Direct Mail Benefits and Tips

Whether you are operating with a large or small marketing budget, direct mail remains a fairly easy and cost effective way to grow business and increase awareness of your company. Below I’ve listed some benefits of using direct mail as well as a few tips to launching an effective direct mail campaign.

Benefits:

It’s Effective
Direct Mail generates one of the highest response rates of all marketing media. Studies have shown that 81% of households either read or scan direct mail.

High ROI
The average conversion rate for a direct mail campaign (percentage of recipients that turn into active customers) averages between 1 and 3%. For many businesses a 1% conversion rate on a 2500 person mailing would far exceed the amount invested in the direct mail campaign.

Sophisticated Target Marketing
Most other forms of traditional media employ a method of “mass marketing” that involves saturating the public at large with your message in the hopes that that will create a small percentage of converts. Direct mail allows you to hone in on your target demographic and reach your desired audience with much greater efficiency.

Tips for an Effective Direct Mail Campaign:

pURL’s
Otherwise known as personal url’s, pURL’s are unique web pages that can be specifically customized for each recipient of your email campaign. pURL’s make great calls to action and also allow you to track response rates to your mail campaign with much greater efficiency.
Further, once an individual logs in, the Web site can track the respondent’s activity and continue to tailor the information based on his or her behavior. This information can also be used to further tailor future print and Internet communications.

By combining both media, marketers can take advantage of the tangible appeal and quality of commercial print, plus the immediacy, tracking, and instant response of the Internet.

QR Codes
We’ve mentioned QR Codes several times in previous blog posts. QR Codes provide similar benefits to pURL’s in the sense that they allow you to include an online call to action in your printed piece and allow you to track response rates and compile analytics reports.

Incentives
If you are going to the trouble to attract attention to your company, you most likely want to create as many new customers as possible with your direct mail campaign. Incentives remain one of the most effective means of turning prospects or leads into loyal customers. The most common form of incentives usually take the form of discounts, but you can also incentivize reponses by offering time savers, luxuries or special shopping expriences to drive new customers to your door.