Over the last 60 years or so, billions of pieces of mail have been sent by businesses, with the sole intention of growing sales.

These mailings have included everything you could possibly think of:

Simple letters and postcards, CD’s and DVD’s, three dimensional brochures, dustbins and even boxes of cereal have all found their way into letterboxes across the Globe – including the UK!

It goes without saying that billions of pounds are dependent on the success or failure of these mailings.

But what can YOU do to make your Direct Mail Campaigns more effective?

Campaign success is measured as return-on-investment (ROI) – or how many total sales were generated compared to the cost of the marketing campaign.

It’s a proven fact you can dramatically increase the response you get with a personalised telephone call as a follow-up. This has the advantage of making it easy for customers to respond to your message and for you to be able to measure the results. The downside is that it does require extra resource (and cost if you outsource), but certainly worth considering a test on a sample of your list.

If you intend to run a long-term campaign, it’s better to test your mailing small-scale first. It depends greatly on what you are selling as to the quantity, but a good rule of thumb is to test between 1,000 and 5,000 pieces to start for a low value/high volume product or service and 100 to 500 for a high value item.

You should consider the following 8 things to increase the response of your mailing:

1. Your Campaign Goal – What are you trying to achieve with the campaign? Are you building brand awareness? Do you want to generate leads? Are you looking to make an immediate sale? Once you have decided on the purpose of your campaign, work out how many responses you need to make the mailing successful – then track the results.
2. Target Your Mailing List – Identify who your “ideal” clients are, and build (or buy) your list targeted on prospects with similar attributes. Look closely at the Demographics, Psychographics and Geographics of your existing clients and look specifically for trends or other unique characteristics that they share.
3. Have A Good Offer – This is one of the most important parts of the mailing. Whether it’s a discount, a free gift or money back etc., the offer needs to be so tempting it is too good to refuse. Offers work better if there is an expiration date or an added incentive to act immediately. Time and time again, regardless of industry, people respond to an offer which they perceive to be of value to them.
4. Focus On The Benefits – Highlight the benefits of what your product or service will do for your prospective customer. Focus on what your service or product can do for THEM: “Double your sales performance;” “receive a 50 percent time saving;” “lose 10 pounds in 10 days.” Use features which quantify the benefits to add credibility.
5. Understand Lifetime Value (LTV) – Know what each new customer is worth to your business – Average Invoice Value x number of purchases in year x number of years remain client – this give you an indication of the maximum amount you could afford to spend to acquire a new customer.
6. Know Your Campaign Costs – Be clear from the start exactly what the campaign is going to cost you. Add up all of the component parts and divide that figure by the LTV. This will tell you exactly how many sales you’ll need in order to break-even on the campaign – more than that and you are in profit!
7. Offer Different Response Mechanisms – Make it easy for your customers to respond. Provide a telephone number, fax number, email address or a Web site. Different people prefer to respond in different ways, so let your customer respond in the way they prefer. Using an 0800 (freefone) number can dramatically increase your response rates. It also has the added benefit of allowing you to better track the effectiveness of your campaign by recording the number of people who phone.
8. Personal Follow Up – A follow up call to a warmed prospect can increase your response by as much as 30%, sometimes more. You can either do this in-house or outsource it to someone with telemarketing experience. If you choose to do this yourself, remember to check phone numbers against the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) – this applies to both businesses and consumers – and only call those who are NOT listed! There are hefty fines which can be (and are more frequently being) applied.

Of course there are many factors which determine the success (or otherwise) of your campaign, but following the points above will certainly get you on the path towards better results.

Now, onwards…

… to your success!

Jez