Marketing efforts are more scrutinized today than ever. There are also more channels than ever before. There’s a paradox at play: more risk, but more opportunity too. Brands need to know how to build the right strategy to meet consumers in the right places at the right times to move the needle. To do that as effectively and efficiently as possible, brands need an agency partner with omnichannel expertise.

What Omnichannel Marketing is and Why it Matters to Your Brand

Omnichannel marketing makes the best use of all available channels to connect with consumers on their journeys. It combines traditional and digital marketing into a holistic approach based on consumer needs and business objectives. It examines which channels are best at different points in the consumer journey for an integrated campaign. With an integrated campaign, each channel and consumer touchpoint reinforce the others so you can maximize your efforts, budget and results.

Today’s channel landscape is constantly changing, especially on the digital side. There’s always a new platform to join or features to explore. Brands can’t take a one-size-fits-all or check-the-box approach to channels. Each campaign needs to start with the consumer journey, data and business objectives. Once you have these outlined, you can build a custom omnichannel strategy that elevates your brand and your products or services.

Why Brands Need Agencies with Omnichannel Expertise

As the marketing channel ecosystem continues to fragment, it can be tempting to piecemeal campaigns across different channel-specific agencies. However, that can create a fragmented, inconsistent consumer experience with different agencies working in silos or even at cross purposes. The best way to maintain brand and messaging consistency is with a single agency who has deep omnichannel knowledge and proven results.

With a holistic plan under a single agency, brands get a global view of their efforts and are better positioned to connect the dots on their campaign and customer data. They can better optimize the entire plan instead of just its legs. Rather than start from a channel point of view, brands can start from the consumer’s point of view to create an overarching strategy. It’s about giving consumers what they need and want, which creates better relationships, while achieving business objectives.

What to Look for in an Omnichannel Agency Partner

It goes without saying that an omnichannel agency partner needs to be an expert in both traditional and digital channels. They need to have the diversity of expertise and experience to pull the campaign off. Here’s what to look for.

Data Expertise and Insights

Without insights or cohesive narrative, data is just a bunch of numbers. Brands have more data than ever at their fingertips, yet most don’t know how to unlock the narratives buried inside it, whether that’s demographic, financial or engagement data. Your omnichannel agency partner should be able to examine all the data you have and provide even more context and understanding with third-party data-service providers. They should be able to humanize the data to uncover consumer mindsets and behavior patterns. How do they feel? What makes them tick? How do they shop? Brands need an agency partner who can help them think through their data and bring an outside perspective to it too.

Rooted in Strategy

It’s easy to just start making and deploying things. With an omnichannel approach, you first need to step back to move forward. Omnichannel agencies should be experts at marrying consumer needs with business goals. They should take deep, ongoing dives into the industry category, business model, specific brand and consumers. From here, they can develop a solid strategic framework that ties everything together. This level of deep understanding is like a tree’s taproot. The campaign strategy becomes the tree trunk, and the channels the branches. Without deep roots, the whole tree crashes to the ground.

Measurement, Attribution, Evaluation and Testing Capabilities

Omnichannel agency partners must be able to prove their effectiveness. They need to know how they will measure the plan’s objectives and which metrics are the best to do so. They need to be able to successfully attribute increases in reach and revenue to their efforts. They need to know not only what’s working or not but why and how to optimize moving forward. They need to be able to effectively test which elements of a plan work best.

Born for Business in Theory and Practice

It’s one thing to talk about omnichannel strategy and another to execute it. At Heinrich, we do both. We’re passionate students of our clients’ businesses and dedicated to building relationships that last. We take the time to dig in to understand our clients, their goals and their consumers’ needs. We have the processes and tools to bring everything together, from strategy to execution, deployment to evaluation. We lead our clients with an eye toward the future. At Heinrich, we don’t just do work that’s creative; we do work that gets results. That’s why we’re born for business—your business.

#marketingstrategy #marketingagency

Traditional marketers might feel like digital is devouring everything. Maybe you’re a direct-mail marketer with your elbows out, “Digital has no business in the mailbox.”

But at Heinrich, we realize it’s not either traditional or digital—it’s a both/and. A hybrid approach can help you take the best of both realms to achieve your objectives more efficiently and effectively, even when it comes to your control package. Here’s how.

The QR Code Comeback

QR codes, once dead in many a marketer’s eyes, have not only been revived, but they’ve also taken over previously analog spaces and places. QR codes are how many restaurants share their menus, PowerPoint presenters promote their websites and social media profiles and even how drag queens earn Venmo tips.

According to eMarketer, the number of U.S. smartphone users scanning QR codes will increase to 99.5 million in 2025. It isn’t just younger smartphone users who have taken to scanning, older consumers have too; 44% of U.S. consumers aged 45–64 and 31% aged 65 and older report using marketing QR codes.

Three Reasons Why You Should Test QR Codes on Your Direct-Mail Control Package

Reason 1: Access to data

Data, as the technologists say, is the new oil. The companies who understand how to collect and leverage their data will be better positioned to capture more market share today and especially tomorrow.

While direct mail can be a great way to stand out in someone’s mind and mailbox, measurement and attribution can be difficult, especially if your call to action requires more friction or legwork on behalf of your audience like filling out a form and mailing it back. Adding a QR code for a call to action can help you better track audience actions and make it faster and easier for them to complete that call to action.

Reason 2: Increased Personalization

You can take your QR code a step further by creating a customized code and personalized URL for every recipient. Here’s an example using our President, George Eddy.

  1. George receives Heinrich’s direct-mail piece.
  2. He scans the custom QR code, which takes him to Heinrich.com/GeorgeEddy.
  3. He’s greeted with a personalized message, “Hey there, George!”
  4. The form fill is pre-populated with his contact information and asks him to correct and/or complete any incorrect or missing information.

Of course, you’ll need to thoroughly vet your mailing list ahead of time to find any duplicate names. You wouldn’t want to mix up two John Smiths.

Moving from a handwritten form fill to a digital form fill also alleviates work and reduces costs for your business. No longer will your staff waste precious time deciphering illegible handwriting. You can transition your data-entry employees to more meaningful work.

Reason 3: Retargeting opportunities

Using a direct-mail-to-web strategy gives you more chances to increase your direct mail campaign’s effectiveness. You can continue to retarget your direct-mail audience online via online ads and/or emails. Your media budget will dictate the number of touches.

  1. You match the physical addresses on your direct-mail list (your owned or purchased mailing list) to people-based digital identifiers such as LiveRamp or RampIDs.
  2. Devices tied to those digital IDs receive paid digital media such as display or video ads.
  3. These ads can then drive your audience to a standard landing page with an online form.

When you combine traditional and digital marketing, you’re cooking your direct-mail campaign with gas. You’ll gain the first-party data you need to make smarter business decisions, and you’ll make it easier for your audience to engage with you and you’ll be able to increase the efficacy of your marketing. In sum, integrated marketing plans that combine online and offline tactics do better than siloed efforts.

Heinrich is born for business—and your direct-mail campaign. That’s how we were able to beat our control package for a credit card offer 12 times with one test boosting Gross Revenue Retention by 24% through an estimated 1,400 incremental accounts. Let’s talk to see how we can beat your direct-mail control package again and again.


Naysayers have been saying it for years: direct mail is dead. The truth shows that direct-mail advertising is more robust than ever thanks to creative and technological advancements. That’s why an agency’s print department is a microcosm for wider agency trends as I’ll explain below. 

Trend #1: Start with Strategy

Strategy should drive all campaigns and tactics. In direct mail, strategy helps us know who to target when and how with the best formats and creative applications. Here are four examples: 

  1. Credit cards: Put an image of the credit card (personalized with the recipient’s name) on the package to help them imagine what it will be like to have the card in their hands. 
  1. Business recipients respond better to a letter package than a postcard or self-mailer. 
  1. Consumers during the holidays love invitation-style envelopes with stamps. 
  1. Mail that feels more emotional and tactile drives the urge to open it: 
  1. Handwritten fonts that look more personal 
  1. Soft-touch envelopes with a velvety feel 
  1. Gloss UV coatings that shine and catch the light 
  1. Embossed papers add sophistication and texture 
  1. Perforations make it easy—and irresistible—to open 

Trend #2: Data-Driven Plans and Results  

It’s no secret that data dictates marketing dollars. What may not be as intuitive is that data drives direct mail too.  

Today, direct mail campaigns are more microtargeted which means they’re more effective. We can tailor campaigns to highly local geographies or to extremely limited audiences based on past consumer behavior. For example, we can pinpoint the 50 people in a 5-mile radius who bought a boat in the past month and target them with products and services for their new boat. This kind of hyper-personalized, hyperlocal targeting means you’re spending your direct mail dollars more wisely so you can get better results. 

Direct mail holds the top position among channels for average return on investment (ROI) at 43% according to the most recent Response Rate Report from the Association of National Advertisers. Almost three-quarters of marketers agree that direct mail offers the best ROI. Proof-points like these explain why direct mail should have a place in every major campaign. 

Trend #3: What’s Old is New Again 

Overflowing mailboxes used to be a daily occurrence nationwide in the not-too-distant past. Now our email inboxes and social feeds overflow. To stand out, businesses increasingly turn to direct mail regardless of their audience demographics. Here’s why: 

As one of the oldest marketing channels, print too often gets overlooked in favor of digital channels. But much of innovation involves seeing the past with fresh eyes. The brands and agencies who know how to re-imagine direct mail and use it effectively as an anchor channel see higher results. 

Trend #4: Technological Innovation and Integration

Technology accelerates productivity and creativity. What used to take weeks in direct mail, now takes days. Digital proofs, more efficient production and new capabilities mean we have more opportunities than ever before to stand out in the mailbox with less time and money. 

Developing fully integrated campaigns that use both print and digital drive better results. In a survey commissioned by the U.S. Post Office, 60% of marketing respondents said combining digital and direct mail increases ROI. Don’t just take the marketers’ word for it: 56% of consumers tried a new business in the last six months because they got mail about it. 

With Informed Delivery and interactive calls to action like QR codes, the lines between the physical and digital worlds continue to blur—which works. Here are the stats that prove Informed Delivery pays off: 

Trend #5: A Can-do Attitude 

As business needs and consumer habits evolve, so have Heinrich’s print department and our skills. When we were founded, we focused primarily on direct mail for financial services, completing 18-million-piece runs with 30+ different versions. Now we also work in verticals like healthcare and multi-family real estate, which require different deliverables. For healthcare, we create fulfillment packages like sales enablement kits for insurance agents to host events-in-a-box. We develop high-end collateral pieces to woo and awe potential renters in multi-family real estate. 

We’re yes people who are solutions oriented and always looking for faster, more cost-effective ways to produce the ideas our creative department dreams up. We experiment, we test, we learn—and we know that what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. As such, we stay up on cutting-edge trends and technologies. 

Whether we’re making pop-up coupons for Macy’s inspired by their iconic parade, delivering human resource-department kits for a Kroger’s check cashing campaign or sending salt lamps to Medicare insurance agents to enhance provider affinity while improving personal well-being, we always champion innovation and impact. Because we’re born for business, which means we’re driven by results.