Direct Mail Marketing 101

This article ©2005, QuantumDigital. All rights reserved.

Before launching a direct-mail marketing campaign, or even renewing an existing campaign, it’s critical to understand the fundamentals of how and why such marketing works.

What is direct-mail marketing?

Direct-mail marketing is a direct communication, via regular mail, that’s intended to generate some form of response from the recipient.

This definition can be clarified further by asking two questions: “Who is my recipient?” and “What response do I want him or her to take?”

In most cases, the recipient is a potential or existing customer. You want to acquire the former and retain the latter … Business Growth 101.

You achieve these goals, and thereby justify your marketing expense, when these potential and existing customers do one of three things:

• Request information from you (lead generation)
• Visit your store or website, or call you (traffic generation)
• Purchase something from you (direct order)

You can measure it in phone calls, website hits, or sales volume, but the purpose is always the same—get the recipient to take action!

Why use direct-mail marketing?

In a sentence: To promote your product or service to a targeted audience in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Promoting your product or service

Doing business without marketing is like smiling in the dark. You know you’re doing it, but nobody else does. Translation— you might have the best products or services around, or be the most knowledgeable in your field, but it does you no good unless you broadcast it.

Direct-mail allows you to get the word out, promote those products and services, and tell your recipients why yours are better than Brand-B. As we read on, we’ll see how to make this promotion even more powerful.

Reaching the right audience

Relevance gives you more bang for your marketing buck, and direct mail makes it possible. With the extensive databases in use these days, you can specify your message to meet the best audience.

Real estate advertisements, for example, would do well targeting homeowners, but would quickly find the trash bin if sent to commercial or industrial recipients.

The days of blanket mailing are fading … greater specificity is the future. Combine this concept of relevance with a degree of personalization (made possible with variable-data printing and messaging), and you’ll see response rates and profits climb like never before.

The power of immediacy

Another advantage of direct-mail marketing is timeliness. Advancements in digital printing, coupled with powerful new methods of automation, allow direct mail to go out when it matters most—immediately.

If you’ve created a sense of urgency by setting a sale deadline, or by offering incentives for a limited time only, you want the world to know right away. Otherwise, you reduce your window of opportunity to a mere peephole.

Direct-mail marketing lets you put your product, logo and message in front of prospects in the shortest time possible. The only faster methods are cold-calling (which there are laws against these days) and email-marketing (which is often deleted unread).

Get more for your dollar

With the on-demand technology of direct mail, you can have printed and mailed only those pieces you need to send out at a given time. There is no waste or overstock, so it’s more cost-effective. And with an online interface between you and your direct-mail marketing service, message alteration and updates are as simple as typing a few words or uploading a new image.

This answers the why of direct-mail marketing. Now let’s address the how.

How do I use direct-mail marketing?

On the surface, this question appears simple enough to answer itself:

How do I use direct-mail marketing? Well, I gather information about my product or service, have somebody print it onto a card, and blanket the world with it … right?

Right, if your only purpose is to expedite the mailbox-hand-trashcan procession. But we want our marketing to reach more than the trashcan, so we must dig a little deeper. That’s where we unearth the value of the following points.

Be responsible

Let’s face it … we have entered an era of marketing under the microscope. With the advent of the National Do Not Call Registry and growing support for the “CAN-SPAM” act, now more than ever direct marketers need to watch their step.

What separates legitimate marketing from spam and junk-mail? How do we earn the respect (or at least avoid the contempt) of our recipients? These timely questions bring us to the next point…

Be professional

Above all else, be professional in your direct-mail marketing. Not only will it enhance your image and drive more response, but it will help ensure the viability and legality of direct mail well into the future.

Be professional with your design:

• Have your direct-mail pieces created by a professional.
• At the very least, use a professionally-designed template.
• Avoid the amateur-night effect of sloppy graphics and haphazard design.
• Exercise some creative restraint so your words can do their job.

Be professional with your message:

• Learn some basics of marketing writing to avoid common pitfalls.
• Sell the benefits, not just the features.
• Have a skilled writer proofread for grammar and spelling.
• Go easy with the exclamation points … they suggest over-compensation!!!
• Avoid one-sided boasts like “we’re number one” or “we’re the best.”

In direct-mail marketing, as in many things in life, bad apples can truly spoil the bunch. So be responsible. Be professional. Be a success.

Conclusion

Dollar for dollar, direct mail is the most effective advertising today. On average, direct-mail marketing will yield $10 in sales for each dollar spent—twice the return of a television ad.*

Direct-mail marketing works, but only when done right. I hope this article has answered some of the how’s and why’s of doing it right, and I wish you the best in all your direct-mail endeavors!

* Broudy and Romano, Personalized and Database Printing