Data and Audience
Before you launch your own direct mail campaign, here’s what you need to know.
Even when most businesses now rely on both their social media platforms and websites for their marketing campaigns, direct mail marketing still remains relevant in the current age. Considering direct mail marketingiDirect mail marketing is the act of using the postal service to deliver promotional marketing material direct to a customer based on demographic information such as age, location or income. Direct mail pieces can include postcards, catalogs and other promotional pieces enables one-on-one communication with your audience, so you can control who receives the message and when... Read More is a good idea, as it is still an effective and cost-effective marketing tool. Small local businesses that still cannot afford a digital marketing campaign can consider direct mail marketing as their primary means of marketing before investing in social media marketing. But before you launch your own direct mail campaign, you must first know its dos and don’ts.
Dos of Direct Mail Marketing
1. Follow the 40/40/20 Rule
The 40/40/20 Rule states that 40 percent of your marketing campaign’s success comes from the effectiveness of your mailing listiA Compiled List consists of data or information gathered from multiple sources and assembled into one list that is used for marketing purposes. Compiled lists can contain everything from email addresses to other contact or demographic information. Unlike response lists which consist of information compiled from a consumer's previous buying history, for example, compiled li... Read More, 40 percent on your offer, and 20 percent from everything else, including the design, the text of the mail, and others. To follow the rule, you must focus on identifying your audience first before anything else. A perfectly designed mail isn’t useful if the receiver is not interested in what you have to offer. You must first understand your target audience and build a mailing list. Knowing who your customer is, what stage of the buying process they are in and what the lifetime value of this type of customer is, helps you to hone in on a specific audience that will lead to a higher conversion rate. Only after you’ve built a mailing list and prepared a goal should you think about the design, copy, delivery method, postage rates, and others.
2. Test the Market
If your business is in a medium or large city, you will first need to test the market in a small area before fully executing the campaign. You can run several tests on a small area using your focused mailing list to measure the effectiveness and ROIiReturn on investment (ROI) is simply the measure of what was spent on a marketing campaign compared to the sales that were a result of that marketing campaign. More simply put, for every dollar a company spends on marketing, how much money is that effort generating in sales. On a larger scale, ROI is a key metric used to not only determine success of markteing efforts, but... Read More of the campaign and tweak the tests’ audience, offer, and design one at a time to find the best combination.
3. Make a Great Call to Action
Once you have tested the market and identified your target audience and offered a great deal to the right people, you must then direct them to your business. You must give your audience an option to act and transact since a postcard that only informs people of your presence is too expensive if there is no ROI. The call to action doesn’t have to be a sale or discount – it could be advertising a contest or promotion, or incentivizing people to conduct an online survey. Regardless of the nature of the call to action, there must at least BE a call to action. Direct mailing is most certainly not the avenue to send out a blank postcard or flyer that simply informs people of your presence – it’s too expensive, too time-consuming, and too hard to efficiently track metrics to garner simple impressions.
Don’ts of Direct Mail Marketing
1. Neglecting Quality Control
Remember that you’re writing and sending mail to people, and you’ll need to do an excellent job at it to attract their attention. If your cards have glaring misprints, noticeable formatting issues, and poor print quality, it’s realistic to expect that the receivers will throw them in the trash. You must ensure that your mail is easy to read and has an attractive graphical design that will immediately catch the receiver’s attention.
2. Not Following Up
Once people come into your business through your mail, you must focus on customer retention. Just because you received customers after sending them one mail, doesn’t mean that your marketing campaign is over. Engage with your customers by sending a thank-you note or putting them on a priority list for the continuation of your campaign. You will need to have a system to track which of the mail recipients responded to your first mail drops so you can focus on them.
3. Not Driving Traffic Online
Even if we’re talking about direct mail marketing, you still need to maximize your online platform to attract more customers. You’ll need to get your new customers to visit your website or social media platform and help spread the word about your services to their friends and families. You can host an online sale on your social media platform specifically meant for the people who received your direct mail. Using coupon codes and QR codes for sales and small freebies and additional entries for a contest are excellent ways to strengthen your call to action while driving trafficiWeb analytics are the benchmark for the collection, analysis and reporting of data collected from website traffic. Once goals are set for website traffic, those goals are measured against web analytics collected over a pre-determined amount of time. Goals can range from unique visitors to a site, total number of visitors to a site or even page views or duration that a user... Read More to your online platform. If you’re considering direct mail as a marketing campaign, know that it is an effective marketing tool when used properly. It can complement any digital marketing campaign you already have in place.
Learn more about how Amsive can help you with this marketing campaign and eventually help your website gain more traffic.
