20 Plus Direct Marketing Dos and Don’ts
In a previous post I gave you five direct mail tips to improve your direct marketing efforts. Here is a list of direct marketing dos and don’ts that should help you improve your marketing results:
Do:
- Focus on your target audience as well as who you don’t want to mail to
- Personalize your messages
- Use direct mail to acquire, retain and win back customers
- Make it easy for me to respond (include 800#s, URLs, mail response and
today, mobile text messaging and social media) - Think through your strategy and make sure everything is in order before
the mailing (sales, fulfillment etc) - Create a sense of urgency
- Provide an offer or incentive for me to respond
- Get creative and think about what is going to make me take notice of your mailing
- Test everything (lists, offers, formats, messages, etc)
- Make your mailings interactive to get the reader involved
- Use active and directional words in the copy
- Set goals and read results
- Use direct mail to sell your products or generate leads
- Hire a specialist if you never worked with direct mail – you won’t be
disappointed.
Don’t:
- Focus exclusively on the creative or offer – the list is the most important part of the mailing
- Mail dated material to close to the due date
- Copy your competition – how do you know their mailing works?
- Try to wow me with fancy creative and forget about the benefits (what’s in it for me)
- Forget a call to action – you would be surprised how many mailings miss this one
- Try direct mail once and give up – it takes time to build a great program
- Rely on one media channel
- Get complacent with your mailings or results – you can always test and do better
- Assume since you like something your audience will too
- Use direct mail as a branding tool and expect sales results
- Refer to direct mail as junk mail
OK that is more then 20 and I am sure there are more. If you have additional points you want to make please share them in the comments section.
