cost savings, direct mailing services, e-commerce, fulfillment house, fulfillment services-posts, order fulfillment, orderfulfilment with e-commerce
The 5 Biggest Mistakes in Direct Mail Campaigns
1. Not Getting a Professional Copywriter
Direct mail and direct mail copy have been around for decades. Why re-invent the wheel! An experienced copywriter knows the tried and true techniques about how to write to drive conversions. For example:
· Your ad copy should always be written in the third person. It makes the customer feel like you are talking to them.
· Never ask a question in your ad copy. It gives control to the reader. Instead of asking “Need Some Red Shoes?” you should be saying “Elegant Red Shoes Found Here”.
· Keep your copy short and to the point. Don’t use big words. Keep your sentences short too.
· Highlight benefits. Instead of copy like “you’ll bend over backwards for our Red Shoes”, you should be talking about, “the soft soles in our Red Shoes will make walking a dream”
· A call to action. There are so many direct mail campaigns I see without a call to action. You’re sending your customers a mailing piece for a reason. To get them to buy from you! If you don’t tell them what you want them to do, they won’t “contact us” or “check out our website” or “request a free consultation”
2. Not choosing the right contacts to send your mailing to.
If you have a database of thousands of contacts, you can improve your response rate and lower the costs of your direct mailing campaign by selecting the right contacts from your database. For example, you could implement a couple of different scoring systems to prioritize your leads:
· RFM (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value): this technique involves scoring the lead by how recent they have been in contact with, or contacted you, the frequency of contact, say in the last 12 months, and the monetary value of their purchases.
· Lead Scoring: Lead scoring may incorporate RFM but is much more detailed. You may have identified that your best clients are in a certain geographic area, age, gender, or in the case of business to business marketing, of a certain revenue size, in a particular industry. You assign points based on these factors and rank your database accordingly. If you only have budget to send out 1000 pieces of mail, you’d better choose your top 1000 best bets.
3. The Wrong Creative
The best direct mailing campaigns are simple, highlight the benefits and show the product or service in its ideal state. In the “Red Shoes” example, if you’re showing a picture of anything but Red Shoes, or someone joyfully wearing your Red Shoes, you should consider another design agency. Far too many times ads are created with images that don’t make sense. I’m sure we’ve all see the “I bend over backwards” photo. Or the shark image with a slogan like “we take a bite out of the cost of red shoes”. Don’t confuse your readers. Stick with a simple but elegant image of your product or service.
4. Forgetting about the offer
Every direct mailing campaign needs an offer. The offer sells! Consider, “Call us today and we’ll give you 20% off your Red Shoes Order” or “Buy One Pair of Red Shoes and Get One Pair Absolutely Free”. The offer leads into the call to action. A great offer will get much higher response rates that direct mailing campaigns without an enticing offer.
5. Not Choosing the Right Fulfillment House
A good Fulfillment House with experience in Direct Mail Marketing can save you thousands of dollars. They will have done this many times before. Get their input on design, mailing practices, timing and creative ideas. They can help you with solutions like variable data printing to personalize your mailing. This increases response rates. A good fulfillment house will also have a wide range of services like print on demand, which can save you money for smaller runs. They should also be able to provide you with services to capture your responders. They can fulfil literature requests, mail coupons, send a promo item, or process a rebate. The right fulfillment house can be a single source for all your needs. Choose carefully!
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