According to the Direct Marketing Association, 42% of direct mail recipients prefer to respond online. What does this mean for direct marketers? One channel is no longer enough for the average consumer. It’s become essential to provide an option for responding online such as a personalized URL and/or a landing page. “Cross-channel marketing is an approach that helps you leverage the strengths and visibility you gain in one channel to help you develop opportunities through other channels as well.” says Tim Platt in his article Cross Channel Marketing and Business Social Networking.

By providing the option to respond to direct mail online you are also opening to the door to continued personalized communication. The information gathered from a personalized URL page (granted that mail recipients go to it and answer the questions) can be invaluable to your business/organization. You can use it to communicate with respondents in the future via mail or email with personal and relevant information. It is likely that you can double your response rate by incorporating a personalized URL and relevant content in your marketing campaign. According to PODi, the leading association for Digital Printing Service Providers and Vendors of Digital Printing hardware and software, campaigns that utilize both relevant text and graphics can increase response rates up to five times.

Click here to read more about making the transition from multichannel marketing to integrated cross channel marketing.