This is the first in a series of articles that will outline the planning and execution of successful direct mail campaigns, including techniques, best practices, strategies, achieving goals and improving results.
Finding new customers and keeping existing customers are fundamental strategies common to all businesses, regardless of size. Despite a growing array of marketing channels available to drive sales, direct mail continues to be a powerful marketing channel that outperforms the closest alternative by approximately 700%. Direct mail success has been substantially enhanced with advances in print technology.
Step One: Determine Your Direct Mail Campaign Goals
The execution of a successful Direct Mail campaign requires a well-defined strategy as well as thoughtful planning and the availability of the proper tools and technologies to help your team achieve its goals.
To form an effective Direct Mail strategy, start by asking yourself, “What are you trying to achieve?”
Are you trying to find new customers? Or, do you want to reach out to existing customers that you haven’t heard from in a while? Or, would you like to welcome new customers that have made their first purchase and drive them towards a second purchase?
Step Two: Determine Your Target Audience
Once you have determined what your goal is, the next step is to determine the target audience you’re trying to reach. For example, if you’re trying to find new customers, will your search be limited to a particular geographic area or to a specific demographic?
Once a succinct and detailed strategy has been defined, the planning phase of your team’s marketing campaign can begin. The scale and level of personalization of your campaign will largely determine what print technology should be deployed to accomplish your goals.
Step Three: What Size Direct Mail Marketing Campaign Should You Deploy?
If your conversation is broad, you can use data from basic mailing lists to showcase a product, service or offer and send it to as many people as possible. Generally, these types of “mass mailer” campaigns begin at 250,000 pieces and can go as high as several million pieces and are most efficiently produced on a web press with sophisticated personalization capabilities. Smaller and mid-range DM campaigns that don’t meet the 250,000 piece threshold are best produced on sheetfed offset presses where quantities of 5,000 to 200,000 are best produced.
If your conversation is more specific, data can be analyzed to find similarities between consumers and group them into segments. Because campaign segments contain shared attributes, they are “more targeted” and, therefore, more effective than less-targeted mass mailers. Segmented direct mail marketing campaigns can also be produced on web or sheetfed presses, depending on the size of the individual segments and the scope of the entire campaign.
Step Four: Make Your Direct Mail Piece Personalized
Finally, the combination of the internet, data, and artificial intelligence is greatly amplifying the usefulness and application of demographics as a tool for creating completely customized mailers with a unique offer, product and appearance that is tailored to specific, individual consumers. Hyper-personalized mail pieces that speak directly to individual consumers are proven to increase effectiveness and create improved ROI. Ideal for small to mid-range quantities, direct mail pieces that are designed for 1:1 communications are produced on digital presses, where each piece can contain 100% variable content.
Make no mistake – direct mail is a powerful marketing channel. It is an opportunity for a private, one-on-one conversation with your customer or prospect.
Leveraging the correct print technology is an important consideration in achieving your Direct Mail marketing goals & milestones. At a print company like ColorDynamics, we offer customized direct mail printing powered by our dedicated digital, inline web and conventional sheetfed platform, located in our world class, centrally-located manufacturing facility in Allen, Texas.
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