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Literally for decades it has been used as a valuable marketing tool – be it traditional or digital. We are talking about the mailing.
Its reason for being is still the same as in the beginning, but the means to achieve the desired ends have changed significantly. And they also changed several of the important associated aspects.
If you want to know everything you need to know about and how to make professional and proper use of mailing, this content is for you.
What is mailing?
It is a foreign term – as most terminologies used in Marketing tend to be – which means using the mail to make contact with a person. Not any person, nor any contact, but a person who demonstrates a probable interest / need for a product and/or service.
Calm! Contain your possible anxiety if the explanations and definitions that you have eventually seen and/or heard about mailing are a little different from the one above.
Understanding the scenario and the moment in which the term was coined takes us back decades, even before mailings were instruments used in active Telemarketing operations.
Yes, because there was a time when not everyone had a phone number. In fact, as strange as it may seem to those who are part of the new generations, the telephone was once reserved only for companies and more financially affluent families.
But having an address, and therefore being able to receive correspondence by post, was a condition for practically everyone.
And that’s what it was first used for, sending direct mail by mail, which in short consisted of business correspondence, which postage was affordable for virtually any business.
With the passage of time and the consolidation of the practice, especially when the possible return was verified, companies began to invest in obtaining more and better data used and the set of these data also began to receive the same designation.
The expansion and refinement of data paved the way, along with the popularization of the telephone, for mailing to be used for telemarketing.
With the commercial advancement of the Internet and access to e-mail accounts, first through free services such as Hotmail and Yahoo! and in a second moment, with the professional accounts, it started to feed the e-mail Marketing.
The cell phone boosted its use for sending SMS and instant communication apps, such as WhatsApp, still help maintain its importance at a high level.
Generally speaking, currently when we talk about mailing, we are referring to the data set of a group of people who have common characteristics and who, therefore, supposedly have the potential to become customers – the “suspects”.
That is, over the decades, with changes resulting from advances in technology and digital transformation and how these and other changes affected market behavior, mailing evolved and was adapted to suit the current scenario.
This brief historical account, in addition to helping you understand the breadth of the term, will also contribute to what comes next…
The importance of mailing for Digital Marketing
Thinking about mailing in terms of Digital Marketing automatically leads us to e-mail Marketing.
It is the main reason for the almost obsession with obtaining an email address and especially personal data associated with an email account, just as it was in the days of direct mail, except that at the time, it was a physical address.
But it does not change the importance of the variety and accuracy of the other related data, which allow us to know the name, age, income, education and many other demographic data necessary to build an image as accurate as possible of our contact.
The more detailed this photograph is, the closer we get to the persona, the reason for the company’s efforts.
In fact, it is much more productive and effective to have 50,000 entries rich in diverse data that allow you to segment them into a variety of smaller mailings, than to have 500,000 with just name and email address. In fact, being strict in terms of the purpose of a mailing, the second situation does not even deserve such classification. It’s more like a “database”.
And with that as an assumption, that we deal with the first factor of importance…
1. Create your own mailing
The level of efficiency or the result that the mailing provides to those who use it, is related to the knowledge that one has of it and which tends to be proportionally greater, when the mailings themselves are created.
- Important data – you can determine which data are important, such as income, professional activity, education, etc. When it is clear which data is relevant for future contacts, the means used (form on the website, survey, etc.) need to take them into account. In the end, greater diversity and specificity of data implies better segmentation;
- Origin – the origin or source used to collect the data is also relevant. A mailing formed by visitors to the company’s stand at a fair, are different from those who express an interest in receiving the company’s newsletter on its website. Even two mailings resulting from two different fairs may contain differences, depending on the purpose of both. In one, most of the participants can be characterized by final consumers and in the other, potential partners and suppliers;
- Prior contact – creating your own mailing implies prior contact between the company and the prospect, which in practice means that the company is no stranger to contact, even if its origin was a form on the website. Depending on the origin, even some level of relationship may exist and this is essential data for targeting campaigns;
- Language – with greater chances of knowing the contact and therefore, a more targeted and personalized language can be used in communication and in the pieces prepared by Marketing;
- Efficiency – for everything we saw above, the level of efficiency, or if you prefer, the return, tends to be better for each campaign.
There is another aspect resulting from investing in the creation of the mailings themselves, but whose importance is so great that it justifies being treated as a separate factor…
2. The mailing and the LGPD
The LGPD, among many things, determined how data considered personal should be collected, processed and stored by companies.
Therefore, the creation of mailings by companies must consider everything established by law and only by being responsible for doing so can full compliance be guaranteed.
In other words, when obtaining the data, it is necessary to make it clear to each person, the reason for the collection and how the data will be used. In addition to express consent, the means to cancel it must also be provided, if the person so wishes in the future, which is generally defined as anonymization of personal data in the LGPD.
Although there is the possibility of use by third parties, subject to consent, only the company that obtained them can guarantee that the procedures complied with what is stipulated by law, which reinforces the creation of its own mailing.
To do so, it is necessary to adapt all the mechanisms that respond to the mailings, such as, for example, adapting the website to the LGPD, any surveys, registering for events and all the means used for collection.
3. Mailing and SPAM
Even before the LGPD, another issue should be considered by companies – SPAM.
As much as one tries to give plausible justifications, in practice using third-party mailings, most of the time it configures SPAM.
Yes, if your company has ever made use of “partners” mailings to contact potential customers, in the first instance it refers to the LGPD and in the second, to what characterizes SPAM. Was there a deliberate option for the contact to receive messages from your company, the so-called opt-in? Did the contact acknowledge your privacy policy or did he do so under the “partner” policy?
Even if there was, which is unlikely, there is an ethical issue. The term partnership has long been trivialized and in practice, a company can have literally hundreds of “business partners”, which would imply that a simple registration results in a flurry of emails from companies which there was never any intention of knowing anything. about them.
This intrusion into the inbox of someone who is completely unknown to the company is one of the hallmarks of SPAM, whether you like it or not.
4. Relationship Marketing
This is a factor whose efficiency is related and, therefore, also depends on creating your own mailing list.
The wealth of information and even the origin can positively influence actions aimed at Relationship Marketing, since campaigns can be better directed. Say the right thing to the right person.
On the other hand, well-constructed and executed strategies enrich the mailing and make customers and candidates better known. It is a gradual refinement of the mailing.
This better knowledge of customers also contributes to actions aimed at educating them and solving their problems.
5. Sales
Segmentation allows each group of leads to be worked on in different ways, changing behaviors and results in the sales funnel.
Thus, according to the data available, steps can be “skipped” and contacts from a given mailing can enter more advanced stages of the funnel, making the shopping journey shorter.
The extreme and quite specific, but valid, example is the one associated with the CRM whose actions are no longer aimed at transforming him into a customer, but keeping him and strengthening ties, producing additional sales, building loyalty and who knows, winning over a new one. means of an indication.
But there are other real situations, such as the well-known renewal campaigns, of products classified as subscriptions and that in the past had newspapers and magazines and today, have streaming services or even the digital versions of the former, examples of representatives. A directed work and based on a quality mailing, provides high conversion and makes the churn rate plummet.
6. Brand
The mailing is also the basis for actions aimed at brand growth and recognition, as well as engagement.
It all starts with how good the segmentation is, such that the goals that are intended can be directed at each class or category of customers.
Imagine the value it has for a smartphone company to know that the main social networks of some customer mailings are Instagram and TikTok and that it launches a model whose main differential is related to the photo and video resources. Depending on the direction and conduct of the campaigns, the brand will be consolidated in the minds of this public, as a synonym for good photos and videos for this purpose.
In other words, having several mailings that are very well segmented and rich in detail allows you to be much more precise and direct.
Conclusion
Understanding the role and importance of mailing for Marketing (traditional and digital) is decisive for the success of the actions in which it is used.
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