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How Energy Providers Find New Customers with Direct Marketing in 5 Easy Steps

Written by Michelle Toivonen Director of Strategic Marketing

1. Create an Integrated Direct Marketing Campaign

Turn your next mailing to prospective customers into a multi-media blitz that homeowners will see in the mailbox, on their desktops, and on mobile devices. Using our digital direct marketing platform, it's easy to integrate direct mail with digital marketing.

2. Retargeting with Direct Mail

Immediately begin to capture prospective customers who visit your site and target them with an informative postcard and online ads.  No email or home address is required! (Yes, we can do that.) And you can build your lists with visitors who are interested in your company.

3. Stay Social with Targeted Messaging

Stay socially connected by appearing in the Facebook and Instagram feeds of the people who live in your prospect's home -- even if they have not connected with you yet.

4. Informed Delivery® Email

Get around the spam filter with the USPS opted-in email system. Over 40 million US citizens have opted in and the open rate is approximately 60%!

5. Report & Recommend 

Actively track and update your campaign with our intuitive, easy-to-use dashboard that reports on mail delivery and email engagements down to the individual level. We match people on your list to their social media accounts, serve them your add and track social media engagements with click through rates. Online ad response rates can include WHO clicked through to your site. 


Learn how Energy Providers can quickly stand up a marketing campaign. We call these campaigns digital+post -- and your campaign will target the prospective customers you have now and will grow your list of prospective customers with high-quality candidates. This campaign integrates two of our most popular martech products: Digital+Post and home IP targeting. The following deep dive will describe the tools we use to achieve this campaign in 5 Easy Steps. The takeaway is that by working with Midwest Direct, you can quickly achieve targeted advertising to your most valuable prospects in multiple channels -- and most of the campaign results are reported in near-real-time (daily sync) and fully visible in one dashboard. Does it sound expensive? It’s not! You can turn your next mailing campaign into a multichannel marketing blitz for just a few extra pennies per record on your next mail campaign. 

Contact us today for more information -- or read on!

Step 1. Create an Integrated Direct Marketing Campaign

Use our online dashboard to turn your next mailing to prospective students into a multi-media blitz that students and their parents will see in the mailbox, on their desktops, and on mobile devices.

When you use our digital+post dashboard, you integrate mail, email, online advertising, and social media advertising into one campaign. The dashboard empowers you to see your results in near-real-time reporting and allows you to adjust your online ads anytime you wish. So, you can be responsive to the results you’re getting. 

In addition to making it easy to integrate channels, this method extends the impact of the campaign from one or two days when the mail arrives at a full thirty days of an online advertising and social media blitz to the people on your mailing list before and after the mail arrives. This creates better brand awareness and messaging retention. Additionally, the online ads and social media posts support response rates long after the mail has been received -- effectively circling your audience back to your message for a full 30 days. And if you like what’s happening, let us know and we’ll extend your advertising for 30 more!

In order to do this, all you need is your mailing list (or ask us for one), to create your postcard, your landing page, a clickable link for our Informed Delivery email, some online ads, and Facebook/Instagram ads. You can even add inbound call tracking & private recording. If that sounds a little overwhelming, let us know. We can show you how easy this really is.

Step 2: Retargeting with Direct Mail

Immediately begin to capture students who visit your site and send them an informative postcard and online ads. No, you don’t need their email or home address! (Yes, we can do that.)

Here’s how this outbound marketing works. We’re going to capture the IP address of everyone who visits your site, then using our software, we will match that IP address to their home address and send them your postcard and/or online ads. We’ll also SAVE all those home addresses for you so that you can grow your prospect list with candidates who were interested enough to visit your site. 

There are all sorts of nuances and details about this and we’re happy to talk you through all of that, but the important part is all you have to do is think about the postcard and install the tracking pixel we generate on your site. (And, if you need our help creating artwork or placing a pixel, just let us know. We can help with that, too!) 

Here’s more info on Retargeting with Direct Mail.

Download Google Ads for Dummies Chart

 

Step 3: Stay Social with Targeted Messaging

Stay socially connected by appearing in the Facebook and Instagram feeds of the people who live in your prospective student’s home -- even if they have not connected with you yet.

You’re probably already running social media accounts and actively advertising there. This is different. We will match the people on your mailing list with their social media profiles and place your ads in their feeds. This means the folks on your list will see your ads -- and no one else. No robots, no ad fraud. Our match rate floats between 40-60%, but we can guarantee that those matches will be targeted with your ads. How great is that? Now you can stay social with your most important prospects during your active recruiting campaign.

Download SocialMatch Campaign Calendar

Step 4: Informed Delivery® Email

Get around the spam filter with the USPS opted-in email system.

Informed Delivery® is an email sent to anyone who has opted-in to receive an email showing what will arrive in their mail. As of the date of this writing, over 40 million US citizens have. We will upload your mailing list to the USPS Informed Delivery® email service and those on your list who have opted in will receive an email with a scan of your postcard and a clickable link to take them to your landing page -- often before the mail arrives. The open rate averages over 60% and CTR is near 18% on average. This is an extremely valuable channel that you can only access through the USPS. You’ll see the number of matches and your response rate on your dashboard.

Step 5: Report & Recommend 

Actively track and update your campaign with our intuitive, easy-to-use dashboard that reports on mail delivery, email, and social media CTR. Online ad response rates include WHO clicked through to your site

Your campaign will be fully loaded into your own custom digital+post dashboard. All the key performance indicators (KPIs) are reported at the top, then broken out in detail. You can download your mailing list, active leads, and captured site visitors anytime. You can also change the artwork for ads and social media as your campaign progresses, empowering you to be truly responsive throughout the campaign. 

In addition, we’ll report your Retargeting with Direct Mail results so you know that active site visitors are receiving follow-up postcards and ads, too.

Here’s a quick view of the key performance indicators. Contact us and ask for a live demo to see the in-depth reporting available to you. 

Learn More About This Advanced Marketing Tactic:

If you’d like to capture the home addresses of prospects who visit your site but didn’t leave an email,  we have advanced software and tactics to give you exactly that. You can use this advanced marketing tactic to make next year’s list of prospects your most relevant. Ask us how to implement our advanced marketing tactics for better response rates.

 

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