Using Funnels and Direct Mail to Drive Sales

What is a sales funnel?

How do you draw a customer into it using direct mail?

The sales funnel is the journey prospective clients, donors, and consumers take from awareness to commerce. For businesses, using the word "funnel" can help visualize attracting, nurturing, and ultimately converting leads into paying customers.

A sales funnel can be short or extensive. Generally, we associate it with longer, more complex sales strategies. Here's what the process might look like:

1. Lead with the Call to Action

The journey begins with your direct mail piece's call to action (CTA). The purpose of the CTA isn't always to close a sale immediately. Instead, it can be to get potential customers curious enough to take the next step. That might be visiting your website, downloading a resource, or attending a webinar.

2. Enter the Funnel

Once recipients respond to your CTA, they become warm leads. Use content to continue to draw them deeper into the funnel. Entice them with a fre

e trial, for example, or a downloadable white paper. Whatever the specific action you want them to take, the goal is to keep them moving toward a lasting relationship.

3. Use Drip Marketing 

As prospects progress further into the funnel, continue with drip marketing. Following your initial mailing, send a series of strategically timed follow-ups, such as product fact sheets, success stories, or testimonials. Each piece of content should address common objections or questions, guiding prospects steadily toward making a purchase decision. You should try and diversify the content and the delivery method--clouding warm leads with direct mail, phone calls, or e-mails only is, to be frank, annoying!

4. Follow Up with Direct Communication

Once a warm lead has opened a line of communication, shown interest, or has been moved by your CTA, you can follow up with personalized emails. Be sure to allow time to pass and use patience--your warm leads have other things going on and want to know that you respect that.