Direct Mail marketing is very effective tool that small-medium businesses can leverage to prospect and acquire customers. It is both an art and a science that requires giving a serious thought to every direct marketing campaign and improving it over time by testing and incorporating the learning. And even when you have mastered the above mentioned approach, it is possible that your arduous efforts might not yield the expected results, if you don’t take the following factors into consideration –
Do’s:
Test and change: The success of Direct mail marketing relies heavily on testing. Segmenting your customer base, trying different Ad copies, experimenting with different offers and even changing marketing collateral every time could yield varying results.
Proof read your copy: Make sure your messaging is thoroughly proof read for grammatical mistakes and that the sentences are easy to read. The message should be clear, crisp and precise to stick with the reader.
Leverage existing studies: Scour the internet and Direct Marketing resource for case studies that might be relevant to your campaign and capture key insights from those studies. Not only will they help you manage your expectations from the campaign, but also provide you with best practices to incorporate in your own campaign.
Plan ahead: Think ahead and plan what you want to do with the response for your campaign. For example, if your campaign is geared towards driving users to a website, plan the flow that you would expect a user to follow. Do you want them to fill out a questionnaire or do you want them to register, or perhaps you want to learn more about their demographics. Think through these aspects before you send your mailing.
Don’ts:
Confusing call to Action: Don’t make it difficult for the prospect to figure out what you want him to do. He should be able to quickly understand the action that the mail piece wants him to perform.
Bloated/Hyped content: If your mail piece has extensive content or you mention something that is hard to believe, chances are that the prospect will immediately lose interest and get rid of your mail piece.
Unattractive headline: The headline of your mail piece says it all to the prospect and he is immediately going to decide whether to read further or not. Don’t write a cliché headline or something that is not going to get noticed.
Marketing piece design: Don’t use design and themes that have no relevance to your product/service or for that matter your core message. Make sure the art, graphics and pictures etc. strengthen the underlying theme of your campaign.