Why is direct mail still a valuable marketing tool?
Perhaps the most important thing to do with your direct mail is to make it interesting. What’s more, you need to make it useful. Your customers will be able to tell the difference between a “little” marketing and a “big” marketing campaign.
In this article you’ll learn how direct mail can help you get results from your marketing efforts.
This is a great article for all kinds of direct mail campaigns so if you are looking for more details about these types of campaigns, this might be a good place to start.
The importance of a great headline
The best way to get your product into the hands of potential customers is by sending a great headline to the right person. If you want to grow your business, you have to make your product marketing work for you. The headlines you write for your product should be able to convince people that they want it, so they will make a purchase.
A great headline should:
- Be catchy
- Convey a compelling message – the perfect headline should help people understand exactly what your product does and how it will benefit them.
- Make people feel good about themselves
In this post we’ll share some tips on developing great headlines using these three elements. If you’re interested in having us write more articles like this one, we’d be happy to accept your feedback on them (you can email us). But please be sure to let us know if there’s something we missed! Let’s go!
The power of a personalised message
There is a lot of buzz around how to create the right open rates for your email campaign. While it’s not a new problem (and there are many people who have been doing this for years), there is also a lot of confusion about what exactly you mean by open rate and why it matters so much.
Let’s start with an analogy: you’re driving down the road. A red truck pulls up next to you. “Hello, I’m Roy, do you have any spare change?” You look at him and reply “I don’t know… Could you hold on one minute please? I need to talk to my wife.” After a few minutes get back and find Roy again “Hello, I need those bills paid by this week or else we will go broke.” You look at him and reply “I don’t know… Could you hold on one minute please? I need to talk to my wife. After some more time get back again and find Roy once more… “Hello, I need those bills paid by this week or else we will go broke. After some more time I finally get back again and find Roy once more…and so it goes…
The first guy was offering $10 in cash, while the second guy was trying to sell a product that he didn’t even have himself (although he did have the product, just not the cash). This is what direct mail salespeople do all day long: they offer products that are either ready-to-ship or already delivered; they are typically offering them at low prices; and they are trying to deal with customers who may not be ready for that price yet.
And this is where your open rates come in: they basically let potential customers know that they are most interested in these products but only want them if they can afford them (or can pay later).
This is what we mean when we talk about open rates: if customers aren’t interested in your product right now but eventually might be — then their interest should be rewarded with a higher open rate (which is often translated into higher conversion rates) than if clients who initially express interest had said no from the beginning (or maybe even from the beginning!).
Why you should focus on your target audience
Inbound marketing is all about reaching people who are interested in your brand, and to do it you need to go to where they are. Direct mail is the classic way to do that.
You don’t have to be a high-end luxury brand or sell a very specialised product; a lot of great direct mail campaigns work for companies that serve the average consumer.
Direct mail marketing is not just about writing an effective email with an enticing subject line and catchy headline. It’s also about your message being relevant and useful.
It’s about knowing your audience and creating content which will resonate with them. It’s about finding the right “hook” for your campaign, so you can convince people why they should buy from you over someone else.
People actually like getting emails from marketers; their response rate is higher than that of most forms of communication, like Twitter or Facebook. So make sure you know who your audience is and what they really want out of your campaign — it will affect everything else you do in the campaign.
The first thing to decide is whether you want an email list or not: if you do (and if not, why not?), then make sure it’s going to be a good one: There’s no point having a list which won’t get used (because it’s useless) or one whose effectiveness goes down as its members age (because people stop using it).
Your list should be enjoyable to use, because they’ll remember what they’ve seen in your emails when they’re ready to buy from you again (instead of sending something which doesn’t catch their eye every time).
If you’re on a budget, then take something out of the budget for direct mail — but only something that’s worth doing here: making sure the mailing works well for everyone involved might mean paying more for email lists than some other kinds of marketing campaigns might require (for example, if there’s overheads associated with retargeting your customers through email).
How to make your offer irresistible
This is a list of some of the most effective ways to increase your open rates. The list below is not meant to be comprehensive. It’s just a small collection of tactics that make an impact in a short period of time. You can adapt and combine these tactics depending on your context; you can also use them in combination with other ones.
To maximise your open rates, you should:
1) Have a strong headline and call to action
2) Feature the best value for money
3) Offer an easy way for people to contact you (for example, by email or twitter)
4) Use at least two different types of offers that complement each other (for example, one with an “add-on” and one without it)
5) Offer something people want. For example, offering competitive discounts will make people more likely to sign up than something like “free shipping”.
The importance of a strong call to action
There’s no doubt that a strong call to action is important, but it is not nearly as important as having a clear and compelling value proposition. In fact, the opposite is true: if you have a strong value proposition, then you will get the most effectiveness out of your direct mail campaign.
The trick here is to be able to show your audience that you understand their goals and where they are coming from. If you can do this with the link on the front page of your email or on any other content you create for your campaign, then you’ve already done most of what you need to do at this point. It’s all about getting people to click on the link and use their copywriting skills to help make that happen.
You also want to be sure that you understand your audience better than they understand themselves. This means using statistics and other data in an intelligent way — especially when dealing with sensitive topics such as sexual orientation (which are often difficult because everyone has defensive feelings about them).
Conclusion
Following these tips will help you create a successful direct mail campaign.
Let’s understand the process of creating a successful direct mail campaign. The first step is to define who your target audience is and what they want from your products (throughout this we use the term “prospects”).
After that, we need to establish how you want them to respond: for example, if you want them to buy your product or use it. This means that you need to create an effective product message that will persuade people into doing so (the more convincing the better).
Next is defining what type of response you are looking for (this can be done through a series of different questions such as: “What do they want?”, “What do they need?”, “How would they like not just buy but use it?”). It might be tempting at times to ask all those questions upfront but it might not be ideal because it would add time and cost unnecessarily. Instead, try asking each question separately and only include them if necessary.
Finally, ask yourself: “what kind of opt-in are we looking at here? Do I have some existing content or information I can turn into data using an opt-in form? If so, then we can just use it; otherwise, maybe I should look at building something new from scratch?”
If all those things are true for your particular situation then let me know. After all, unless we talk about this in detail we cannot help you. Otherwise please feel free to give me some feedback of how well these tips work for you and why or why not they helped!