Digital technologies have tempted some marketers to take their business online. But a new type of marketing integration appears to be flipping the trend on its head.

Instead of taking print messages digital, more marketers are building cutting-edge digital elements right into their mail and other printed pieces. That’s because with the advancement of digital printing technology and other breakthroughs, they’re finding it easier to stretch the boundaries of traditional mail.

Digital elements in direct mail campaigns impress consumers

Consumers are being dazzled with an array of digital elements in the print pieces they receive, including:

• Postcards with QR (quick response) codes that drive them to websites.
• Audio chips that get brand messages heard — literally.
• Mailers with small jump drives built into them.
• Intelligent Mail^® barcodes.
• Customized pieces displaying short videos and virtual presentations.

All of this is being done in the name of rising above the clutter of a fast-fragmenting media cosmos.

“The business environment has people looking at their marketing results to find better ways to reach their audience,” says Kevin Gilligan, vice president of sales and marketing for Structural Graphics, an Essex, Conn.–based marketing company. “It’s no longer about the cost per unit of a mailing, but the ROI of your campaign. There’s not a chief marketing officer who’s not being asked, ‘What were the results of the money you spent?’ You need to be able to answer that question in today’s environment.”

High-tech ways to track your direct mail campaign

Meanwhile, marketers also appreciate the role that the new high-tech elements such as Intelligent Mail barcodes play in helping them track mail pieces and measure the impact on campaigns.

Clients of Mississippi marketing firm Mabus Agency are seeing a 40- to 60-percent increase in response when they use an Intelligent Mail barcode, says agency president Josh Mabus. To show off its power, he often sends an e-mail that encourages recipients to check their mailboxes just as the mail piece arrives.

“Any time you can touch a person with more than one medium, the results are normally multiplicative,” Mabus says. “Plus there’s another level of personalization. A direct mail piece hitting the mailbox at the same time the e-mail is coming to you takes an aggressive bit of coordination. To the end user, that looks like rocket science.”

Last year, for example, Mabus Agency began working with Northeast Mississippi Community College (NEMCC) to merge digital technology into mail pieces for its enrollment campaign. The Booneville, Miss., school amassed a substantial database with information on numerous prospects and then sent more than 1,300 personalized postcards with digital codes that took students to personalized websites.

At the site, recipients were encouraged to fill out surveys and provide more information to school marketers. Of the approximately 17 percent of the students who visited these sites, nearly all filled out survey questions. NEMCC received the responses in real time, triggering alerts to the cell phones of nearby recruiters. In the fall, the college reported a 12-percent bump in enrollment.

Mabus says digitally enhanced mail pieces make good sense when going after high-tech targets. But he reminds marketers to be sure to drive home a relevant message with their electronic bells and whistles: “At its simplest, the question is, does it have value to the reader?”

For many of those who’ve witnessed digital mailers draw large crowds and win awed response, that question has already been answered.