5 Most Common Direct Mail Mistakes

Here is the 5 most common direct mail mistakes most businesses make.

1. Not spending enough time and money on the list. Quite often we throw a direct mail campagin together without a thought to what kind of list we are going to market too. We find out later that the direct mail piece, the message and the call to action was perfect but the list, which we “rushed” to purchase without checking the validity and the integrity of the list broker has let us down.  Think more of the list broker and explore the quality of the list and also the types of buyers the list has. Sometimes it could change the direction of what kind of marketing message you are going to plan for if you find another target market ready to buy your product or service.
2. TESTING! This is a biggie. More than half of direct mail customers will give us a direct mail campaign to mail out, give us the list and fail to give us some parameters of changing out how the mailing piece looks to test the headline, the direct mail piece design, etc. There are so many things to test, the color of the envelope, size of the piece, the message, making it “lumpy,” and so on. Be a test “junkie” and you will find you will be consistently doubling and tripling the money brought in on a campaign.
3. Stress the benefits to the customer in your marketing message as opposed to the features your product or service has. The buying customer does not care about the fancy, schmancy features your product has, as a matter of fact, they do not have the time to listen to how great you are, they want results! What kind of result can you customer achieve by using your product?
4. Have an offer. What is a direct mail campaign good for if you do not have an offer. Even just asking for the order in your message is good enough to get you results. Research what kind of offer you are going to make. It has to be compelling and benefit driven.
5. Lastly, and most importantly FOLLOW UP with your customer list. I highly suggest you get the phone numbers of all your direct mail prospects too. That way, you can follow up and get a good probablity that you will make sales right on the phone from the mailing. Do not underestimate the power of follow ups!

For your direct mail processing needs call Business Helpers at 480-483-7677. Serving all of Arizona, USA.