Launching an Effective Mailer Starts with a Plan

Direct mail marketing is a powerful, profitable way to generate revenue and grow your business. While there are many factors that go into launching a successful campaign, the first and most important step is to start with a plan. Carefully planning your mail strategy beforehand will help you get the most out of your marketing investment.

The Objective: Defining clear objectives and how you are going to measure direct mail effectiveness will keep your campaign on track throughout the design process, implementation and tracking results. For example, is the purpose to drive website traffic, event registrations, or store visits? Be sure to have baseline metrics in place such as how many responses you expect or want to have, along with a way to measure the success of your primary objective (i.e. offer code redemption, call tracking, form-fills, match-back analysis, etc.).

Define your target audience: Identifying your target audience is one of the most important steps for launching a successful mail campaign. Understanding the demographics and buying behaviors (profiling) of your best buying customers will enable you to send the right message and offers for higher likelihood of driving response. Profiling will also help you find more prospects just like them who are more likely to buy from you. For example – don’t sell lawnmowers to condo owners. By defining your audience, you’ll prevent money wasted on mailing to the wrong people and increase response rates. Modern’s prospect lists and data services can help you do all of these things to build the best mailing list for your campaigns.

Budget and return on investment: One of the biggest benefits of direct mail marketing is that it’s highly measurable. You’ll need to outline how much you are going to spend on your mail campaign and how much profit you expect to gain out of it. By setting these guidelines upfront, you’ll be able to better track the performance to understand if your mailer was successful or not. One of the easiest ways to measure direct mail performance is with an ROI calculator. Inputs include the size of your mailing, total campaign costs (design, lists, printing, mailing, postage, etc.), number of responses, average order value, number of orders and average number of repeat orders. Several direct mail providers offer free ROI calculators online – from simple to very complex, you can find the one that best suits your need to track costs and return from your mail campaign.

Timing and frequency: Plan out when you want your mailers to reach your audience (timing) and how often you will mail to them (frequency) to reach your end goal. Don’t expect to mail one card and get immediate response. The more you mail, the more chances you have for your brand to be recognized and your mailings to be responded to. Be sure to factor in the time it will take to produce your mailer from start to finish so that you meet your target mail date, and your promotion is delivered within the time frame you want.

Implementation: How are you going to design your mailer, write copy and get it printed and mailed? If you don’t have all the resources in place to launch a mailer, then do your research and find the right direct mail provider to help you through the entire process of choosing the right format, designing your mailer, building the right list, securing the best postage rates, getting it printed and into the mailstream. Working with a single-source provider will save you tons of money and time wasted on working with several resources to piece together and implement your campaign.

Hint: Modern Postcard is a full-service direct mail provider, with over 25 years of expertise in helping businesses like yours plan, create and launch effective mail campaigns that boost business.

Call a Direct Marketing Specialist at 800.959.8365.