Direct mail can be a very rewarding business-generation tool, but it has to be done right. There are things marketing directors should consider before championing a direct response campaign in their organizations. If marketing leaders would ask themselves the following five questions, their meetings with digital printing and mail house partners can be more effective—and mail campaigns more fruitful:
1. What is the plan?
Simply starting is often the hardest part, but having a documented plan allows you to begin changing and modifying the plan. The way I learn, is often characterized by behaviorists as “visual spatial” learning; I need to draw things out to understand them. I like using a dry-erase board or a software solution, such as Microsoft Visio, to map out the anatomy of my plan and know where I’m going and what my next steps should be.
2. Where am I going to get my data?
There is no better place to start a direct mail strategy than to leverage data that you already have. However, most companies have difficulty implementing an effective customer relationship management (CRM) strategy. Your team must be disciplined in recording and cleansing this data or you are going to have to purchase it from an outside source. (In reality, most companies do a little of both.) A disadvantage is that it often requires a lot of clean-up effort both internally and externally—an expense that you need to plan for. Purchasing data is good for finding new customers, but you have to know what your current customers look like before you can go and find more. Purchased data is usually clean and is ready for most postal requirements, but costs of the data, and performing any data modeling, need to be considered.
3. Who is going to design the mail piece?
Many people without any professional training think they are good graphic designers—most are not. If you don’t have a creative department, I’d highly recommend using a professional graphic design or marketing organization. You usually get what you pay for. It takes designers time to learn how to leverage the opportunity presented by variable data printing. Look for designers who have experience in using this business development tool. Even when using an outside professional, be wary of a designer who is more interested in winning an artistic award than helping you make money.
4. What is the budget for this marketing campaign?
It is critical to establish your budget early on. Mail campaigns benefit from redundancy; response rates often climb with each follow-on mailing for the first three mailings, and start to drop with a campaign’s fourth mailing. Unless you have the budget to do some smaller runs (something digital printing makes possible) to test different variables, such as calls to action and offers, you may be wasting time and money doing a mail campaign altogether. Reduce your mail list if it means you can mail more frequently to a smaller list. Three mailings to a mail list of 5,000 usually produce better results than a one-time touch to a mail list of 15,000. You may also benefit from integrating a personalized URL landing page. Web sites are used to expand marketing messages, and capture and qualify mail recipients by integrating other channels such as e-mail or phone touches.
Budget is going to impact postage considerations, especially as postal rates rise. Do you mail automated first class or presorted standard? What if you reduce the size to reduce the weight of the mailer? Will a mailing that is combined with a personalized URL landing page provide enough added creative “real estate” when you can only afford to mail a 4x6˝ postcard instead of a large mail piece? Knowing the budget at the initial planning meeting helps tremendously in charting a marketing strategy.
5. How will success be determined?
Never confuse activity with results. Increasing mail response rates are good, but increasing sales for your organization is even better. A great tool is a return on investment (ROI) calculator tool that can be easily created in Microsoft Excel. Use these tools to secure the type of budget you need so that you can effectively impact your bottom line and lead a results-oriented campaign, versus one mired in unproductive activity.
Mike Wesner is the Vice President of Digital Services for Hutchison Allgood, a business communications company in Winston Salem, NC. Mike has presented and consulted for many organizations, including the United States Postal Service, GATF, Xerox, Heidelberg, DMIA and CAP Ventures. Mike can be reached with feedback or questions at mwesner@haprinting.com.
- Companies:
- Heidelberg
- Xerox Corp.