Market research consistently shows that accurate audience targeting and relevant lookalike modeling leads to higher audience engagement and ultimately higher conversions. The challenge, however, is obtaining authoritative data sources that provide insights into an audience’s habits, preferences and behavior.

Enter direct mail.

The 2024 Direct Mail Marketing Benchmark Report found that high-quality audience targeting is the main benefit of mail, according to B2B and B2C marketers, a significant increase from fourth place in the 2023 survey. Experts suggest the jump reflects marketers’ increasing appreciation for mail and offline data as a reliable customer acquisition and reach tool – a strong alternative to digital targeting methods, where privacy concerns continue to grow.

Accuracy = profitable growth

Direct mail is a great way to target audiences. The high-quality and authoritative data sources used in building audience models allow marketers to identify and reach prospects who are similar to their best customers. Detailed, individual-level transactional and intent data enables highly accurate predictive modeling. Marketers can further scale campaigns and discover high-potential audiences as new data sources are introduced and variables are transformed.

These hyper-targeted campaigns increase return on investment per post across today’s most popular digital channels.

Here’s a not-so-secret secret: direct mail audiences can be integrated into digital environments.

Increase digital reach and campaign effectiveness with offline data

Third-party cookies are an important part of effective digital campaigns. Although Google recently announced that it will not be without cookies in the future, advertising experts suspect that the industry will continue to look for alternative solutions. Identity resolution and conversion tracking have already been weakened, leading to lower conversion rates and higher customer acquisition costs in digital campaigns.

Over the past few years, digital marketers have been testing various solutions to the dilemma of audience targeting and performance reporting, including offline data from direct mail. A deterministic identity graph can link offline audiences to online identities without the need to use third-party cookies. This allows marketers to deliver relevant ads to a specific audience across digital platforms.

Measure campaign performance accurately

Another notable shift in marketer data from 2023 to 2024 was the increase in “easy-to-track attribution and performance metrics,” which jumped from fifth to second highest, advantage over post.

Just like in the direct mail channel, the rare benefit of incorporating audience lists into digital environments is that you can attribute specific actions or purchases to a specific target person. This customer acquisition strategy also eliminates wasted impressions and concerns about programmatic ad fraud.

Future trends in the integration of direct mail and digital campaigns

Nine out of 10 marketers agree that integrating direct mail and digital marketing strategies has a positive impact on campaign performance. Consider how you can leverage proven offline direct mail models in the new age of digital marketing to better target your audience and improve campaign performance across all direct marketing channels. For more insights on direct mail usage, industry trends and consumer sentiment, download the full report here.