How Direct Mail Tactics Can Work For Digital Marketers

When Direct Mail Meets Email

Email in my opinion really is the killer marketing app. I’ve tested most marketing channels and as far as monetization channels go, email has proven the strongest by far.

And I’m not the only one who’s found it to be that way…

A while back I spoke with Daniel Levis, founder at Levis International Marketing, who began his marketing career working on the direct mail side of the industry, doing a lot of advertorial style writing along with megalogues that are part editorial and part sales pitch.

When switching over to primarily work as an email marketer, Daniel continued on with the same strategies – just adapted them to fit email.  
It’s fairly counter to what most marketers are doing, and many would perhaps argue against it, yet this is how Daniel found a lot of his success.

 
One of the main benefits stated by Daniel is that email doesn’t have the types of upfront costs you encounter with direct mail.  
“For sure all of the direct mail companies are doing more email than they ever had before” he says, whilst claiming that there’s “still opportunity in all types of media as they all have their benefits”.

Daniel mentions the unique benefits to email marketing, such as tracking and being able to make changes quickly across campaigns, and I can only agree. The opportunities for personalization and customization are endless and for sure one of the key benefits to email marketing.

Trying to crack the million dollar question for most entrepreneurs, I asked David for his best advice on how to quickly grow your email list if you’re starting from scratch?

“There are 3 ways I’d start, especially if you’re new to the whole game”, he says. “An online summit is a good idea. Capture email addresses then sell the recordings, and this way you’ve got an incentive for your speakers to mail for the summit.”

Having done many virtual summits myself, I can only agree. Summits are a phenomenal way of growing your list and generating high-quality leads, especially when using the reach of affiliate partners, in exchange for a cut of the revenue.

David’s second option is an informative webinar that could have similar list-building results.

Producing a high-converting webinar can be difficult, but once you nail it, it can be turned evergreen to generate leads without any work from your end.  
“The good old-fashioned product launch is another great, rapid list-builder” continues David, advising to put together several pieces of pre-selling content being a squeeze page exchanging information for email addresses.

“These are some of what I’d consider the lowest risk ways to build up a list from scratch,” he says whilst finishing off our conversation raising a word of warning.

“Too many people go into building lists without a clear end goal in mind in terms of monetization. You may need to rent lists or pay for cold traffic, so you must be on top of the dynamics of your particular market.

You really need to look at monetizing plans when doing partner-driven list building strategies in the same way you would be thinking about doing direct marketing.”

 

Action Steps

1. Ask other experts to participate in a summit where you interview them and in return, they offer to email the summit to their list for a price.
2. Create a valuable webinar that can be sold to JV partner lists for a commission.
3. Launch a product with a squeeze page and use JV partners or cold traffic to convert sales.

 

Result You Will Achieve

Build your list quickly by partnering with others in your niche and providing value to their audiences first.

 
This article is written by Liam Austin, co-founder at Entrepreneurs HQ, based on an EHQ interview with the mentor.