In a recent article from a Digital Printing blog, “Selling Direct Marketing: 7 Steps to Success,” they discuss tips for creating a direct mail piece that not only increases your engagement and response rate, but ultimately increases your company’s ROI.

The first tip, understand your audience.  Before you can create a message or a unique design, you must understand what your consumers are interested and when they’re interested in making purchases.  Track their buying patterns and habits as best you can in your consumer database and target them with branded message during times that they’re more likely to make purchases again.  Targeted and personalized direct mail is ultimately about getting the right message to the right person at the right time.

Another important tip mentioned in the article was to build and create a plan-of-action. Once you understand what your audience is interested and when they are most likely to make purchases, begin to build your brand’s message and the campaign’s timeline based on the information you’ve uncovered using your database.  Ultimately, having a solid marketing plan with set goals and objectives will help your sales team gauge their success and have a clear follow-through process.

A final tip they mentioned — quality over quantity.  Instead of casting a large net with one generic message, use your database to only reach out to the ‘right’ people.  The ‘right’ people are the people who you qualify as the most likely to respond, the people most likely interested or the people with who your company already has a strong relationship with.  By reducing the number of people you send your message to and  creating hyper-targeted campaigns, you’re more likely to not only see higher returns, but also will see more qualified and valuable leads in response to your message.

Timothy Freeman
President
Print & Graphic Communications Association