By Justin Wong, Published November 1, 2014
Direct mail is one of the most effective ways of getting your marketing materials to your customers’ doorsteps. Direct mail is very similar to an online landing page in some respects; you want to provide enough information for the consumer to take the next step without losing interest or throwing the piece away.
Direct mail is incredibly effective at reaching a geographic audience. If you’re looking to increase foot traffic to your store, a direct mail blast to the surrounding neighbourhoods should make a noticeable difference.
For Curve’s direct mail campaigns, we partner with a third-party company that has a good relationship with Canada Post. This allows us reduced rates and higher geographic coverage. If you don’t want to team up with anyone, call your local or national mail service to see if you can get a deal on bulk deliveries.
Here are four best practices for direct mail to get you started:
1. Include multiple elements
Different people like reading different things. Some people enjoy reading letters while some like looking at colourful photos in brochures. As a rule of thumb, we recommend using both brochures and letters in conjunction to maximize readership.
2. Give people many different ways to respond
One of the biggest difficulties of direct mail is that getting a response may not be easy. Unlike an online ad, people can’t just simply “click-through” to a sales page. To minimize this, I always recommend giving your recipients multiple ways to respond. Give them a URL to your website, the direct line of your sales centre, and a form for them to fill out.
3. Have a compelling call-to-action
Just like any other advertising campaign, having a strong call-to-action will make the difference between someone taking your offer versus throwing your materials in the trash. Be clear about what you’re asking people to do.
4. Don’t be afraid to spend some money
If you don’t have in-house experience, we recommend hiring or contracting a design firm to give your materials a professional sheen. If you have the time or budget, test the design with a few focus groups or online surveys to see which design is the most popular. Don’t cheap out with the print quality for direct mail either! You need your colours and images to be bold and crisp to attract attention. Saving a few bucks on printing will cost a lot of conversions later on. Appearances are everything!
5. Repeat the most important information
It’s impossible to predict where the reader will actually start reading. Only a small portion of readers will actually read the entire text. Some will skim the headlines, some might only read half of the first paragraph, and some might just look at the images.
That’s why it’s so important to make sure your call-to-actions are clear and repeated throughout all the elements. Anyone who looks at any of one section of your materials should have a clear idea of what the offering is and why they should care.
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