Online advertising campaigns (including Facebook and Instagram) often suffer from imperfect targeting, creating a lot of wasted marketing budget. On the other hand, direct mail offers the advantage of near-perfect prospect targeting. 

Traditionally direct mail only, Lawn Doctor franchisees have been testing the impact of adding highly targeted banner ads to their direct mail campaigns since 2018, effectively reaching the exact same customers both off-and online. 

Direct Mail + Target Online Banner Ads. Starting with an identified mail list, IP addresses and smart device ID’s (mobile) were appended to the mail list. This enabled online ads to be delivered ONLY to the mailing list, creating an additional online touch to direct mail.

Targeted online ads were served to homeowners on the mailing lists one week prior to the letter packages arriving and continued running two weeks afterward to reinforce and remind their target audience about the offer. This combination created a multi-channel, multi-touch strategy that could easily be tracked back to the initial targeting file.

Leveraging IP address and device ID ensures a qualified audience is seeing your ad and offer versus creating a look-a-like audience to serve online banner ads to.

The impact of targeted banner ads in combination with direct mail increased sales 21% - 44% compared to direct mail alone.

Franchises that have incorporated direct mail with IP targeting as part of their annual marketing strategy have experienced a 7-22% year-over-year lift in sales.