3 MIN. READ
How often do you hit the trashcan icon before reading an email? Do you decline a call if you don't recognize the caller ID? How can you find a way around similar reactions in your prospects? One approach that's regaining popularity in 2023 is direct mail.
Direct mail marketing is anything you send through the mail to gain business. Some examples are:
● Postcards.
● Letters.
● Catalogs.
● Brochures.
● Information packets.
Direct mail contains a message you target to prospects encouraging them to engage with your company. Your pitch will feature an invitation to a specific activity, such as visiting your website, attending an event or ordering your product. You want the materials to be eye-catching enough to discourage a direct trip to the circular file or recycling bin. You don't want your piece to languish at the bottom of a to-do pile. Your call to action should be clear and powerful enough to evoke as immediate a response as possible.
Why would you invest the time, effort and money in putting out direct mail? Here are some statistics that explain the direct mail resurgence.
● Recipients open over 91% of promotional mail.
● Seventy-one percent of consumers feel a more personal connection to direct mail than to digital forms of communication.
● Direct mail speeds up the timeframe for a purchase. Seventy-one percent of decisions take place within one day.
● Your mail-based competition has fallen off. Marketing mail decreased from 103.5 billion pieces in 2007 to 66.2 billion in 2021.
● Direct mail became cheaper. In 2022, the United States Postal Service (USPS) began offering discounts for mailings with sensory elements such as holographic effects, scents or textured paper.
Direct mail offers you additional advantages. You can personalize it, letting customers know you're communicating with them by name, company and even position rather than launching a digital blast to an anonymous audience. You can also aim direct mail at specific demographics or industry segments.
Your direct mail reinforces a prospect's memory. While digital communications may be gone and forgotten within a matter of seconds, your potential customers can reach for a mail piece to refresh their recollection. Seeing it sit on their desks will create greater urgency to take action.
Your first step in launching your mail campaign is figuring out where and to whom to send it. If your business already has a mailing list of customers and potential prospects, you can use it. Many companies also offer many mailing lists you can rent or buy.
You'll want to send out the most appealing and informative mailer possible. That will involve generating compelling copy and attention-grabbing design. The composition and the structure may offer opportunities for personalization that you should exploit whenever possible. You can also use color to increase the impact of your piece.
As of August 29, 2021, the USPS made 9" X 6" postcards eligible for first-class mailing rates. These can be brightly colored, as well as allowing space for concise but intriguing copy. These oversized postcards can also accommodate quick response (QR) codes directly, connecting recipients to additional information.
Large postcards are not your only means to connect your customers to the online world. You can use QR codes with other types of mailers. You can also use Snap tags and Microsoft tags to guide prospects to specific products and descriptions on the web.
For the most promising results, you should test your mailers for improvement. You can send out different versions of copy and graphics, a process known as A/B testing. By monitoring the responses, you will be able to optimize your piece and maximize your ROI.
With postage rates on the rise, you want to make sure you're working with the most accurate data available for your direct mail campaigns. Verified firsthand by an 80-person research team, IndustrySelect subscriptions offer profiles that include much more than the names and locations of potential targets. You can select the companies most likely to need your product. You can also address your mail pieces to executives empowered to initiate purchases and close deals. IndustrySelect can also clone your best customers, allowing you to add more likely buyers to your list.
Whatever your industry, IndustrySelect provides the most reliable current data and the resources you need to make your direct mail marketing, email marketing and sales efforts a success. Visit our website to explore the many benefits we offer our subscribers or request a free demo here. Make every mailer, email, and phone call count!