Direct mail allows your brand to reach customers in their homes and it can be highly targeted — decreasing your investment and increasing your overall response rates.  Additionally, direct mail’s response rate has increased to 4.4 percent for generic messages and can see, on average, a 33 percent higher return when the messages are targeted and personalized.

Our first direct mail marketing tip?  Create relevant marketing messages. As with any marketing campaign, you will increase your chances of seeing higher response rates if your audience feels that you’re sending them a personalized message that is both timely and relevant.  For example, send a different message to a current customer than you would  send to someone who has never purchased your products or services before. Using your database, you can create multiple variations of the direct mail piece to appeal to your segmented audiences’ needs, likes and interests.

Secondly, add an incentive.  Give the recipient a good reason to contact you — and be sure to generate the feeling of immediacy — for example, maybe the deal is one day only or can only be redeemed before a certain date.  Even though direct mail can stay around a household for a longer period of time, once the consumer disengages with your message, it’s less likely that they’ll respond — even if they were planning to do so.

Finally, include digital technology such as a QR codes or personalized URls.  This adds an additional way for your brand to continue to engage with your target audience. And, once your recipient visits your QR codes or pURL landing page, you can track and analyze what they click on and follow up with them again in the future according to what they were interested in when they visited your digital landing page.

Timothy Freeman
President
Print & Graphic Communications Association