Tips For Effective Direct Mail Marketing

With all the focus on digital marketing nowadays, it’s easy to look right past a traditional dependable channel that can play a significant role in your marketing mix.

Direct mail isn’t dead.

If you’ve been in the marketing and advertising field for 20 or more years, you likely have a lot of experience working with direct mail. The key to making it highly effective today is to use direct mail as a tool to manage a single task, rather than running large-scale, expensive campaigns.

Those mass mailings of yesteryear usually aren’t successful, unless of course, you’re an advanced consumer marketer with a large budget centered on building brand awareness, or unless you possess very precise tracking metrics to quantify marketing ROI.

The majority of newly-minted marketers getting into the workforce spent their college focus studying digital marketing – social media, mobile marketing, search engine marketing and possibly email. If you’re one of them and are searching for ways to develop your overall marketing results, take into consideration using direct mail. With everyone getting swamped by digital campaigns, a well-done mailpiece can really stand out.

Direct Mail Campaign Ideas

Listed here are some ideas for campaigns to get you thinking :

Produce New Leads

Think about joining an industry organization in which the members are your target audience. Develop a special offer – a quote, a discount, a pass for a seminar, etc. – and send them a special introduction to the offer.

Direct Sales

Create a “special deals” mailing, run month-to-month or quarterly, that’s highly targeted to the particular needs of your audience( s). Guide them to your website to order, and use a PURL or offer code to track responses.

Improve Relationships with Existing Customers – Send a hand-written style thank you letter from your CEO showing appreciation for their business. The thank you letter is uncommon nowadays. Don’t present any special offer – simply thank them. It’ll stand out.

Upsell to Existing Customers

Send a notecard with a unique upgrade offer to your very best customers. Everyone loves a deal, and make them feel that you value their business by giving them a solid offer.

Tips for Effective Direct Mail Marketing

After figuring out precisely how you’re going to use direct mail, ensure that you follow these 5 steps :

Make use of a clean list

Your list is the central element of your direct mail campaign. Inaccurate addresses or old contacts create a wasted investment. Be sure that your names and addresses are accurate.

Project conversion metrics

The common rule of thumb is the fact that the smaller and more specific your list, the more you can spend per piece. It’s better to make a solid impression to a few than to make a weak impression to many. Understand your cost per unit, and project a conversion rate, so that you can calculate whether your campaign will have a positive ROI before running it.

Make the offer clear

Evaluate your creative to make certain that the recipient will know precisely what action you’re asking them to take. If you happen to scan your mailpiece and can’t figure out the call-to-action within 3 seconds, revise your creative.

Plan fulfillment

Know precisely how you’ll deal with positive responses, and track each one

Measure results

It’s always an excellent practice to gauge your results after a campaign, to see how close you were to your original projections, and if you reached a positive return on investment. This will also enable you to become a better estimator over time, and thus a more effective marketer.