Are you fed up with your overloaded letter and email boxes? Probably we all are. It is a paradox that we marketers do not like them ourselves despite the fact that we are responsible for many of these messages.

Now I will introduce you the world of direct mail and tell you something about the reasons why we still stick to it so much.Firstly, all you need is a good database of contact addresses and a head full of creative ideas. Additionally, a sense of ethics and efficiency must not be omitted. In some cases you can create very expensive DM campaigns but in general you can influence the amount spent on any of these campaigns by deciding on how big an audience you want to address.

Will That Pay You Off?

What are the biggest benefits of this kind of campaigns? Are there any reasons for using them prior to the ‘classic’ massive advertising?

One of the advantages of this direct marketing tool is its measurability. You will see more clearly how important this is in the detailed submission about the marketing effectiveness and efficiency. As Jay Conrad Levinson said, unless you measure, you will not know which campaigns have been effective and which have not. DM campaigns are trackable because you have the evidence of all recipients. You are then able to track their responses so that at the end you can compare the number and costs of the direct mails sent, with the number and revenues of those who responded to the campaign and bought your product or at least visited your business.

Another positive thing about DM is the fact that it is addressable. This means that you send it to your customers and when managed appropriately, you are able to give each individual letter or email a personal salution. This leads to the fact that the recipients feel that somebody is taking an interest in them, knows them and is offering something that could be of a high value to them personally. Therefore they are more likely to read through the message and to respond to it.

Send-Out Cards Campaigns

Moreover, they feel even better when they get a greeting card on their birthday or at Christmas. This a very sneaky way to alter positive attitude of your clients or prospects. It works because it makes them feel good and they associate this feeling with you. This can make them want to pay you back somehow and they will think of you as well when it comes to buying the product you offer. There are also some automated on-line services which will arrange all of this for you, such as http://www.sendoutcards.com/. All you do is create personalised cards using a wide range of the tool provided which enable you to insert your own hand-writing, signature, photos etc. all of which make your card look original and personal.

How to Create a Good Direct Mail Campaign

Please, just don’t use boring phrases like ‘the best’, ‘low price’, ‘extraordinary’ etc. They will very likely spoil all your effort and keep your ‘audience’ away from reading on. Words like this are just too general. Do you realise how many times a day you see such kind of cheap ‘claims’? Would you like to create additional ones? No way! Your product is different, original, it has its unique value, so please communicate this everyone. And do not copy the mistakes of your ‘marketing colleagues’.

Your DM campaign should at first attract the attention. Do not be afraid of devoting a lot of time and money to creating and executing it well.

If you decide to send your direct mail electronically, I would suggest that you order a paid service like e. g. http://www.newsletter.ie/ or http://www.constantcontact.com/. These services will enable you to create good-looking email campaigns (when you send them regularly they are often named ‘newsletters’), to send them out, to collect responses and to analyse the campaign results very easily. The greatest advantage of this kind of tool is that while securing professional look it will save you a lot of time. Finally, these services are not expensive at all.

Last but not least, I should definitely mention here the ethical factor. If your campaign does not comply with DM standards your clients will dislike you and the effect will more likely be negative.