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Amazingly, many companies still don't understand the true value of a good direct mail campaign. Instead they focus all of their efforts on digital methods or other advertising and marketing methods that don't include a direct mail strand. The consequence of this strategy is that they miss out on one of the most effective and trusted methods of marketing a company and its products or services. This post looks at some ways in which you can get the most out of a direct-mail marketing campaign.

Your first step is to ensure that you know who your customers are. If you can truly target your mailing campaign to people who actually buy from you or want to buy from you, you have a better chance of succeeding. This means identifying who your target customers are and ensuring that you send a mailing campaign to these people only, rather than sending out a 'blanket bomb' approach to mailing that covers most of the town. Be sure to think big though. You must send out a direct-mail campaign to a targeted audience of at least 500 people for it to be effective in any way.

Another effective technique that will boost your return on investment with direct mail is to make the mailings as personal as possible. Some companies really work hard at this and they know that the more personal the direct-mail campaign is, the more likely it will be opened and engaged with. Many direct mail companies offer a service that provides personalised mail, even to the extent of using handwritten envelopes. You can even appeal to the tastes of the people you are trying to reach, by offering treats inside the mail, from sweets to perfume samples. All of this makes sure the mail seems more personal and more targeted to your customers. Done effectively, it goes a long way to making your direct mail campaign a great investment.

Keep it professional

Direct mail campaigns should be treated as professional marketing campaigns, which means that you should think about the aspects of a professional marketing campaign that you could use with the direct mail campaign. One of the biggest aspects is maintaining an appropriate level of contact. Many companies send out one letter or a postcard, and then leave it at that. This is counter-productive. The best thing you can do with your direct mail is to send out at least three mailings as part of your campaign. This means you are establishing contact, maintaining that contact and sending out a clear message. It also makes you appear more professional, because you are committing time to discussing your company and products and services with potential customers.

Direct mail is still a useful and very effective way of reaching out to customers and developing relationships. Make sure you follow the few ideas outlined in this post and you should be one step further to producing an effective direct-mail campaign that brings in revenue.

Direct mail is still regarded as one of the most effective and personable ways with which to conduct marketing campaigns. Unfortunately, in a world where email marketing and social media are just a click away, this treasured form of communication has developed a reputation of being somewhat cumbersome to administer.

The main reason for this is that direct mail campaigning requires time, skill and experience in order to make it effective. Few businesses have the resources available to develop those three attributes which is why mailing houses can prove to be something of a revelation for firms wishing to communicate directly with their customers. 

The concept is simple enough. Businesses can outsource their direct mail campaign to a company which produces and sends it for them. Simple. But how does the business in question benefit from such a service?

Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, mailing houses offer a serious time saving benefit for their clients. Printing, packing and sending even the smallest of mailouts is a job for which few businesses have specific staff available, and those that do undertake it are likely to do so begrudgingly. As a result, they can be done in a hurry and risk damaging the company’s brand with a substandard mailout. 

For example, if a company sells conservatories, it should be focussing on convincing potential customers of the benefits such a purchase would bring. It doesn’t need staff folding fliers and licking envelopes.

Mailing houses also offer a very real cost saving. Printers capable of producing customer-ready fliers and leaflets aren’t cheap, and nor are the running costs for keeping them topped up with ink and high quality paper. Staff need paying too, and if they are spending more time franking envelopes than getting on with the task for which they are employed, overheads can become significantly distorted.

Perhaps most importantly, direct mail marketing isn’t easy. At AMS, we have over ten years experience printing, packing, delivering, database managing and handling responses. For any marketing campaign to be truly effective and to offer a satisfying return on investment, it needs care and attention and the ability to bring all of those elements together. The end result of outsourcing direct mail will ensure the recipients are presented with professional and engaging mailings which will encourage them to become paying customers.

For the small to medium business, mining local prospects is key to sustaining growth, with direct mail continuing to be the primary method of keeping channels between businesses and local customers open.

Many of you might be thinking, 'But it's too expensive!' Think again. There are a number of cost effective solutions such as AMS's Direct Mail Services that are designed to lower postage and packaging costs; often saving businesses up to 47% on standard tariffs; thus allowing more time to be spent on ensuring higher response rates from their marketing campaigns.

The 40/40/20 Rule

Rules are fantastic because they dictate the way things actually are, thus removing a substantial amount of the guess work. This rule applies to direct marketing specifically, and states that 40% of a campaign's success depends on list selection; 40% on the offer; and 20% on creative execution.

Targeting your audience

Building and developing a mailing list is crucial to an effective campaign, but list buying can be fraught with pitfalls.

Don't be tempted into buying large amounts of untested data. Ask for a small sample to validate the list first, and do some research into the company selling it. Buying from Direct Marketing Association (DMA) members will guarantee that the list adheres to UK and EU marketing laws; and safeguards against the negative implications of using poor quality and illegal data.

The Call-to-Action

Developing your brand and increasing awareness is all well and good, but sending out a mailer without a call to action will be a waste of time. Tell your audience what you want them to do (come into the store with the mailer to receive a 15% discount; book a 30 minute free consultation); will compel them into action and increase the effectiveness of the campaign.

Use your content space – and a great copywriter - to tell your audience what they want to know: Where are the benefits? What are they key selling points that make your company stand out? Do you have any testimonials regarding what other businesses/customers have to say about your business?

Let your mailing house look after your print

By working with a mailing house that also offers print services, you'll be killing many birds with the same stone: Not only will they provide the design, management, and expert finishing to give your campaign the creative execution it needs, but they will also save time and money.

Follow-Up

Plan and implement a follow up message that ties in to your initial call-to-action. This will serve to build brand awareness, and ensure that your business is at the forefront of the target's mind when it's time for them to buy. Think about the menus you get from your local Chinese takeaway...it's usually the same one, but when you're in the mood for a takeaway, they'll immediately spring to mind!

Taking the time to effectively plan your strategy at the beginning of a campaign is well worth the money it saves in the long run. By working closely with industry professionals – from list brokers and copywriters; to designers, printers, and mailing houses – you will see a significant return on your investment.

What are your tips for direct marketing success? Share them by posting your comments below.

Within the EU there is a requirement to open up formerly closed markets, especially those that have been the subject of Government monopolies. One of the organisations most resistant to change, at least in Britain, has been the national operator responsible for the delivery of mail.

Ironically however, Britain has opened its mail market faster and further than most other member states, which has allowed (from 2000) the entry of independent (mostly foreign) postal delivery operations. They focused initially on the business-to-business (B2B) direct mail market, but as market liberalisation proceeded to full competition in 2006 they began to win share from Royal Mail in business-to-consumer (B2C) delivery.

While Royal Mail was restricted by its Royal Charter and its reliance upon public funding, privatised operators like PostNL in the Netherlands and Deutsche Post were making international acquisitions in related fields such as courier, parcels, freight and financial hand delivery. So well-known names like TNT (Dutch-owned) and DHL (German) are now entrenched in the UK and worldwide market. As Business Secretary Vince Cable put it when explaining Royal Mail’s flotation in 2013 –

"The government's decision on the sale is practical, it is logical, it is a commercial decision designed to put Royal Mail's future on a long-term sustainable business. It is consistent with developments elsewhere in Europe where privatised operators in Austria, Germany and Belgium produce profit margins far higher than the Royal Mail but have continued to provide high-quality and expanding services."

The new (70% privately-owned) Royal Mail must now play catch-up internationally, whilst seeking to be more competitive in an increasingly competitive home market. It is analogous to BT (which was demerged from it in 1981): both organisations are required to maintain a universal delivery service to all households, while being profitable. BT has reinvented itself, supplying and upgrading its network on a wholesale basis to its competitors, while reinvesting the profits of its legacy business in new fields. The challenge for Royal Mail is to do likewise.

What can direct mailing companies expect?

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) represents the direct mail industry, supplying £1 billion of Royal Mail's turnover, DMA Executive Director Chris Combemale warned the CWU postal workers’ union, when strike action was threatened (and averted) pre-Christmas 2013:

"Commercial users account for the biggest percentage of Royal Mail's turnover. Any disruption to service would quickly lead businesses to take their custom elsewhere, which is an outcome that would not benefit the postal workers that CWU represents."

It is inevitable that the future Royal Mail will be a smaller business, leaner and more competitive. Online shopping is its biggest growth area and it must work to secure the lion’s share of this market, as private mail declines. Royal Mail’s new ‘click and collect’ service uses Post Offices as pick-up points for deliveries, and it also recently gained approval to leave packages with neighbours, which other firms already did.

Meanwhile, direct marketers are watching with interest, and in many cases profiting, as new battlegrounds emerge.

The key issue on B2C direct mail is ‘downstream access’. Whereas competitors since 2006 have had the freedom to collect and sort mail from customers, they have largely then handed the items to Royal Mail for the downstream ‘final mile’ delivery that only it has the national network to accomplish.

New Downstream Access providers (DSA)

The first real DSA competitor has now emerged, offering end-to-end delivery for direct mail users: it is TNT, and it is gradually rolling out through London postcodes, delivering by bicycle three times a week and offering track and trace on each item. TNT already delivers 300 million items a month, and has ambitious plans to expand the staffing on this service from 1,000 to an eventual 20,000. To achieve this goal it is looking to bring in a co-investor.

Ofcom is the regulator of postal services, and Royal Mail is lobbying the body hard on the grounds that competitors like this are ‘cherry picking’ profitable city routes and are not offering an everyday delivery. It remains to be seen how this plays out. The Mayor of London is strongly supporting the new service.

How you can benefit

Royal Mail still has a strong advantage by virtue of its exemption from VAT, so that competitors must overcome a 20% competitive disadvantage. But within major cities companies like TNT (and smaller competitors like DX) can still achieve the economy of scale to provide attractive pricing, unless Ofcom should choose to shackle them by insisting that they deliver to wider (unprofitable) areas or deliver 6 days a week.

Using a professional mailing operation like Advanced Mailing Solutions (AMS) of Glasgow is the key to unlocking big savings on mailing costs, whichever way works out to be the best for your situation.

Assuming that your database is capable of being sorted (and if it is not then AMS can cleanse it for you) there is the opportunity to qualify for one of the categories of Mailsort rates, which achieve up to 47% discounts when compared against Royal Mail's standard tariff.

AMS will also work with you to establish whether it is economic to pre-sort your London mail, for example, to TNT or another DSA. The arrival of new competition can only be good for the industry and we can expect the new Royal Mail to defend its position with attractive rates and services.

All of the competitors are wooing direct mailing firms with extra incentives for Advertising Mail and Sustainable (environmentally-friendly) Mail.

Of course the mail savings that are on offer can soon be offset unless you have access to the ancillary mailing house services like polywrapping, envelope enclosing and postcard printing at cost-effective rates. Fortunately all of these services are on offer under one roof at AMS: together with free consultancy on how best to negotiate the maze of DSA and Royal Mail tariffs that are now on offer.