Direct mail is a great way to get your product or service in front of customers. It can be a powerful channel for marketers looking to grow their businesses. When combined with digital, direct mail has the ability to help marketers effectively identify, craft, and deliver their message to the customer at the right time. This one-two punch of digital + direct mail provides marketers with precise insights and compelling messages that can deliver a strong ROI. But before you dive in, it’s important you’ve honed in on your audience with the message they want to hear. Here are five steps to creating a direct mail campaign that delivers results.
Existing customers are a great place to start when identifying your audience. However, sending a direct mail offer to everyone in your database is not necessarily the most effective use of your budget or skills when it comes to direct mail. It’s important to focus your campaign’s message on the right audience. This is where digital marketing can be very effective. Analyze your social media channels, digital survey results, and email lists to help hone in on your target audience. They’re the ones most engaged with your products/services. From there you can identify key information like gender, age, location, income, interests, and hobbies. Once identified, you can use this information to target new customers with the same traits.
Once you’ve identified whom your direct mail campaign is targeting, you want to make sure you understand them. More specifically, you want to make sure you understand what they need and tell them how your product or service can help fill this need. But rather than fill your direct mail piece with the features and benefits of your product, tell how your product will improve their situation. This is where identifying the right audience in step one is helpful. By understanding who they are and their interests, you’re able to position your product/service from their perspective and emphasize how it will make them feel and improve their situation.
Consumers are more likely to make a purchase from someone they know and trust. When developing your direct mail message, be sure to include copy that offers “proof” to the recipient that they can trust. Some effective forms of communicating trust in your direct mail piece include providing statistics, customer testimonials quotes from industry experts, a free trial or a money-back guarantee.
You have five seconds to convince the recipient to read your direct mail piece. Tapping into your target audience’s emotions is the key to creating a connection. This is where the choice of materials, paper, and envelopes, is a critical factor in a campaign’s success.
Studies show that the mere act of holding something in one’s hands creates an effect known as embodied cognition. It’s the sense of touch that influences our emotions and drives decisions. Therefore, by utilizing a tactile paper or finishing technique, you capture the recipient’s attention immediately – before they even read a word.
It’s important your direct mail piece has a clear call to action. By tapping into emotions when crafting the copy for your direct mail piece, you’re likely to garner a more powerful response in the reader. You can do this by using powerful language with action verbs. Try to keep it short and sweet – that applies to your words and sentences.
It’s important to not only define the goal of the campaign (build awareness, lead conversion, etc.). It’s equally important to measure the effectiveness of the piece. Some simple ways to measure a campaign’s effectiveness are with PURLs (personalized URLs) or campaign landing pages. Using Augmented Reality or QR Codes with a coupon can be effective incentives to drive response. Don’t forget about tried and true methods like toll-free numbers and coupons. And there are also new metrics, like Informed Delivery, to help improve response rates.
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