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Five
Tips for Direct Mail Success
Direct
Mail is extremely effective in driving new
sales and generating new interest in your
product or services. Its unparalleled success
comes from its innate ability to directly
target your specific audience. It has been the
preferred method of advertising and promotion
for many years and that`s not going to
change anytime soon.
1)
Research
is your friend.
Leverage what you know about your customer
base. By knowing whom your target market is
and just targeting them, you can increase your
success rate dramatically. If you send out
10,000 advertisements for a retirement village
and 5,000 of them go to twenty something`s,
your success rate is going to be very low.
Contrarily, if you send the exact same mailer
to people 60 and over, your success rate is
going to be astronomical.
2)
Slow and steady wins the race.
It is important to remember that the most
effective direct mail campaigns are just that,
campaigns. The more times a prospect sees your
service or product, the more likely it is that
they are going to become one of your
customers. A
"one time" shot-in-the-dark
mailer is simply not going to be effective. In
order to get the best results, plan on doing
more than one mailing to the same list of
contacts. Your response rates will go up with
each consecutive mailing.
3)
Crunch the numbers.
Determine how much budget you have for your
mailing campaign and prepare accordingly. For
example, you may want to send out 10,000
mailers, but you don`t have the funds to do
it all at once. It would be less taxing on
your budget if you mail to your top 2,500
target customers, four different times, say
over a period of two months. This will be much
more effective in the long run, cost less up
front, and return much higher dividends.
Especially if you pay attention to tip #1.
4)
Determine the best type and size for your mail
piece.
Don`t try to say too much at once. The idea
is to get their attention and generate a good
lead. You may have grand plans to send out an
enveloped mailer full of your brochures.
However, in most cases, it is more beneficial
for you to produce a clear and concise
postcard. Then take the money you saved on
printing and hit a larger target market
audience. For instance, if you are planning on
sending out six mailings, start out with
postcards for the first three. Then, as your
revenue increases, you could easily create a
larger mailing piece for the last three
mailings.
5)
Style is not a substitute for substance.
Dramatic and detailed graphic design is great,
but you should never substitute the substance
of your advertising message for style.
Substance is what sells. The substance of the
message: "We have the largest selection of
wedding dresses in our area and the guaranteed
lowest price" carries much more weight than
just some nice graphics of a wedding dress.
Ultimately, the best thing to do is give your
substance style.
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