How To Capture Leads Using Print

In a digital age, it’s tempting to focus on what online marketing can do for your business. However, print marketing can be incredibly effective for generating leads, especially when combined with your digital strategy.

But how do you capture leads using print marketing?

Send Personalised Letters

The information you hold on your customers is gold. No, literally: you can turn data into money if you use it well.

Sending personalised letters to your customers is proven to improve the response rate. You’ll immediately increase the chances of generating more leads. Even if you’re sending letters to customers who have signed up to receive information, but have not yet purchased from you, there’s still a plethora of ways to personalise for that extra sales push.

For example, break down a direct mail campaign by region, and change some text in the letter to reflect local landmarks or events, and you’ll instantly generate a connection with the reader.
Capture potential leads from sales letters by encouraging a specific call to action. This could be driving the reader online, or asking them to call your customer service team and place an order using a code stated in the letter.

Use Old-School Order Cards

Direct mail campaigns are also a great way to boost sales. Send out brochures, or product launch invitations, and include a response card as part of your direct mail campaign.

It’s recently been discovered that direct mail is responsible for 96% of people making a purchase – even in the hard-to-target millennial demographic.

Make the most of this by creating interesting brochures and including order forms that can be returned by post. You could also use this for customer feedback surveys, to help determine where your company could improve.

This approach, giving recipients printed media to send back (postage free!), will appeal to a wide range of demographics. To older people, it’s a familiar system that they’ll enjoy using again, and in younger people, it’ll come across as a novelty – especially if you offer a discount or the opportunity to win a competition in return for the submission.

Be Colourful With Your Tickets

If you’re running an event and have several promotors working to sell tickets, consider colour-coding them. Use a different colour for each promoter, and see how many of each are handed in at the door on the day. Alternatively, you could print tickets with unique codes that refer to the promoter too (but we think colour is far more fun and easier to sort out at the ticket booth!).

If your promoters know they are being tracked, it’ll become a competition to sell more tickets. This will help to drive ticket sales – and is even more effective if the best-selling promoter has the incentive of winning a bonus, too!

Drive Customers Online To Complete The Sales Funnel

For your next campaign, try sending out flyers with your promotion that encourage readers to go online to complete a transaction. For example, if you’re offering a discount code, send them to register on your website to receive an email with the code included.

You might want to make the most of social media competitions, by asking your customers to post photos of your product or your shop, with a hashtag that’s only been given out via a direct mail leaflet, postcard, or poster. That way, you’ll know they’re taking part in the competition because they’ve seen your print media.

Use Unique Tracking Codes

When creating your print materials for a marketing campaign, be sure to send people to unique landing pages on your website. This is a good example of how print and digital marketing can work together to drive sales, as online traffic is created by offline marketing.

If you don’t want to use a unique landing page, for example, if you want a long-term tracking code for general website traffic instead of a specific campaign, use a URL shortener such as bit.ly instead. This will allow you to keep track of website traffic created by your print marketing in real time, and to monitor trends over a long period of time.

Exchange Business Cards

When you’re in a business setting, it’s more appropriate to generate leads with print using business cards. For example, when you’re at a networking meeting, make sure that you receive a potential client’s business card for every one that you hand out.

The efficacy of this action may seem hard to measure, but if you make a point to actively follow up with every new contact who has handed you their card during an event, it’s actually very easy to see how effective business cards are.

You could even print a different card for major trade shows or specific events, to help clients see how your business fits in with the exhibition. This’ll make you more memorable, and swift follow-ups are a sure-fire way to quickly expand your network of connections and potential sales leads.