How Direct Mail Advertising Works

Direct mail advertising is one of the most cost-effective ways to attract your target audience. It allows small businesses to operate under a limited budget, specify their audience, and then target them through direct mail messages. The response rate from recipients can tell you a lot about how effective your marketing strategy has been so far. TV and Newspaper ads are quite expensive and do not dedicate enough time or space for a business to depict their complete story.

When doing direct mail advertising, businesses have a lot of room to be creative and personalize the message for each of their targeted customers. Direct mails can always include a form that can be used by potential buyers to reach back to the provider in case they are interested in what they see in the mail.

Mentioned below are some examples of how companies used direct mail advertising in the past to create a strong impact on their target market:

World Water Day Ad

A firm in Belgium used a creative method to relay a strong message to their potential clients. A direct mail ad was sent to customers which was blank on the surface. However, the words magically appeared on the paper when water was poured on it. The marketing campaign was run to help the audience understand and the importance of natural water in their daily lives.

Environment-friendly helmet

A leading manufacturer of bicycle helmets mailed out a cardboard box to their target customers. The box contained pieces of recycled material that when assembled together, formed a shape of a helmet. The drive created awareness about how earth-friendly material can be used in our daily lives to preserve natural resources. This a great example of how direct mail advertising can be used to introduce creativity in a marketing campaign.

A Tomato Splat

A laundry firm was having a difficult time attracting millennials and office workers to their services. The company launched a creative direct mail advertising campaign to resolve this issue. They sent out a small paper box to their target market, which opened from all sides, and formed a shape of a T-shirt. An artificial tomato was placed in the middle so that recipients could pick it up and splat it on the T-shirt creating a dirty clothes effect. The drive made a strong impact on the target audience, and nearly 30% of the recipients signed for the laundry service within the next few days.

Significant benefits of direct mail Advertisement

Companies can benefit a lot from direct mail advertising. Apart from the advertisement page itself, the direct mail comes with an order form and a pre-paid envelope. This helps in increasing the response rate during promotions. Here are some significant advantages of using a direct mail:

They are highly targeted

Direct mails are addressed to a particular individual and can be sent to their home, office or any other address. With so many research companies studying consumer behavior in different industries, it is convenient to acquire a list of your target audience. A new weight training product manufacturer can order a list of customers who have been using fitness facilities in a particular area. These clients can then be targeted with creative direct mail advertisements.

Direct Mail Campaigns Can Be Measured Accurately

When a direct mail campaign is run, the provider can add a coupon with an expiration date on it. This allows the response to be measured to the very day the product was used. Such tactics can be used by companies and small business to measure the effectiveness of their direct mail advertising campaign on a regular basis. The data gathered can be used to make the future of direct mail campaigns more effective and lucrative than ever before.

High Return on Investment

Direct mail ads are easy to design and require a minimal amount of investment. Companies only require a desktop computer and a decent designing software that they can use to build a flashy and colorful direct mail brochure. Printing is usually not that expensive especially when the number of recipients is large. This makes direct mail advertising much more cost effective than Newspaper or TV ads.

How to make your direct mail marketing more effective

Businesses need to understand that while running a direct mail marketing campaign they may face tough competition from other suppliers and magazine distributors. Hence, it is important that direct mail advertisement is designed in such a way that it can stand out from the crowd. To gain a high return on investment from direct mail advertising, businesses can use the following techniques:

Massage should be clear and properly organized – A direct mail advertisement is quite the same for a customer as a resume is for a potential employer. The buyer has few seconds to decide if they are interested in the content or not. Therefore, every word on a direct mail advertisement should make sense and appeal to the target audience. The product or service that is offered by the business should be clearly defined and self-explanatory. It should compel the buyer to know more about the advertisement.

The mail should grab immediate attention – Potential clients have a number of paper mails in their mailbox. They have to pick and choose the ones that are important and discard the rest. Therefore, businesses need to ensure that they enclose their mail in a catchy envelop that attracts immediate attention. It should be addressed directly to the recipient and have return mail address on it as well.

Every target on the list matters – The amount of response a business gets from direct mail advertising depends on who they send the mail to. Therefore, it is important that the marketing manager acquires the list of their target audience from a reliable resource. This will also help in reducing the number of return or unattended mails.

Direct mail advertising is a great way to promote your product to the audience which has a great use for it. The key to running an effective direct mail marketing campaign lies in creative marketing and maintain the accuracy of data including target list and response rate.