How To Think About Your Direct Mail Copy

A good Direct Mail piece should appear completely selfless. It's not about you. It's about what you can do for the prospect. It's not about your product or service. It's about what your product or service can do for the prospect. Never brag or boast. Always show that you understand your prospect's needs, care about those needs, and that you're in business to meet them.

Is it clear?

Is it interesting?

Does it speak to the recipient's needs and desires?

Does it pile on the benefits?

Is it concise? (By concise, we mean, does it avoid unnecessary verbiage in doing the job it has to do?)

Is it believable?

Remember, the purpose of all advertising is to generate believability. One exaggerated claim or bit of excess "hype" can lose your prospect's trust.

Is it totally, 100% about the recipient?

Is your logo on the piece? Make sure that you are “branding” yourself and your company, so they will remember your logo and your name.

 

 

Coupons and "The Offer."

The offer is one of the most critical components of your Direct Mail package. A mailing may be highly compelling in many ways in format, copy, selling strategy but it will only achieve its maximum potential when coupled with a sound offer.

Consumers love to get something for “FREE”, so be sure to have at least one coupon with FREE in the offer. Expiration dates give a sense of urgency for use, and since the magnet mailer stays up for 6 months to a year, (or longer) make sure the expiration dates are far enough out so that you get the best use of your money for the magnet mailer.

 

 

Mailing List Methodologies

When wanting to do a saturation mailing to a radius around your location or within a trade area:

Our lists come with some additional demographics, provided by carrier route; such as Median Age, Median Income, Median Home Value and % of households with children. This may or may not be of benefit to you, but it can help you understand your customer base, who you are mailing to and where they are in their life; how beneficial your product or service might be to them. Keep in mind that full carrier routes are less expensive than mailing a portion of the route. Some companies ignore business in their mailings, but consider that you can increase your lunch traffic by mailing to businesses.

If you are considering a list with additional demographics or using your own customer list:

As you might suspect, the art and science of list selection is a much written-about subject. But there are certain guidelines that can point you in the right direction. Start, for example, by forming a mental image of your ideal customers the ones most likely to need your product or service, and remain loyal over the years. Consider their demographics age, income, geographic location. Consider their psycho-graphics lifestyle characteristics such as favorite activities, hobbies, or affiliations. The best initial guide to choosing a list is your hard-won knowledge of what your particular customers are like, based on your own business experience. Try to purchase lists of people whose characteristics match your "ideal customer" most closely. With this as a start, go on to fine-tune your list sensibilities by testing.

Keep in mind, that when you mail a full carrier route, you get the best postage rates. For example, if your customer list shows that you have 25 households on one carrier route, and the entire carrier route is 100 households, why not fill in your list, to include all 100 – then you are hitting your customers AND prospecting at the same time.

 

 

How To Build Towards An Email Campaign?

Direct Mail is the best way to start building your email list or add subscriber names to one that you may already have. Your direct mail should have a compelling offer that can only be accessed by visiting an on-line landing page. Make the URL of that page prominent and the offer more prominent. You can even use QR codes to simplify their access to your landing page. And yes, we can generate those for you to put into your direct mail piece. We can help you by setting up your landing page too. On it will be a form to capture your customers information. When they give you their name and email address, we recommend that you email them immediately with the offer reward information and to thank them for subscribing. We can help you with setting up your list and your email campaigns. Just give us a call at 1-877-511-2228. We'll hook you in t our email experts. And we can show you ways of continuing a dialog with your customers through social engagement and email once you have them signed on.