Avoid These Mistakes to Increase the Success of Your Mail Campaign

Direct mail should be an important part of your marketing strategy. Making a good amount of investment on direct mail can bring a huge ROI. If executed well, direct mailings are the most compelling piece of your mail marketing campaigns. 

However, these campaigns can be expensive and a total waste of money if you are making the most common mistakes every marketer makes. 

Here are some common direct mail mistakes you should avoid while working on your direct mail campaigns to increase your success metrics: 

• Hidden call to action: 

There are far too many mailers without any visible call-to-action. You put all this effort and money into getting your potential customer to read the mail piece but you have made it hard for them to find what you want. When designing your direct mail piece make sure your call to action is clear and easier to take action on. 

• Not including your printer: 

Your printer should be the expert on direct mail campaigns. They should be able to guide you according to your goals and budget. Details such as costs of postcards, postcard dimension restrictions, and printing methods for your mailer.

A good printer can answer all these questions about presorting, paperweights, and runtimes. When you include your printer in the planning process you will meet deadlines and have a more efficient response. 

• Not mentioning an offer: 

Sending a mailer that doesn’t include an offer is a major mistake. Without an offer, your mailer will be discarded. Special invitations, discounts, coupons are common examples of offers which customers expect in a direct mail piece from a place they do work. To seal the deal, make sure to include a clear CTA in all the mail materials to inform your audience of how and when they can redeem the offer. 

• Forgetting to send a test mailer 

Don’t forget to send a few test mailers. There are various reasons for this. First, you need to identify that the post office can mail that specific size of the mail campaign. You also need to identify how long it takes you direct mail piece to arrive in your target audience’s mailbox. If you want your piece in the mailbox to reach by a certain date, ensure that you give the postal service enough time to deliver it. 

Send test mail continuously. Even the most successful sales pieces run out of trends. Time changes. People change and so are their preferences. Competitors change. To grow your business continuously, keep up and run test mailers. Try new formats, new offers. Sometimes changing a headline makes a big difference. Do everything possible for you to improve your performance metrics. 

• Bad design

A good design is a must for your direct mail campaign success. If you want people to read the mailer, you should make it worth looking at. If you are spending some money the mail the campaign piece, invest a little money to make it look great. Test your design with multiple formats on others and ensure you have some feedback in place before sending any designs out the door. 

• Cut back printing costs 

Direct mail campaigns are not always cheap – but wouldn’t you rather have a large, beautifully printed and creative piece that gets the attention of the recipients rather than a small 4X6 postcard that most recipients throw away without even looking at it? 

Those who invest in good design and printing, create effective mailers that stand out, and avail direct mail printing companies services, are more efficient than those small postcards. 

• Not integrating with other marketing tactics 

Sometimes most clients don’t have their past mailing effective because most of the time they don’t follow up the direct mail piece with any other communication source. Don’t just send one mail and expect your audience to respond or take action immediately. 

You should welcome your customers happily to provide them a pleasant experience and make them buy again in the future. So, prepare yourself to respond as soon as possible for orders received. Complete those orders. You have already invested much to make them respond. Don’t disappoint them at this point. Prove to them that everything you say you are. Make the most of the time for every customer and your business will grow eventually. 

A good direct mail campaign company follows a marketing strategy to integrate your printed direct mail piece with other marketing strategies such as social media or a follow up email or phone call. 

• Not tracking success 

To determine if a direct mail campaign was a success, don’t forget to track the results. Tracking help you find the data that you need to analyze the success of the direct mail campaign and inform future marketing initiatives. If you don’t track your success, you may not learn from your mistakes that may lead to loss of money and resources. 

Meanwhile, before you begin to track success metrics, it is essential to set measurable goals that define success. The goal may be that you want to increase sales of a certain product by a certain amount over a specific period of time. From there, you can track your direct mail efforts in various ways such as promotional codes, campaign-specific URLs, contact details to determine whether your campaign is meeting certain goals. 

Final Thoughts 

Undoubtedly, the print and direct mail campaigns work well in converting new leads. But implementing direct mail marketing strategy can be a lot of work. By avoiding these above mentioned pitfalls you will be on your way to a direct mail campaign that’s sure to convince your customer enough to respond or take action. 

Along with ensuring that you have a solid goal, targeted audience, compelling design, legitimate testing, accurate tracking and analysis of responses or results, an effective CTA. There are also other considerations such as scaling up, postal regulations, and handling responses as they come. 

Doing it all on your own can be overwhelming for you. Availing services of direct mail marketing companies in the USA will help you get the job done at the most affordable rates.