The multichannel marketing approach follows the old adage, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” You hear about some companies investing all their money in social media now that this major shift has taken place in how we communicate. That approach may or may not work but the wisest thing to do is to find a balance in your cross channel marketing strategy so that your mediums complement and support one another. This is especially true when marrying online and offline marketing efforts. They don’t have to be and should not be separate entities. An integrated approach would prove beneficial for both strategies and for your business/organization overall.

You can use direct mail to drive traffic to your website by printing your website address on the mail piece along with any social media avatars, integrating social media or online promotions into direct mail campaigns, and/or sending out direct mail pieces to make announcements about online events. You could also invite current customers back to the site to provide feedback or reviews.

There was such a giant shift in marketing efforts from offline to online that online channels have now become too cluttered and something is needed to supplement these efforts…print media. According to one study direct marketing tactics (such as direct mail) are twice as likely to drive traffic to a website than digital marketing alone. In fact, 60% of the people surveyed felt that a personally addressed mail piece was more likely to drive them to visit a website than an email with the same message. That’s probably pretty surprising (and good to know) for people who strictly market online. To leave you with one more tidbit on direct mail; recent studies show that 63% of 18-34 year olds consider receiving direct mail to be “a pleasure”. There are so many opportunities when it comes to direct mail that are not being taken advantage of. Now is the time to utilize direct mail to both stand out from the competition and improve your online presence.