Even as direct marketing becomes focused on email campaign strategy, a direct mail marketing campaign can still be effective. A direct mail campaign is harder to ignore than a mass email. It also provides potential customers with a tangible example of a company’s desire to sell to them. As the owner of a start-up, using a direct mailer could set you apart from your competitors. You may wonder how to set it up though. Your start-up has not done such a campaign before. A bad campaign could be expensive in postal fees. However, the following steps will show you how to start a direct mail marketing campaign.
Build A Mailing List
Before you can mail anything out, you need to decide who to mail it to. Like other marketing, your mailing will only be effective if it is carefully targeted. Do your research and produce a list of leads the same as you would for an email campaign, only taking their home addresses instead of emails. You can then buy more mailing names depending on the criteria you are looking for in customers. Together, these two methods should produce a list of people likely to buy your products. This list will ensure your investment in printing and postage is not wasted.
Create The Mailer
You now need to design the mailer you will send to the customers. This should be a custom-made piece that uses window envelopes. It should be much more noticeable than your company’s usual brochure’s or pamphlets. Your mailer should be informative, providing the reader with all the info they need on the product your advertising. It should also encourage a call to action, a statement that encourages them to call or email you back if they are interested. Additionally, use plenty of graphics, but make sure they are relevant to your message. This mailer needs to do one job, sell your product. You should avoid including anything that interferes with that goal.
Test The Campaign
Before you start the mass mailing, test the mailer to make sure the campaign works. To do this, send the mailers to one small area of your overall target and measure the response to your sales department. If you get a good rate of leads following the call to action, you can expand the rollout to other areas. This process of test and expand ensures that you don’t spend money on a failing campaign. Every expense comes after you’ve proven interest in the one before. This scale up also makes it easier for your company to respond to interest by staggering the roll-out. Testing like this is the only effective way to make sure your assumptions about the customers are true.
Process Responses and Analyze
Now that the mailers are going out, your company needs to be ready for responses. Potential customers interested by your flyer will quickly lose interest if they can’t get a hold of you. If you put a phone number on the mailer for response, make sure your company is ready for the call volume, without putting people on hold. If you told them to go to a website, make sure you can take the surge in users. You should also be ready to take the data these responses will generate. This data will be essential to determine your return of investment, or ROI. Your ROI lets you know whether the campaign worked. This step is the most important, since it is where potential customers become actual customers.
Repeat The Process
Now that your mail campaign is a success, you need to do it again. These fresh customers will forget about your company quickly if you don’t jog their memories from time to time. A good direct mail campaign will interlock with the next campaign, and the one after that. Marketing like this needs to be a constant process. You should always be thinking of new mailers to send or ways to connect the mailers to your other marketing. That way your brand is constantly reinforced in the customer’s mind.
The following steps will help you build a successful direct mail marketing campaign. Research your desired audience and create a mailing list that is likely to respond to you. Use this knowledge to create a mailer that will call people to action. Test the campaign in a small area to prove it works. As you launch, be ready to respond to interested leads, and study their data to produce an ROI. Repeat the process with interlocking campaigns so your customers don’t forget you. These steps will let you dominate the mail marketing space.
Image: Geralt