What is Automotive Direct Mail Marketing?
As the name suggests, automotive direct mail marketing involves sending advertising material directly to the target audience’s mailbox. Mailers often use various marketing materials, ranging from brochures, service reminders, newsletters, and postcards to promotions.
The tangibility of automotive direct mail marketing means there’s an 80 to 90% chance that the target clients will read these marketing materials. As such, potential customers will most likely engage with the promotional materials, which increase ROI.
While the tangibility of direct mail increases the likelihood of mail being read, auto shops still need to grab the target customer’s attention. Automotive shops should take advantage of eye-catching designs., bright colors, unique marketing material texture, and strategically positioned graphics to make their marketing materials stand out.
Our team at IndoorMedia can help businesses create a successful direct mail marketing campaign.
Types of automotive direct mail marketing
New customer acquisition is among the many goals of direct mail marketing campaigns. Auto repair shops looking to introduce new services or products should consider several factors. Apart from a compelling marketing message design, they should time the message delivery, give a strong offer, and send it to the right people.
Below are the main types of direct mail marketing auto shops can employ:
Saturation mailing
Saturation marketing is based on the carrier route or the area serviced by a postal carrier. Here, businesses should purchase a saturation mailing list from the carrier to deliver their mail to a specific postal area.
A saturation mailing list or an occupant list allows businesses to reach households in a specific geographical location at lower postage rates than targeted lists.
Targeted mailing
Unlike saturation marketing, the desired audience in the targeted mailing is narrowed down based on various factors, including industry or niche, geographic location, economic status, and demographic characteristics. Segmenting customers allows automotive businesses to send marketing messages to a particular group.
This means the business:
- Can reach a specific audience
- Can tailor marketing message to suit the needs of target customers
- Enjoys higher relevance, which leads to higher engagement and response
What to Look for in a Direct Mail Provider?
When comparing your options to decide who will create and distribute your direct mail coupon advertising, use these four criteria:
- Repetition – Success with direct mail advertising is never a one-and-done. It takes time and repeated mailings to get real results because you need to build brand recognition.
- Appeal- Your coupon design must be eye-catching and connect with customers through a simple message and great looking imagery.
- Targeting –Who you mail is as important as what you mail. Will your direct mailer hit the addresses within your targeted area or distance from your auto shop?
- Exposure – Will your coupon be seen? Does the provider reach enough households in the area you’re targeting?
Why direct mail coupons is a must-have for auto repair shops?
Coupons can attract customers to a business, boost customer loyalty, and increase revenue. Auto repair shops can introduce physical coupons for foot traffic and digital coupons to be offered through social media sites and business websites.
With more than 60% of customers agreeing that they’d try a new product because of coupons and 46% saying they can change their buying decision, auto repair shops have all the reasons to use direct mail coupons. Coupons designed to entice new customers to visit the auto repair shop or provide discounts for repeat customers can certainly grow sales revenue.
The Best Direct Mail Companies for Auto Shop Coupon Advertising
After doing some research using the above criteria, we’ve narrowed down the best direct mail companies to these options:
- MailShark for Repetition
- Spectrum for Appeal
- PostcardMania for Targeting
- ValPak for Exposure
MailShark
Best Company for Repetition.
If it’s repetition you want, you’ll surely get it with MailShark and their weekly mailing strategy. This feature allows you to spread your mailings and payments out on a weekly schedule of your choice. However, if you’re truly looking to advertise your auto shop every single week of the year, then they can ensure that you’re marketed consistently using a variety of direct mail pieces through The Annual Mailing program.
MailShark is a full-service print and direct mail company specializing in auto repair shops. Whether you want to DIY your direct mail campaign or want full-service from design to mailing, they can do it.
MailShark will make sure they understand your auto shop’s unique needs and then tailor their direct mail marketing solutions to fit.
Spectrum
Best Company for Appeal.
With 26 years’ experience, Spectrum’s auto service industry expertise allows them to design auto shop coupons for maximum engagement and ROI. Here are a few examples of their work:
Spectrum has experts that understand the auto service industry and its unique dynamics. This allows their approach to direct mail coupon advertising to be powerful and drive results. They are also a full-service company offering additional features like reporting and analysis.
PostcardMania
Best Company for Targeting.
Not only can you hit your targeted areas with PostcardMania, but they allow you to edit your mailing lists so that you can focus your message for specific households.
PostcardMania is data-driven. They boast that they are the ONLY Postcard Marketing Company to create customer marketing campaigns based on proven results. This company offers a tracking option that lets you keep tabs on how well your customers respond to your mailers. With this information, you can adjust future direct mail campaigns to meet your customers’ needs better and gain valuable knowledge about the people your business caters to.
Valpak
Best Company for Exposure.
Valpak is the best known of our options. It’s no wonder since Valpak mailed more than 1.01 billion automotive advertisements last year.
We’ve all seen The Blue Envelope of coupons in our mailbox. Valpak mails to over 38 million homes and is the national leader in direct mail.
Valpak does its mailings per zone, and each zone is approximately 10,000 mailings or households. Let’s say you purchased two zones; then, your direct mail coupon would be seen by 20,000 households per mailing.
So, how do you ensure your advertising will be successful?
There are many options when choosing a direct mail company, but we think that the best for the auto shop industry are MailShark, Spectrum, PostcardMania, and Valpak. Before committing to any company to create and execute your direct mail campaigns, consider the criteria of Repetition, Appeal, Targeting, and Exposure. Each company has its strength. Use this information to help you pick the provider that best fits your advertising strategy. Learn more about how to distribute your auto shop coupon to potential customers using profitable, proven advertising.
While Facebook ads, sponsored tweets, Adwords, and other digital marketing can be a great addition to your marketing strategy, don’t forget what put those services on the map in the first place, the humble print ad. To stay competitive, on budget, AND land a great ROI, think about traditional as well as unconventional print advertising.
By Eric Shafer
