These days, marketing is all about digital. We are emailing, blogging, Tweeting, and Facebooking our little marketeer hearts out. So direct mail (the kind that the postal delivery person puts in your mailbox, remember?) must be dead in the water. Right? Wrong. According to the Direct Mail Association (DMA) Factbook for 2013, 65% of consumers of all ages have made a purchase as a result of direct mail. According to Direct Mail News, in 2015 the average response rate for direct mail was 7.4% for both business-to-business and business to consumer mailings—considerably higher than industry expectations, and surging past electronic mail’s response rate of just 0.12%. All this indicates that direct mail is alive, providing the highest conversion rate, and working well, thank you.
Many of our clients, including those in high tech, are recognizing this and direct mail is going through a renaissance. They may have maximized their online spend and need to find another channel, or they may enjoy such a high response to direct mail that it’s added to the mix from the start. Either way, the results are highly satisfactory, and direct mail is becoming a staple in their marketing plans.
Direct Mail Lists Are Better Quality
Direct mail list vendors have been working on their databases for decades. Email lists are improving, but they are still not at the same level of quality. This means that a direct mail list from a good vendor will be more tightly targeted to your desired customer and give you a better chance of the highest conversion rate.
Use the Right Direct Mail Format to Achieve the Highest Conversion Rate
How well does your direct mail format correlate with what you are selling? Fun, glitzy pieces that work well for cosmetics or fashion will not fly if you are selling financial services; a somber No. 10 envelope would be more credible because that’s what people expect from financial services. Start collecting direct mail pieces as a reference library. Focus on direct mail aimed at your audience and analyze what the senders’ intentions were, the calls to action, graphics, etc.
Get Personal
Personalized communications continue to out-do generic pitches in all categories. But using a person’s name is just the beginning—the content needs to be personalized as well. For example, if you are marketing high tech products that run on different platforms, users will have different hot buttons. A generic message that focuses on only one platform will not be relevant to other customers. Wording that tries to cover issues for all platforms will be cumbersome and uninteresting to most recipients. It’s worth the extra time and small expense to assure that your piece says the right thing to the right people.
Get Started
From creative and messaging to list building and timing, Triadex knows what is needed to take your direct mail marketing to the next level. Contact us today to discuss your next campaign.