understanding that they can trigger and track return on investment from a physical postcard the same way they do with email.
We’ve seen our clients have great success by using postcards for localized engagements, targeting lapsed customers, and engaging loyal customers with personalized messages that make them feel unique.
Here are a few specific use cases that QuickPivot now makes simple:
- Retailers can retarget a lapsed customer with a special offer that features a product similar to what they've previously purchased.
- Organizations can engage and reactivate an email subscriber who has become disengaged using a special offer in a postcard.
- E-commerce marketers use postcards to follow-up with purchasers and generate positive reviews online.
- Luxury brands can follow-up with their audiences to send invitations to special events.
- Automobile dealerships could send a postcard to a purchaser with a picture of a car that the consumer purchased and upsell a warranty or service plan.
- Arenas or entertainment venues can promote a country singer to an audience that previously attended events featuring similar artists.
- A sports team or league could promote memorabilia or swag when their favorite team wins a championship or recruits a new star.
4. Why was the Direct Mail team excited to work with QuickPivot?
Liam Oliver: All too often, you'll hear a marketing leader talk about how much data a company has, but what you don't hear is that often they aren't leveraging the data because it's inaccessible or constrained by organizational and technological silos.
QuickPivot crushes these barriers by tying customer data together. Ease of access empowers marketers to use the data to segment, personalize, and execute 1:1 marketing campaigns that drive better results.
A component of Direct Mail Manager's culture is to have a bias towards action, and we're obsessed with making marketing execution easy. Our two philosophies and goals as it relates to empowering and enabling marketers are very similar, and it’s exciting to be able to collaborate on this integration.
5. How can brands incorporate both catalogs and postcards into their direct mail strategy?
Liam Oliver: We don’t believe that it has to be – or should be – one of the other. They’re just different mediums that should be used differently. Catalogs don't have the level of personalization that postcards do. A postcard's design is similar to an email or website where every element can be dynamic based on the consumer.
Say, for example, an outerwear company realizes that a large portion of their customers has an affinity for purchasing red colored items. You could trigger a postcard featuring red accessories and even include a complimentary photo of a red jacket or sweater that the consumer previously purchased.
