Bring Your Direct Mail Marketing into the 21st Century

With new technology, excellent marketing strategies and a wider market, it is more important than ever to make not only a good first impression, but a lasting one when marketing your business. Direct mail marketing is still an incredibly popular marketing strategy. It’s used by a variety of companies around the world to get their product, brand, service or message across to a select number of individuals who have been targeted specifically to receive the promotional material.

Direct mail marketing can be used with a variety of other marketing methods to create a super marketing strategy. This combination will not only create an excellent first impression with your potential customers, but will also keep you fresh in their minds.

So how do you incorporate and synchronise new marketing and analysis strategies into your direct mail marketing plan and help to bring it into the 21st century?

Keep in Contact Electronically

Incorporating an email marketing strategy into a successful direct mail marketing plan will hopefully show you some excellent returns. When designing your email it is important that you choose slogans, colors and logos that you are also using on your leaflets or flyers, which will allow for maximum recognition. Try to make the subject of your email repeat what is written on the heading of your leaflet and keep it short, benefit driven and brand specific.

The information displayed on the leaflet should make some reference to an email or website as well as allowing the recipient to sign up to a newsletter or redeem an offer. This way email correspondence can be established and you will be able to advise your customers of any future offers that may be available to them. Again, ensure that your website landing pages are similar or identical to your leaflet or flyer.

Know Your Target Audience

There is a goldmine of information available which allows you to target a specific audience when making your leaflet drops. Without this information and data your promotional material would be delivered to anybody and everybody and the chance of getting a response from a high percentage of recipients would be very low.

You may be wanting to target households with more than one car, families with children, the elderly or those with a high disposable income; whatever your target audience, ensure that you have a reputable mailing list for them and an offer that will suit them and you will have a good chance of success.

Delivery, Whenever and Wherever

It is no longer the case that your leaflets or flyers need to be delivered along with a handful of other promotional material tucked inside the weekly free newspaper. It is now up to you when you want your leaflet to be delivered, who you wanted to be delivered to and how you want it to be delivered.

It is often said that direct mail marketing enables you to deliver the best offer to the appropriate person at the optimum time. There are very few forms of marketing that can provide service that is this effective at targeting individuals that want to be targeted and providing them with a piece of promotional material that they will keep in their house, pass to a friend or file away for future use.

Keeping on Top of Your ROI

One of the excellent advantages of a direct mail marketing campaign is that you are able to measure its success. This is critical when you are determining your ROI and therefore it is important that your direct mail marketing campaign features a response tracking tool. This response tracking may be a phone call, a barcode coupon, a personal website URL or any other method by which you can calculate whether or not the recipient of your leaflet has acted upon what they have read.

Speaking to your campaign manager will give you a good idea of which method to use. Armed with this information you can calculate your ROI make and is formed decision as to how to proceed with your direct mail marketing.

So are you ready to bring your direct mail marketing strategy into the 21st-century. Using the tools and technology that are available to you to maximise your return on investment and grow your business will in turn enable you to reach your business goals successfully. Then what are you waiting for?

Author: James Lane Marketing Manager of Essex Distributions (www.essex-distributions.com), is part of a ten-strong team pushing leaflet distribution services throughout London & Essex, who is passionate about offline marketing and media.