The younger generation is aggressively marketed via the internet. Many companies ignore them in direct mail marketing campaigns, thinking young adults are only interested in the digital world. In fact, young adults are a rich opportunity for your direct mail marketing campaign if you use the right strategies. Before you can effectively market to young adults, however, you must first understand the mind of the millennial. Millennials make up a large portion of the workforce today and have different values than the generations before them.
Many of these young adults grew up as the children of corporate business workers, parents who struggled to balance their work with family life, or those who often worked long hours at unfulfilling jobs to make money. Millennials are a response to this “rat race” mentality; they have been taught their whole lives to follow their dreams and to find a job they love so much they don’t think of it as work. They value flexibility, personal freedom, and the ability to make a difference in the world. If you can understand this mentality, you can use strategies like those below to be successful in direct mail marketing to young adults.
Make a social statement with your mailings.
Millennials like social change, and most claim they want to make a positive difference in the world. Customize your mailings and use them to make a statement to these young adults. Use recycled paper, publish mailings that advertise or draw attention to a social issue, or pledge to make donations to a specific cause for every recipient that responds positively to your mailings. These efforts will impress young adult recipients and encourage them to read your promotional material. By adopting a social movement or putting your corporate weight behind environmental conservation, you make your company an agent for change and much more attractive to young adults.
Emphasize individualism.
It may seem strange that a group so devoted to making a collective difference in the world also highly values individualism, but it’s true. This seeming paradox is in part borne of the culture that relies so heavily on social media, which is at once a celebration of the individual and a place where grassroots movements like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge can thrive. Effective direct mail marketing must appeal personally to the recipient and explain how his or her individual contributions can make a difference for your company.
Combine digital marketing and direct mail.
The combination of digital marketing and direct mail may be the most effective method for marketing to millennials, because it encourages online use on a widespread scale. Direct mail marketing campaigns carry more weight and credibility than digital marketing because young adults are so inundated by online requests and marketing. If direct mail can be used to lead young adults to online resources, it will be more effective than either marketing strategy would be on its own.
Use the above tips to create a marketing campaign that will make use of multiple media and reach a larger audience than ever before.
