Tag Archive for: direct mail marketing

How Direct Mail Can Boost Your Online Presence

As an experienced direct mail company, we’ve learned that this most important thing is to reach your target audience with the right mail pieces. With the evolution of digital technology, this has become easier than ever. It’s important to present your customers with a call to action that can only be accomplished online. Printing and mailing business cards and marketing assets is a great way to help you draw traffic to your company’s website. By utilizing the right marketing approach, you can expect to generate a greater ROI as a result.

These are some of the ways that direct mail campaigns can level up your company’s presence online:

Integrate With Your Digital Marketing Efforts:

Direct mail and digital strategy are a powerful  combination for search and reach strategies. When you send a direct mail piece, you usually have a higher response rate than any other outreach method. If you send a postcard printed to a client or prospect, your goal is to persuade the target to visit your website. In turn, this will help boost conversions that can only be accomplished online.

Reach Multiple Audiences Faster:

Direct mail is a less intrusive way to get your brand in front of the public eye. In order to effectively execute this outreach strategy, it’s good to analyze the traffic your website already brings in. This gives you the chance to see where most of your visitors are coming from. When it comes to mail marketing, this is an easy way for you to develop target lists early on. In turn, you’ll be able to distribute mass amounts of direct mail to the potential customers much more quickly.

Avoid Digital Roadblocks:

Digital marketing comes with many opportunities, but it also creates a lot of challenges to get around. For instance, an email advertisement can be easily blocked or filtered into a spam folder, never to be seen. Users install ad blocking software to deter digital ads away. Designers and copywriters spend long hours creating these pieces, so don’t let all the hard work go to waste. If you really want to make an impression on your audience, then it’s good to execute a direct mail marketing campaign as well. This ensures that the custom design at least reaches the intended prospect.

Compel Customers To Visit Your Website:

Who doesn’t love a discounted service? Sending direct mail is one of the best ways to inform people about sales, discounts, and reward opportunities. Motivate your prospects to visit your website by providing them with coupons to go along with your direct mail pieces. Customers that want to use the coupon will have to visit the website so they will be able to claim discounts, giveaways, and more. This usually results in people exploring your website to learn more about the other services that are offered.

The Importance Of Variable Data Printing

Marketing is constantly evolving and direct mail tactics are transforming with the evolution of digital technology. Nowadays, companies use high-quality software to put a personal touch on all mailed pieces. Businesses rely on variable data printing (VDP) technology to help create more engagements and responses from clients and consumers. If you are a business owner, it would be in your best interest to adopt VDP to boost the results of your marketing mailing campaigns.

 

New printing technology can bring a fresh new aspect to your marketing strategy. Take advantage of the top perks and watch your business grow right in front of your eyes. These are some of the ways that VDP software can help your business generate a greater ROI:

Build Attention-Grabbing Mailing List Data Sets:

Increase the response rates from customers and prospects by filtering out any sets of irrelevant data. With VDP technology, you have the ability to build specific mailing lists that pertain to different audiences. This software generates analytics and insights about where people live, their marital status, occupation, and so much more. Variable data printing is one of the best tools for you to utilize when you’re building a strategy for mailing campaigns.

Create Automated Mailing Processes For Multiple Locations:

When you are sending mail to businesses, make sure you send it to the right branch. If you are targeting a company with multiple franchises, it’s important to send your piece to a decision maker at his main office. Variable data printing allows you to print pieces that are most convenient for that targeted recipient. This helps if there are multiple store locations available. With VDP, you have the ability to see which address makes the most sense. You’ll get access to the zip codes and distances

Generate Analytics To Target The Right Market:

With variable data printing support, you have the ability to discover demographic data and consumer interest information. VDP offers sophisticated targeting applications so you can determine which audience is best to send mail to. With VDP software, you’ll always have the metrics you need to get the right reach. Additionally, you can also integrate VDM software to monitor website traffic and digital strategy approaches. Using VDM gives you the ability to detect the interest of your website visitors. If you run a digital advertisement, you can track how many engagements that specific ad generates.

Save Time And Money:

A variable data printing system will help you eliminate the frustration that comes with mass printing. With VDP, you have the ability to print the exact amount of mail pieces that you need. This eliminates waste and duplicate prints. In addition, VDP reduces the amount of time  spent on labeling. VDP systems grant users the ability to print addresses directly onto the mail piece. Just type in the information and when the piece is printed out, you have the advertisement ready to mail.

Create Custom-tailored Mail Pieces

Create custom-tailored mail pieces with VDP software.  Variable data printing systems give you a gallery of fonts, colors, and other custom applications to create an authentic marketing piece. Thanks to these advances in technology, you have the ability to create a piece that makes a direct connection to each client or consumer..

 

Factors for Analyzing a Successful Direct Mail Campaign

Is your direct mail printing strategy effective enough?

Starting up a direct mail campaign without having specific metrics in place is a recipe for disaster. If you’re not diligent about adhering to a set of predetermined factors to measure yourself by, then you’re already putting yourself at a disadvantage; how can you ever hope to understand whether or not it’s successful if you don’t even have a method to measure that success?

An effective campaign relies on heavily backed data to emphasize what went well or highlight where it fell short. Without that in-depth analysis, it’s impossible to make the proper adjustments for your next direct mail advertising campaign. So, what factors do you need to be looking at? We’ve outlined a helpful guide below so that you know exactly what you need to do to make sure your mail ends up in the right hands.

  • Results: Sure, this one might seem like it should go without saying. But you’d be surprised at how frequently there’s a disconnect between what you’re offering and whether or not potential customers take the bait. If your mailing list isn’t generating results, then it’s time to think critically about why: Was there interest with no purchase? Where specifically did your numbers fall short? See what about your process turned customers off, and what about that specific part made them wary of moving forward.
  • The Offer: Is this the second, third, or maybe even fourth time that you’ve tested this offer? If so, think about what offer you’re putting out there, and how its message might be compromised by myriad factors. Make sure what you’re trying to say is coming across loud and clear; if clarity isn’t the issue, make sure that the message aligns more closely with what your audience is looking for.
  • Audience: Direct mail services live and die based on the people they reach. Make sure that the audience that you’ve identified is one that you’re trying to bring in, and that they’ve been identified because they’re the best candidates for what you have to offer.
  • Size: Direct mail postcards might vary in size, but that doesn’t mean you have to go gonzo and pick a size and look that’s obnoxiously large. You want your message to stand out, but you don’t want to be intrusive. If you’ve used a similarly-sized piece of mail before and it’s been successful, stick to playing the hits; if not, it’s time to make a change.
  • Design: Design is more than the simple placement of colors or images; you need to select specific color-schemes and on-brand images that get your message across effectively. Make sure that the layout is in keeping with what you’re trying to say to your audience.
  • Copy: Now that you’ve got their attention with an eye-catching design, make sure your copy backs up the message in a conducive way. Make sure that your font is eye-catching—highlight or bold the most important words and stay away from confusing language.
  • Timing: When it comes to engaging customers, timing is everything. Mailboxes are more cluttered than ever around election time, so try and avoid that season for revving up your direct mail campaign.

For small businesses and large corporations alike, high-quality marketing campaigns are a critical component. They require less resources than a costly digital campaign; delivered right to your door, direct mail business cards, free samples, and engaging written content are a great way to drum up interest in what you have to offer. As long as you’re committed to quality printing for your postcard design and strategically map out when you need to kick things into high gear, you should be in good shape.

Tips for a Successful Holiday Direct Mail Campaign

Even with all the social media marketing and internet advertising, there is still no substitute for a smart, targeted, and well-designed direct mailing campaign. Direct mail is appropriate for any size business and are a great way to get your message in front of a targeted, motivated audience.  But it takes proper planning, the right target, and a great design to get noticed. Before you start to plan your campaign, here are some tips to help your holiday mailer on the right track.

Make sure you have the right target – How you go about choosing the right target is the most important part of your campaign. The greatest design in the world is meaningless in front of the wrong target. It’s pointless to send a postcard about roofing repair to an apartment complex, right? If you don’t have a working prospect list, you’ll have to find one that uses the right target criteria.

Make sure your mailer looks great – If your mailer looks dated and is poorly designed, it can do more damage than good. In fact, people will connect poor design to poor service. A better way is to design something memorable that shows your company as a vibrant, competent provider of a service or product. The content should be clear and free of typos, poor grammar, or misleading claims. The look should be colorful with pictures and easy-to-understand graphics. Your mailer should stand out, be relevant, and be useful.  This is an important way your piece will avoid being considered “junk mail.”

Use different sizes and colors – Larger and differently shaped mailers helps your piece stand out from the rest and gives you more room to add content which is more useful than standard postcards, or letter sizes. Color is an important factor to making your mailing piece stand out from the rest. Bright, vibrant hues of green and yellows are great ways to do this.

Anticipate a realistic response – If you send out 2,500 mailers you shouldn’t expect to close hundreds of new deals.  In fact, the response rate for a direct mailing campaign is between 6 and 3%. This figure should be used when trying to determine what kind of success you need to have in order for your campaign to be profitable.

Look at the competition – Remember that other companies are sending out mailers too and even if they aren’t direct competitors, you should get an idea about how they approach their mailer pieces. The best place to start is your own mailbox. Take a look at pieces that catch your eye and use those aspects for your next piece. Imitation is the best form of flattery after all.

Use QR codes – these make it very easy for a customer to scan and head to whatever online resource you want to send them to. This could be your homepage, a blog about your product offering for the holiday season, or a specific product listing on your site.

Track the response – Make it easy for you customers to contact you, but also remember to make it easy to track how they got to you. This will help you gauge the profitability of this campaign and give you feedback that will allow you to improve later campaigns.

Plan ahead – The best time to get your marketing materials in front of a customer is the week before Black Friday. Black Fridays are planned ahead of time nowadays as shoppers want to maximize their bargains and with your mailer in hand they can add your store to the list.

Presort can not only print and get your mailer distributed, we can assist you with the marketing research needed to find the most potential customers and make your campaign a success.  Call us today!