Why Print Should Be In Your Marketing Mix

When it comes to campaign planning, most marketers skip right past print. Digital channels like email, text messaging, banner ads, SEM, and social media are easy to track, convert, and measure. You can turn them on or off in minutes, which fits neatly into an agile marketing strategy.

But when you put all your marketing eggs in the digital basket, you risk missing full engagement with your prospects.

Digital fatigue is real. The average professional now receives about 121 emails per day, and most never make it past an inbox scan. Meanwhile, people are exposed to somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 digital ads every day. That’s a lot of noise to cut through with one more banner ad or email blast.

As digital channels get more crowded, omnichannel marketing (deploying your message across every channel your audience uses) matters more than ever. We recommend that every marketing and sales team building omnichannel campaigns add mail and print services into the mix. The 2025 ANA/DMA Response Rate Report found that direct mail earns a 4.4% response rate compared to just 0.12% for email, a gap wide enough that skipping print means leaving real response on the table.

What Mail and Print Services Warm Up Prospects?

Mail and print services warm up prospects by giving them a physical touchpoint early in the funnel, something an email or paid ad can’t replicate. Here are three ways to put that to work.

Promo Codes for First Purchases or Free Trials

Send a promo code in a print direct mail campaign. This might include printed postcards, flyers, or brochures to drive first-time purchases or free trials of your products. The discount creates urgency, so your prospect acts before the campaign ends. You can use the promo code on the back end to track the mailer’s success. Use personalized URLs or promo codes, and you can measure the campaign down to the individual contact.

Flyers to Drive Retail Traffic into Stores

If you run a local brick-and-mortar location, send flyers or brochures to prospects in the area to drive them to your store. Print a flyer announcing an in-store event, or send postcards via direct mail with your sale information and dates. Statistics on print collateral marketing show that direct mail campaigns succeed across a wide range of industries.

Whitepapers or Case Studies to Educate a Buying Committee

For B2B marketers, printed collateral builds credibility fast, and that matters more now that buying committees have grown. The average B2B buying committee for deals over $50,000 now includes 11.2 stakeholders, up from 9.7 just two years ago. Send members of your buying committee whitepapers or relevant case studies as a follow-up to your initial sales calls. This keeps the conversation alive without getting buried in someone’s inbox.

How Can Direct Mail Win You Repeat Customers?

Direct mail wins repeat customers by following up a first purchase with something a customer can hold onto, whether that’s a catalog, a welcome kit, or a handwritten note.

Mail Catalogs After First Purchase

For transaction-based businesses, winning repeat business matters just as much as the first sale. Use a printing and mailing service to follow up a first order with a physical catalog highlighting similar products. This cuts through digital noise and builds out your omnichannel marketing strategy. Add promo codes or personalized URLs here too, so you can track the campaign.

Send a Customer Welcome Kit

When a customer signs up for a free trial or subscribes to your service, welcome them with fanfare. Build welcome kits with brand SWAG, printed cards or brochures with upsell opportunities, and other material that celebrates and informs them. Partner with a mail and print service that keeps your branded print marketing materials on hand for easy ordering.

Mail Personalized Thank-You Notes

For customer wins that took real effort, stand out with printed, personalized thank-you notes. Send these from your desk, or set up template thank-you notes with a postcard printer that handles variable data printing (VDP), so your sales team can print and mail cards easily through a service like Mimeo.

How Does Mail and Print Build Your Brand Relationship?

Mail and print build brand relationships by marking the moments that matter to a customer, birthdays, anniversaries, sales, and events, with something more memorable than an email.

Send Birthday or Anniversary Notes

Celebrate your customers with birthday messages or notes marking the anniversary of their first purchase. This kind of touchpoint is common in email marketing, but you’ll stand out more in the print channel. Print custom postcards with personalized fields like your customer’s name, anniversary date, and first product purchased. Add a promo code to drive them toward an upsell.

Mail Sales Alerts

For transactional businesses, track what your customers buy and when. When you run a sale, send a physical notice to the customers who’d be interested, whether that’s a custom postcard, flyer, or brochure. Include a personalized URL or custom promo code so you can track the campaign’s success.

Print Invitations to Brand Events

Events are a key part of your brand strategy, but most marketers rely on email invitations and social media to spread the word. Add printed invitations instead to build excitement and grow your attendee list, and be sure to refresh your marketing collateral before the event. This works for online and in-person events alike, since the goal is a physical card that grabs your attendee’s attention.

Frequently Asked Questions

Things to Remember:

• Digital channels are saturated. The average person sees 121 emails and up to 10,000 ads per day.
• Direct mail outperforms email on response rate by a wide margin, 4.4% versus 0.12%.
• Buying committees have grown to 11.2 stakeholders on average for larger deals, making printed whitepapers and case studies more valuable, not less.
• Track every print campaign with a promo code or personalized URL so results are measurable, just like digital.

The team that leverages the most channels sees the highest returns on its campaigns. Mimeo’s on-demand print services offer self-service project setup and overnight delivery. Set up your free account to get started with print marketing.