Direct Mail Best Practices

Each and every day, the average American views, hears, and reads more than 2,000 different advertisements. Is it any wonder that, given the chance, most people tune out to advertising instead of paying attention? 

As a business, standing out as an engaging, interesting signal amongst the constant noise of other advertisers is difficult. With all that noise, how can you ensure your target audience hears your message? 

More so, how can you reach out to your target audience and make it clear that your message is worth their time?

While direct mail may no longer be the dominant direct marketing channel, it still remains a power player alongside mobile, search, email, social and many other online options. The name of the game today is “integrated channel” marketing.  

Businesses are now using multiple channels to reach customers, prospects and generate leads.  What’s true for any channel, however, are three simple marketing basics:

-  Do we know our prospect and have the right list? (List)
-  Does the deal or offer we present tempt the prospect to take action? (Offer)
-  Does the marketing copy and design catch attention, set an impression and prompt action? (Creative/Design)

Have you ever prepared a brilliant postcard design, spent days writing the perfect marketing message, and taken every step to ensure your targeting is as relevant as possible, only to have the campaign fail to make an impact? 

It’s time for some hard truth, marketing style. Your prospects primarily care about themselves. They care about their wants, needs, and interests. They do not, however, care about you, your company, or your objectives.

When a prospect pulls your direct mail postcard or flyer out from their mailbox, he or she will ask a series of questions: 

• What is being advertised?
• Is it something I need?
• If it’s something I need, who is offering it? 

The last question – who is offering it? – brings your credibility into the spotlight and makes your reputation essential. It’s also a double edged sword – you need to reveal just the right amount of information, all without wasting valuable space. 

If you’ve studied copywriting or marketing in any respect, you’ve heard the phrase “focus on the benefits, not the features.” 

While the benefits of your product or service can have a huge positive effect on the success of any marketing campaign, it’s important not to forget about the immense effects that a product or service’s features can also have. 

Benefits are crucial – no doubt about it. Your prospects will only sign on the dotted line once they’ve understood how your products or services can benefit them. But the details and features of your product or service are important, too. 

From failing to double-check your copy before printing your postcards (and sending out thousands of cards with misspelled headings as a result) to ineffective targeting, every direct mail marketer makes a mistake at some point in their career.

While some direct mail mistakes can seriously affect your campaign, others are easy to avoid with the right preparation. Read on to learn about five common postcard marketing mistakes and how you can avoid making them.

Today’s small businesses have a huge amount of choice when it comes to marketing channels. There’s online, print, radio, television and a huge range of other options to choose from, even for the smallest or newest of businesses.

While other marketing methods may be more glamorous or trendy, one of the most effective ways to raise awareness for your business, create action, and generate real results is by delivering direct mail postcards to your target audience.

From prompt delivery and an immediate impact to value for money, read on to learn how direct mail – and in particular, direct mail postcards – can give your business a steady flow of leads, sales, and loyal customers.

If your direct mail piece fails to capture the reader’s attention, it will fail in all other regards, too. No matter how great your copy might be, it will have no effect if readers don’t make it far enough into your postcard to read it.

So how do you make readers pay attention?

Is your direct mail postcard as effective as it could be? One of the biggest problems many marketers face is optimization. If your postcard already produces profits and drives responses, what reason is there to optimize further?

Optimization is what separates good campaigns from great ones. A careful process of optimization can double, triple or quadruple your campaign’s response rate and result in a massive increase in your return on investment.

That is, if you optimize at all. Far too many marketers, content with any degree of profitability, start expanding their campaign as soon as it’s in the black, leaving an incredible amount of extra potential sales still on the table.

Learn how you can test your direct mail postcard’s key elements – from headlines to calls to action – to increase your response rate and generate an improved return on investment from your marketing budget.

Was your most recent direct mail campaign a success? While many marketers and business owners understand the ins and outs of direct mail, a large number make a common mistake: failing to establish goals for their campaign before launching it. 

Clear, measurable goals can be the difference between launching a successful direct mail campaign that you can optimize and expand in the future, and a campaign that, despite generating a profit, gives you little to no actionable information. 

Discover the importance of setting measurable, objective goals for your direct mail campaign before you start. We’ll also share a simple goal setting framework that you can use to set effective goals for your next campaign.