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!
