One of the biggest mistakes you can make in marketing is assume that print campaigns and digital campaigns are mutually exclusive.

If you search, you’ll find articles upon articles of people debating the pros and cons of print vs digital marketing, but this is a dated view. In truth, print and digital campaigns are much stronger when they are supplemented by each other. It’s called a marketing MIX for a reason after all. In fact, the Royal Mail’s MarketReach found that, when supported by a mail campaign, people spent 30% longer looking at ads on social media [1] and 41% searched online for more information about the company in question [2].

However, according to Tim Bond, Director of Insight at the Data and Marketing association (DMA), the pandemic accelerated the transition from non-digital to digital channels [3] and with many people preaching the benefits of a completely digital approach, or assuming that physical marketing only includes static door drops, posters and leaflets, it can be hard to convince clients to consider adding a print edge to their marketing strategy. Here are a few discussion points you could bring up to make them think again.  

SNAPSHOT SHOPPING

Phuzion media creates image matching technology that allows users to take a photo which is then matched against a database. Once the match is found, it will take you to a corresponding web page. Argos saw the potential benefits of using this technology for their Christmas Catalogues, creating a webpage built to take photos of items in the catalogue and pair them with their purchase pages. With 86% of people in the UK stating that they like to keep catalogues and refer back to them [2], this makes what is a repeatedly used but fixed medium more dynamic and allows the audience to interact with it in a way they’ve never been able to before.

QUICK RESPONSE

Now this one’s personal. When XMPie wanted to promote their ‘Do More’ campaign across multiple channels they asked this nutty bunch to design a piece of eye-catching direct mail as part of it. They then employed a scannable and personalised Quick Response (QR) code which made use of their marketing automation technology to gain personalised insights from their customers and automate further communications. This effortlessly interlinked their physical and digital content, combining the ‘directness’ of direct mail with their specialist technology to make more individual brand experiences in their future print marketing, giving their customers a first hand experience of the service they can provide.

PAPER WITH POWERS

Most if not all modern smartphones are secretly equipped with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. This allows the phone to interact with NFC tags so you can do things like pay on a card reader or scan a passport. Antalis thought bigger than that though, and created a new kind of paper which has a chip inside of it. Not inhibited by its technological advances, this Powercoat Alive paper can be used just as you would use any other paper. However, thanks to the chip it can provide businesses with powerful analytics for measuring their print campaigns while also adding content for the audience.

You can’t neglect the impact that a physical, tactile piece of marketing material has on your audience. Thankfully, most consumers aren’t sold on going all-digital. In fact, 49% believe that when a business tries to push them to digital it’s just about them saving costs, and 57% still prefer to read printed books [4]. However, you’d be remiss to ignore the dynamic nature of content on digital platforms and the value of collecting data in real time. That’s why it’s always better to make them work together.

Have these inspired you? Why not say hello so we can help make your print and digital campaigns harmonise:

Sources:

[1] Royal Mail MarketReach, Mail Matters More Than Ever

[2] Royal Mail MarketReach, Physically irresistible

[3]Print Power, The Future for Print Media in 2022

[4]Two sides, Paper’s Place in a Post-Pandemic World