The key to success in business is a direct hit in the target audience. These are the people who are willing to pay for your product or service here and now. Television, radio, the press means a huge coverage which always meant huge losses. With the advent of the Internet, targeting the message and segmenting the audience became easier. After the company has met its target audience, it is necessary to establish relations with it through direct mail campaigns.
What is Direct Mail?
Direct mail is a tool for direct marketing, which is a targeted mailing of correspondence of an advertising, informational nature with the purpose of attracting and retaining the attention of potential or existing customers. Classic direct mail marketing is a mailing of paper letters in envelopes. Such letters usually contain information about goods, offers of services, invitations to various events, advertising booklets, catalogs of goods and price lists, samples of goods, souvenir products. The design of such postal items is an important component of the success of the direct mail. The more colorful and tempting the letters are, the more likely it is to receive feedback from the audience, and with the number of responses, direct mail marketing effectiveness increases. But the design is not the only guarantee of the success of the mailing. It is very important to correctly select the addresses of the target audience. It is necessary to seriously approach the issue of the formation of a direct mail database. Here, gender, age, profession, education, an address of potential customers, their hobbies and place of residence, and much more matter.
The main tasks of the direct mail are the dissemination of information about the company and its products, the search for new customers, maintaining communication with existing customers, preparing for telephone conversations or a personal contact between the client and the sales manager, and increasing sales.
Direct-mail, like any marketing campaign, is conducted in several stages. At the first stage, the first dispatch of letters with advertising or informational materials is made in order to acquaint a specially selected target audience with the product or services of the company. This step is called a fact-finding. Then follows the informational stage, when the dispatched letters contain more detailed information, and reminding the stage when the direct mail provides information support to the company's customers. In addition to basic information, reminders, gratitudes, souvenirs, and congratulations are sent to customers.
4 Easy Direct Mail Marketing Tips
- Identify the target audience.
- Make a portrait of the ideal client.
- Develop a design for each letter that will be sent along the chain.
- Track the percentage of openings of messages and conversions to the site from them.
Pros and Cons of Direct Mail
Advantages of direct mail are selectivity, reasonable price and the absence of references to competitors in the newsletters. Unlike the sale of "everything to everyone" it allows the company to:
- Personalize your message.
- Reach a clear target audience.
- Get an instant response.
- Share with the buyer something useful for him (discount coupon, gift certificate or e-book).
- Get new customers.
- Increase profits with minimum costs.
- Even direct mail to build a home business can be used.
Speaking about the shortcomings, it is worth noting that the direct mail may not cover people from the target audience who expressed a desire not to receive postal advertising. It is impossible to control when a person will contact a mail advertisement. Other shortcomings are the relatively high cost of purchased addresses and the negative image of "junk" if it is a classic mailing.
Direct Mail in Business
Mailing lists are used for a long time. The first companies that began to use this method of advertising in their promotion earned billions of dollars. At the dawn of the appearance of the mail, catalogs of goods began to spread actively, which can also be considered as an addressed mailing. Today direct mail is used everywhere. To save some companies do not print letters on paper, they do not buy stamps and envelopes but use e-mail capabilities.
In the age of high technology, it is possible to safely position email marketing as an inexpensive but very effective alternative to direct mail. The fact is that the proposal in an e-mail also falls directly to the addressee, and is more likely to interest the reader than an image publication aimed at the masses. At the same time, e-mail marketing is a more promising direction of business than traditional banner advertising, which has recently become an increasingly less effective tool. When we talk about e-mail marketing, it is very important to clearly delineate between it and spam, which is certainly one of the biggest disasters of the modern Internet.
Spam is commonly referred to as an obsessive, unnecessary mail correspondence, advertising those or other sites, products or services. The user does not have the ability to unsubscribe from it, and it is more difficult to identify the spam because spammers easily counterfeit the names of senders.
To ensure that your newsletter does not get such a stigma, try to follow some tips. First, send your offers only to those users who really need them. Secondly, always let users unsubscribe from your mailing list. To do this, at the end of the letters, specify the contact address of the mailing coordinator, or commands for the mail robot. Thirdly, never forge the name and address of the sender, always conduct correspondence honestly, on your behalf or on the person of your company. It is also recommended to send out only personalized messages.
Types and Tips of Direct Mail
Today, direct mail can be divided into four main types:
- traditional mail;
- faxing;
- e-mail;
- telephone mailing.
Each of them has its own drawbacks and advantages, its specificity in use.