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Looking to grow your small business by building better relationships with your audience? Have you considered incorporating direct mail into your strategy? 70 percent of Americans feel that mail is more personal than the internet and 56 percent of customers find print marketing to be the most trustworthy type of marketing. Sounds promising, right? Continue reading to learn valuable direct mail marketing strategies that can have a positive impact on your business.
The Right Mailing List
How you target your market will play a tremendous role in the outcome, so be sure to be very strategic when choosing your mailing lists. According to BiggerPockets.com, here are five of the most common mailing list types you’ll be choosing from. Select one or select them all, but choose wisely.
- The house list – these are prospect and customer contacts you’ve collected on your own
- The response list – These are prospects that have expressed interest in a specific topic or industry
- The targeted demographic list – These are prospects meeting specific criteria of your choice (age, sex, location, income level, number of children, etc.)
- The opt-in list – These are prospects who have specifically asked for you to market your products and services to them
- The segmented list – This list uses criteria to further segment prospects by alternate habits
Customize, Customize, Customize
You have 2.5 seconds to catch the reader’s attention with your letter, starting from the moment it is taken out of the mailbox. That’s why many small business marketers have found success with customized and color envelopes. For better results, a color scheme should also be incorporated into your letter. Statistics show basic black and white pieces generally receive a response rate of less than 1 percent. On another note, personalizing mail pieces with a customer’s name and adding color can increase response rates by 135 percent.
A Direct Call-to-action
Hook them in with great content, but seal the deal with a compelling call-to-action that can clearly direct prospects to the next step. For the sake of good results, keep it simple. Here are a few tips from The Daily Egg Blog that outline the fundamentals each effective call-to-action should contain.
- A no-obligation statement that removes or reduces risk
- Direction on what to do next
- A sense of urgency for a more rapid response
Run A/B Testing
If you’re not measuring your direct mail marketing success, then you simply aren’t doing it right. A/B testing is one of the most effective ways of understanding your contacts and what they respond well to. A/B split testing is an effective strategy that has been used for decades in direct mail marketing. Simply create a Version A of your mail piece, then a Version B, that changes one element of the piece to see which generates the best response and from whom. Use these results to market better to your audience next time around and watch your results improve.
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