Direct Mail Marketing Strategy To Finish 2021

End your 2021 year off right with a better direct mail marketing strategy. The DMA has reported that customer response rates increased year-over-year by an impressive 43% and prospect response rates more than doubled – reporting an astounding 190% increase. The USPS Household Diary Study found that people read postcards in greater numbers with a 3.9% year-over-year increase. With these results in mind, is your current direct mail strategy working as well as it can?

We all set goals and expectations for our direct mail campaigns, but they don’t always go as we expect them to. Working on a better direct mail marketing strategy can help us achieve better results before the end of the year. Did customers and prospects show interest but not purchase from you? Was there no interest at all or just below your expectations? Did you have any known issues with campaigns in 2021? Focus on both who bought from you and who did not. Are there any likenesses between the people in each group? In many cases we will find that there are common issues with people that can help us better target the ones who did not buy.

Direct Mail Marketing Strategy Elements:

• Audience – The people you are mailing to really matter. Do you have the most current data for mailing? There are many was to clean up your mailing list, make sure you are using them. Once you know you have the right addresses you are ready to focus on other parts of your data. Tracking purchase history, demographics and geographics helps you to target them better. The more information you can collect and process to refine your target audience for each mailing, the better your response rate is going to be. Keep in mind that you can also purchase targeted lists based on your best current customers. If you have not tried this before, you may want to consider it now.
• Offer – If your offer does not resonate with your prospects and customers, they will not buy from you. Look at your best offers in 2021 so that you know what works best. Then take a look at the offers that bombed, what was different about them? How can you make sure that the offers for the rest of the year are much better? Targeting the right offers to the right people is critical for your response rates.
• Design – Did you have some great designs in 2021? There are many areas that you can get creative to stand out in. What size pieces did you send before? How well did they work? Have you considered using larger pieces to stand out in the mailbox more? Color, images and copy placement are all factors in good design. Consider using higher impact images, bolder colors and fun creative elements like texture to draw people in. Your choice of paper stock matters to, so consider a different heavier stock this time or even a pearlescent to really sparkle.

Now that you have some things to consider for your direct mail marketing strategy to end off 2021. Remember that it is best to only change one thing at a time to be able to recognize the impact that each change makes. Ideally you will want to run an A/B test by using a piece that worked great before to test against a newer piece. This will give you an opportunity to continually create better direct mail before the end of the year.

The best direct mail pieces target the right people with the right offer at the right time. Are you ready to create your best direct mail campaign? Need help? Contact us today! We are glad to help!