Digital marketing has largely been adopted as a key marketing strategy for many businesses, but that doesn’t mean print is dead. In fact, print and digital marketing can work together to create more effective campaigns.
By using print as an extension of your digital marketing efforts, your campaigns can go even farther than with digital alone. Print can help drive traffic to your digital channels. What’s more, combining print and digital allows for additional touchpoints in the customer journey, helping boost brand awareness and improve engagement. Print not only adds
more touchpoints, but it also adds variety and memorability to your campaigns to help your brand stand out.
AlphaGraphics Kansas City recently released their latest service
agMail+. With this tool, we bring together 8 technologies to combine print with digital marketing AND provide a single dashboard to review the success and capture new leads.
Combining Websites & Email with Print?
Your website and email lists are the first two crucial components of a digital marketing strategy. Where do you plan to send all of those Social Media followers and blog readers? Your website and emails tell current and potential customers about your brand and why they want to interact with you.
However, 96% of visitors will leave your website without taking any action. How do you get customers back to your website to make a purchase, fill out a form, or donate money? Using print marketing to drive traffic back to your website can be an effective method for converting those prospects to customers. Pair that printed piece with social media and your conversion rate really begins to climb.
Omnichannel content campaigns also work really well with print and digital marketing. Utilizing the same imagery and messaging across all platforms means that your target market sees your ads everywhere. Thus increasing the odds that they will view interact the 8 - 12 times necessary to get a consumer to act.
But Social Media and Print?
Social media is a necessary component of digital marketing. Through your social channels, you can have conversations, build relationships, and get customers more engaged with your brand. You have a place to send customers with a great website, you've developed a great relationship online and now print marketing can improve these efforts even more.
Social media marketing boosts the effectiveness of your print campaigns. Social channels offer a wealth of consumer data beyond basic demographics, such as likes and interests.
agMail+ uses this information to create highly targeted ads that complement your direct mail campaigns. We use a tool called SocialMatch to pair your mailing list with your target market's Facebook and Instagram pages. Serving them ads before and after they receive your mail piece.
Finally, printed materials can prompt consumers to join the conversation on your social platforms. Include your handles or a unique hashtag on printed collateral and encourage customers to join you online.
Leveraging Technology with Print
Customization in print used to be extremely expensive and cumbersome. But with the advent of better digital presses and enhances software, incorporating personalized data into your direct mail is cost-effective and easy. Personalization is no longer limited to emails, digital messages, or form letters. Know your customer prefers dogs over cats or gold over silver? You no longer have to cover all options with a single image. It can be customized for each recipient
Variable data printing allows variations in text, colors, graphics, and images based on the recipient. You can personalize almost any printed material. This capability extends back to digital utilizing personalized URLs - (PURLs) direct customers to landing pages that are highly targeted and customized to them. You can even use PURLs to pre-fill a lead’s information into online forms.
New technology like augmented reality, blends the physical and digital worlds with just a smartphone. AR can enhance the digital experience of your printed pieces. It can reveal hidden text, images, or graphics on your mailers when looked at on a screen. It can turn flat images on sales sheets into 3D models and make them interactive. You can even use AR to launch animations, videos, and sound effects to create more immersive campaigns. Technology is expanding the limits of print and digital marketing in a way that we've never experienced before.
How to Get Started Combining Print and Digital Marketing
Like any campaign, you still want to adhere to marketing best practices. Most notably, make sure the content you send through any medium is relevant and valuable to the audience. Using print and digital marketing together allows you to take this a step further and really personalize your content for a highly targeted campaign.
Talk with your friends at AlphaGraphics Kansas City to understand what they have to offer and how they can help you design the best mail piece with complimentary digital marketing that will boost the return of your marketing efforts by 23 - 45%.
Finally, tracking your campaigns is extremely important. With agMail+ we measure ROI for both printed and digital items. You might also track usage of a unique discount code provided only on printed marketing materials to see how effectively your print campaigns contributed to purchases or conversions.
Print marketing is just as important in your marketing campaigns as ever. With today’s technological enhancements, print will serve a different purpose as a tangible extension of your intangible digital campaigns. Combining your print and digital marketing campaigns in unique and engaging ways, allows you to amplify your marketing efforts and see better results.
Located in the creative Crossroads Arts District, AlphaGraphics Kansas City is a certified Women-Owned business that specializes in helping Kansas City businesses solve marketing problems. The printing company’s production specialties include custom digital color and large format printing.
For further information about AlphaGraphics Kansas City and their capabilities, contact the AGKC team at 816-842-4200 or visit their website, AlphaGraphics KC.
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