12 Direct MAIL Tips - YES! It's back.
With more people at home more than ever, there is an outstanding opportunity to explore direct mail campaigns. Bear in mind the deluge of email hitting most of your customer’s inboxes, and then consider the relative lack of clutter in the mailbox. You don’t even have to compete with the utility bills to get attention!
While it might be easier to get noticed, that does not mean that you can get lazy. There are still plenty of things that can go wrong, here are some ready made and easy to follow guidelines:
1. Run the Numbers.
Begin first with an assessment of the financial risk you're willing to take. Whether you're risk averse, or willing to gamble, ask yourself how much of your marketing budget you can commit to this campaign. Then having calculated how much you can spend, also calculate the value the new customers or increased sales would deliver to the business. Do this whether you're marketing to existing customers or prospecting for new customers. Base the calculations on past marketing performance.
2. Flow Chart Every Step.
As you plan direct mail, be thoughtful about how you'll follow-up with those who respond versus those who don't respond. Whether you call it a flow chart, or work flow, this is essential for thorough customer follow-up marketing. Nurturing and converting response, often through marketing automation software, can be game-changing in engagement and sales. Once someone is in your sales funnel, let your established process be a disciplined approach to direct mail, telephone and/or email until they become a customer or generate a new sale.
3. Mailing List Selection.
An oft cited direct mail rule is that 40% of your success will come from your mailing list (This can be as high as 60%). This is a good rule-of-thumb whether you're mailing a specific segment of your customer list, or if you're using outside lists including models and response files. Make sure your mailing list selection is appropriate for your creative message (or more appropriately, make sure your creative message is geared for your audience). Your current customers will always be the best guide to selecting the best lists and targeting.
4. Test! Test something, but resist "testing around the edges."
That is, don't only test a new headline. Instead, test completely new story, positioning, offers and more. And make sure you have at least a basic understanding of statistical confidence intervals so you can validate if one direct mail package really outperformed the other when it's rolled out to higher volumes.
5. Identify the Persona.
Begin with basic demographic data, but you must get into your prospective customers' mindset using behavioural data. Get started by having a basic profile run of your existing customers (easily accessible from data vendors). Look for behaviours that you can cluster into several personas you can describe and name. You must analyse and interpret the information. What you are trying to do is to put your customers and prospects into segments that will drive the creative, messaging and offers. The better you do this the more responsive the campaign will be.
6. Stimulate Emotion.
We possess advanced human brains. However, we are most responsive to basic needs including anger, fear, and reproduction. Then we look to distinguish both pleasant and unpleasant emotions. The greatest response comes from a stimulation of the negative emotions. For example, the fear of missing out on an exclusive offer, or the dread of not helping a worthwhile cause. The more you create an emotional connection with your mail pack the better.
7. Calm the Mind.
After stimulating emotion, you must calm the mind. Assure your recipient there is a solution that addresses fear, uncertainty and doubt. Direct the recipient to emotions that offer pleasure, reward, a pleasant memory, new learning and moderate the mood. You now are the solution…sell the solution
8. Position/Reposition:
There can no greater branding than what you are about to do. Physical mail is a living and physical proof of your brand, your positioning and your promise. Create a distinctive positioning with your unique selling proposition (or unique value proposition). Differentiating you from your competitors is essential to creating a lasting brand presence for your product or service.
9. Use Storytelling Techniques.
Story is effective because it offers new perspective and solidifies your brand message with the recipient. A compelling story that's well told magnetically pulls your reader into your story, and encourages them to become part of your story. When this happens, so does the magic.
10. What are you expecting the response to be?
You must interpret the outcome of possessing your product and avert abandonment by your prospective customer when you translate features into benefits, use testimonials and a strong guarantee to overcome scepticism. How are they use, engage and justify your product becomes part of their story. You need to consider what that story will be. If it is positive, then they will share with 3, if it is negative, they will share with 10.
11. Permission to Respond.
"This is good, this is smart, I give myself permission to respond now." Sound weird? We all buy emotionally and justify logically. Arm your customers or prospects with the reasons they will need to justify their purchase. Value statements, benefits lists and of course, share of wallet will need to be justified to someone, even themselves, so give them the tools to do this.
12. Analyse Results.
A basic step often overlooked is analysing your results with hard numbers. Metrics can include response rates, conversion rates, cost per response or cost per order. Match how your direct mail program actually performed compared to your benchmarks established in point No. 1. Then, please, please, please build an archive that stores these results, so that the learnings of one campaign make the next campaign even better.
These 12 tips for success are based on my experience analysing winning direct mail from B-to-C, B-to-B and not-for-profit direct mail campaigns. They could equally be applied to any data driven campaign. As always you will know that I will say the data is king, but a lot of attention still has to be paid to the creative and offer.
Shout out if you need a hand with any of your direct mail campaigns.