Direct Mail

Great Ways to Improve the Returns from Your Direct Mail Marketing Campaign

February 15, 2013 Ai Marketing
Direct Mail, Marketing, Multichannel Marketing, Print Campaigns
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We all know that any marketing campaign requires some time to yield significant results. Advertising channels like direct mail may be effective in generating sales but if they are not used strategically, they might not give you a substantial amount of profit. However, there are a few ways to improve your sales and increase the returns from your direct mail marketing efforts. Here are some great ways to start getting your desired results from the direct mail you have sent out.

Improving your content

Direct mail marketing uses the same concepts as online marketing. You might do everything you can to make your mail look fancy or attractive, but there are some key elements you must include in every mailing. Firstly, your headline should be able to grab the attention of your prospects. Make it descriptive but interesting, without revealing all the information you want to convey. Next, be sure to give your audience a solid offer they can’t refuse. Don’t embellish the details too much because it may seem untruthful.

Your mail pieces should contain a brief and clear message about why people should buy your product. To gain their interest in the product, focus the content on how your offer can help them. Try to mention the benefits in bullet-points or numberings to make sure the audience understands your offer. Always make sure to include a deadline for the offer but do not invent a false expiration date. This will prompt your audience to take an action. Keep your call to action clear and concise, so that your prospects can know exactly what you want them to do.

When you include discount codes in the form of QR codes, make sure it is possible for you to track them. This way, you can monitor the effectiveness of your direct mail marketing campaigns. If your company has a website, remember to add its URL so as to direct your audience to a specific landing page. Most people respond better to images than texts, so try to use as many visual details as possible. However, keep in mind not to clutter up your mail pieces; just keep them minimalistic and interesting.

Additional tips

Sending out hundreds of direct mail pieces may yield some results, but all those pieces need to be sent out to the right kind of audience. Try to keep your mailing list organized and make sure it is of high quality. You can include PURLs of your Facebook fan page or your Twitter profile page, so that your audience can easily “like” or “follow” you.

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Creating Your First Direct Mail Marketing Campaign? Here’s What You Should Know

February 14, 2013 Ai Marketing
Digital Print, Direct Mail, Marketing, Print Campaigns
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The cost of advertising is not cheap, especially when you hire the services of some of the best publications and advertising agencies. You don’t even know how well people will respond to your campaign. This is a risk that many businesses like small or start-up companies can’t afford to take. Direct mail marketing provides you a way to market your product or service effectively and at an affordable rate. Find out how direct mail marketing can benefit your business, and learn some quick tips on how to make it work.

How you can benefit from direct mail marketing

Direct mail marketing is a great way to test the market and see if your product is worth the money you are planning to spend on other advertising channels. This is an ideal start for many companies who wish to expand their business. Since direct mail offers numerous advantages, it is highly beneficial for smaller businesses and emerging companies. The main advantages are:

  • You can target your audience more precisely.
  • It gives you the option to create a campaign according to your budget.
  • You can easily test which words, phrases, and offers appeal most to your target audience. If you send out pieces with different offers to a random group of recipients, you can find out which offer works best.
  • It can happen very fast. Most direct mail marketing campaigns are faster than the traditional advertising campaigns.
  • You can avoid getting an overwhelming amount of responses. This is especially beneficial for smaller businesses because there might not be enough staff and resources to handle a powerful response. If you start out with a modest number of recipients, you can study the responses and prepare yourself for the next campaign.

Helpful tips for beginners

The entire process of direct mail marketing is not complicated but has to be planned carefully. When you are interested in targeting a specific demographic, you need to devise a strategy to win over your audience. Note down all the benefits of the product you’re selling, and then create your content with a focus on the features that are most likely to benefit your target audience.

For example, if you are targeting working mothers for a new beauty product, your mailing pieces should address their needs in particular. Include attractive pictures and clear descriptions of what your product does. If the product lasts for long hours without the need for constant touch-ups, stress on that part because the audience is likely to have a hectic schedule

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Are B2B Mailings Effective in the Age of the E-mail?

February 13, 2013 Ai Marketing
Direct Mail, Marketing, Print Campaigns
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Social media has been the main talk of the marketing town in recent times. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or one of the numerous other networks, it has been identified as an effective means of communicating marketing messages with clients and customers. However, there has been tremendous exaggeration about the end of direct mail marketing. As a matter of fact, statistics show that direct marketing is still held in high regard. Letter packages, catalogs, and self-mailers are effective, and continue to remain relevant for B2B mailers.

Importance of B2B Mailings

Since the inception of social media marketing, B2B marketing may have lost its zing, but its efficacy remains intact. A chart released by Marketing Sherpa suggests that B2B mailings are still important in marketing campaigns. The firm surveyed more than a thousand B2B professionals and found that 79 per cent of the respondents considered direct mail as a ‘very effective’ or ‘effective’ marketing strategy. Direct mail is considered especially useful in certain sectors. Organizations that provide business services were also under the microscope, and 34 percent categorized B2B mailings as ‘very effective’. However, just around 13 per cent of firms involved with business technology look at the marketing strategy in the same manner.

Importance of Relevance in B2B Mailings

Relevance is the most important factor in determining the success of B2B mailings. Based on the aforementioned statistics, organizations dealing with business technology may find strategies more effective than direct mail to educate people about their products. But companies that deal with business services can attain customer response more effectively by direct mail marketing. Direct mail can be made a part of your general marketing strategy by focusing on your customers and understanding how they wish to connect with your business, so as to educate themselves about your services or products.

Easy Way to Reach Out to Customers

B2B mailings have a certain power that may be harnessed by technology. Breakthroughs such as variable data printing allow you to customize direct mails when they are being printed. The right message will be sent to the appropriate person, eliminating spams and ensuring that your customer base remains intact. B2B mailings have the potential to be an integral part of an overall marketing strategy as it connects website marketing, direct mail marketing, and email marketing through customized content and personalized URLs so that you can reach your customers and provide them with information through a medium with which they’re most comfortable.

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The Essentials of Direct Mail Marketing

February 7, 2013 Ai Marketing
Digital Print, Direct Mail, Marketing, Multichannel Marketing, Print Campaigns
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In this age of Internet, people think that direct mailing is a waste of time and resources. So it has become one of the least used techniques of marketing, though it is one of the most effective.

Benefits of Direct Mail

There are numerous benefits of direct mailing, the prime ones being that the mailers can be targeted to specific customers and thus customized to be made attractive specifically for each customer; they are tangible and thus, if the right objects are sent through the mailer, all the senses of the customer can be engaged; the outcome of direct mail can also be computed with no trouble. Direct mail also lets you be more focused with your customer group than mass media.

The Basics of Direct Mail Marketing

There are three basic components of direct mail marketing. The first is the target market for your product. You have to decide on the correct audience to whom you are going to send your direct mail. All you have to do here is prepare a list of the names of your customers. You will get better response if you can make your list more specialized. The second basic component is the content of your mail. Your offer promoted through mail should contain the exact elements that your target audience is looking for. This would compel your prospective customers to take your campaign seriously. The last, but not least, is the presentation of your campaign – it should be able to rouse enough curiosity of the would-be customer so as to make him take a look at what you are offering.

How Do You Get Started With Direct Mail Marketing?

Like any other technique of marketing, direct mailing has its own set of steps. If you want to carry out direct mail marketing, you have to plan your campaign properly first. This involves identifying your target market in terms of what kind of people are in need of your product, and laying down your objectives in terms of what you want to achieve through this campaign.

While planning the campaign for your direct mail marketing, remember that being creative is the key to drawing the attention of the customer. Not only the content matter, but also the presentation of the mail needs to be creative. Your creativity can also extend to the type of offers you include and how interesting you can make them. Be sure that your would-be customers will read the matter ardently once you have grabbed their interest. So it’s important to include the things that would rouse their fancy. There is also a chance that they will tell their friends and family about it and you will get more buyers.

Once you have planned your campaign properly, you should execute it just as perfectly as possible. This includes preparing your mailer and sending it to the right audience. Make sure that the mailer is attractive enough for your target audience. The last step is to record and analyze the results of your campaign. This will not only help you in future campaigns but also enable you to realize how successful your current campaign is.

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Have You Discovered These Direct Mail Marketing Secrets?

February 6, 2013 Ai Marketing
Digital Print, Direct Mail, Multichannel Marketing, Print Campaigns
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Direct mail marketing is a very good choice for promoting your goods or services. There are several secrets of direct mail marketing, though, that expert marketers have been exploiting for decades. If you haven’t yet started exploiting the advantages of this, you might find the points below quite useful.

Don’t Underestimate Your Prospects

If you think that direct mail marketing is just about sending out some boring postcards with a picture of your product or service and a matching caption, you are mistaken. In today’s busy world, you will have to do a lot better than that to engage your prospective customer’s attention. A regular mail which has a picture and a matching caption will probably make your customer toss it right into the dustbin without a second glance.

In order to grab the would-be customer’s attention through your product advertisement, you need to get creative. Developing a humorous story about how your product or service can solve their problem will catch their attention better. If you are not so creative, a simple photograph with an intriguing caption can do just as well. Remember, the longer you are able to make the prospect look at your mail, the better the chances of his response. And never go for the clichés of direct mail marketing. They will never help to engage anyone’s attention.

Apply the Results of Your Past Campaigns

If you have carried out previous campaigns, then you probably have a record of what kind of campaign or what patterns got the most response. Gather the statistics from there and create your new campaign. If you have any competitor’s data, you can also draw some ideas from there. You may also have an abundance of junk mail in your email inbox. Go through them and note down their unique characteristics and you will know what to avoid putting in your campaign.

Make the Most of What You Know

Knowledge about your market and your customer is the most important thing in direct mail marketing. Make use of whatever you know about the customer and generate your correspondence list accordingly. Being specific will help you reach out to the right customers and cut down the costs. Demographics and customer statistics are a key to getting your mailing list right.

Get Your ‘Call to Action’ Right

In direct mail, you can provide no hyperlinks as a call to action. But that doesn’t mean you can’t provide a call to action. If you have a phone number, highlight it and ask your customers to call that number. If you have email addresses or websites or any other contact details, be sure to highlight these throughout the mail, too, and ask the customers to use them.

Pay Attention to the Medium

The medium on which you print your mailer has a direct impact on the responses you get. Ideally, there should be no obstruction between the customer and your mailer, so envelopes are not desirable. If your product is expensive, then cheap paper should certainly not be your option. You should keep in mind the impression to create, and accordingly choose the quality of paper. You can use cheap paper for bulk items, though.

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A Look at the 5 Top Benefits of Direct Mail Marketing

February 5, 2013 Ai Marketing
Digital Print, Direct Mail, Marketing, Multichannel Marketing, Print Campaigns
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One look at anyone’s email inbox will tell you how many unwanted bulk emails or spam mails we get every day. These are generally desperate attempts at promotion or push selling, but we hardly ever take a look at these emails before deleting them unceremoniously. Unlike the email inbox, however, direct mail very rarely contains spam. This ensures that customers will definitely look at your mail and not throw it away as spam. This is why you should consider, if you haven’t already, direct mail marketing to promote your company products.

Statistics Reveal That a Majority of People Sort Through Their Mail Immediately

As recorded by the United States Postal Service, most people like to check their direct mail as soon as they can. According to their statistics, at least 77% of the people receiving direct mail sort through the mails right away. This ensures that your campaign is more likely to catch the eye of a potential customer without delay.

Reach Out Effectively to Your Target Audience

Promotion is always about Return on Investment (ROI) at the end of the day. Instead of wasting extra money on advertising through the mass media, sending direct mail to selected potential customers who are in need of your product or service could be more profitable, as you would be able to gain more return through less investment.

Different Direct Mail Solutions at Your Disposal

Your direct mail material should be selected depending upon the type of your campaign. If you think that you would be able to grab the attention of your customer through a postcard, then choose a postcard to be sent as your direct mail. If you think a brochure would be better able to convey your ideas, then you should go for it.

Customize and Grab Interest

Everyone likes a touch of personalization. Using names of the customers in your campaign messages makes them feel special, and they become interested to read further into the message. Determine what they need most and address their specific concerns; they are sure to respond. Since your mail is reaching your target customers directly, you can go ahead and include certain special offers or coupons in the mail. This would urge them to use that offer or redeem the coupon, in the process making them respond to your campaign. A customized mail is bound to catch your customer’s interest.

Easily Measurable

Since you are mailing only to specific customers, measuring the effects of a direct mail campaign becomes easier. You only need to keep a track of how many responses you receive with respect to the number of letters you initiated. This statistics might also come in handy in the future when you need to make forecasts for similar campaigns.

No matter what the size of your business is, if you plan it right, you are sure to benefit from direct mail marketing campaign and reach out to your target group of consumers. Direct mail marketing can give you more ROI than most other types of campaign, and help you create greater impact as well.

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Creating a Direct Mail and Social Media Hybrid

January 31, 2013 Ai Marketing
Direct Mail, Marketing, Multichannel Marketing, Print Campaigns
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Today, a business which is not using social media marketing methods is considered to be conservative and losing out on potential customers. Entrepreneurs have taken to social media like anything. More businesses are creating their Facebook and Twitter pages day after day. The time is not too far off when almost every business will be using social media. In such a situation, traditional methods like direct mail marketing are under threat of going out of use.
There is no doubt that social media marketing is highly effective. With people getting access to the internet on the go through smartphones and tablets, it is a wise choice for businesses to go for it than to use the older methods. Yet, at the same time, one should realize that the conventional methods are equally effective. The reason why they aren’t talked about as much now is because they have fallen behind in the pecking order.

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Advantages of Using Direct Marketing for Your Business

January 26, 2013 Ai Marketing
Digital Print, Direct Mail, Print Campaigns
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Direct marketing encompasses a number of methods by which a business can get in touch with its target audience. The ‘direct’ touch makes use of tangible materials to promote the business unlike email and social media marketing. With the rise of the internet, direct marketing has become obsolete to a certain extent as businesses have moved away from it. However, that doesn’t mean it is any less effective. In fact, some businesses have direct mail as an integral part of their marketing campaign.

You can use the modern indirect marketing methods but don’t shun direct marketing altogether. Here are some advantages of using direct marketing for your business.

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Direct Mail Marketing for B2B

January 25, 2013 Ai Marketing
Direct Mail, Marketing, Multichannel Marketing, Print Campaigns
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Generally, direct mail is considered a business-to-consumer marketing strategy. Businesses pay hefty amounts to get appropriate mailing lists to get their businesses through to their prospective customers. But the fact of the matter is, direct mail is just as effective, if not more, in business-to-business sales too. So if your business caters to other businesses, make sure you utilize the wonder of time tested direct mail marketing to reach out to them. Following are some ways how your business can make the most of direct mail:

Make it to the Point
B2B sales cycle is typically longer than business-to-consumer’s. It is so because other businesses are always on the lookout to build trusted lifelong relationships with specific providers so that their own business is not affected by trying new companies. So self praising or personal mails will do very little to attract other businesses who presumably get such mails by the dozens each day. Experts advise to send a cover letter first with bullet points about all the necessary details regarding your business and how it can be of profit to them. A direct, to the point approach will enable other businesses to fully understand your services and thus will put it into consideration rather than discarding it as just another promotional mail.

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Direct Mail Marketing for Online Businesses

January 24, 2013 Ai Marketing
Direct Mail, Marketing, Multichannel Marketing, Print Campaigns
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Online businesses are all the rage these days. More and more people look for convenience and affordability by opting for businesses that can cater to their needs without having to go through the hassles of making dozens of phone calls or driving half way across the city. More and more entrepreneurs now either solely operate online businesses or provide the options of e-shopping. And when all the big guns in the industry are going online, you know that it is time to jump on the bandwagon too. However, just because your business is operating via the internet does not mean that you cannot use conventional mediums for marketing. Direct mail marketing whether door-to-door or through online can be just as effective, if not more, for online businesses as it would be for other forms of businesses. Following are some ways you can make the most of direct mail for marketing your online business:

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