Don’t wait to until it’s too late, start planning now!
Direct mail marketing your holiday specials can be a cost-effective way to reach your target audience, generate new customers, retain customer loyalty, and differentiate your company from the competitors. Planning is the key to any successful marketing campaign. Here are some ways you can maximize direct mail marketing opportunities.
Set a Goal
It’s hard to gauge the success of a marketing campaign if you don’t have a specific goal in mind. Once you establish what you want to accomplish, then you can coordinate the rest of the campaign elements to align with your goals. A few examples of campaign goals could be:
- Create Brand Awareness – Expose your brand to more people to get them to associate your brand with specific products or services.
- Drive Sales Conversions – Whether online or in-store, you want to see an increase in overall purchases.
- Introduce New Products or Services – Generate interest, get your audience to try it out, and receive feedback either through sales or surveys to determine the potential success of that product or service.
- Build customer loyalty – Retain your current customer’s interest in your products, services, or brand so they will continue to do business with you or refer you to others.
Identify who your target audience
Trying to reach anyone and everyone who may or may not be interested in what you have to offer is not cost-effective. Choosing a specific audience based on your goal will provide you with much better results and stretch your marketing dollars a lot further. Here are some examples of a targeted audience:
- Demographics – People defined by age, interests, household size, lifestyle, etc., who are most likely to use your products or services.
- Locals – Maybe you don’t ship all over the world, let alone the country. It might be more beneficial to target a specific vicinity or areas within a range of zip codes.
- Previous customers – People you have in your database already who use your services or shop with you regularly.
- Businesses – B2B is a term that refers to businesses that sell to other businesses. If your audience isn’t residential customers, why would you include them in your mailing list? Identify the title you want to target and the type of businesses that would use your products or services.
Create a call-to-action
A call-to-action is an opportunity to track how successful your campaign is by driving your audience to do something. It’s essential to use actions that can be tied directly to a specific campaign. The most effective call-to-actions include an incentive for the customer to drive the desired action. Here are some examples of effective call-to-actions for direct mail marketing campaigns:
- Online Coupon codes
- Targeted URL landing pages
- Scannable QR codes
- In-store Coupon/Discounts
Digital Presence
Direct mail marketing wouldn’t be complete without having a digital presence. If someone wants to learn more about your business, the majority of people will look you up online. So you must include your website URL, as well as your contact information, such as phone number, location, and hours of operation. It’s helpful to have good reviews and to have listings with multiple online directories with consistent/accurate information about your business for legitimacy.
What type of direct mail format should you use?
It depends partly on your brand image and your audience. There are a lot of ways to increase your appeal with high-quality paper, graphics, fonts, and messaging. Here are some examples of different direct mail marketing formats:
A letter
Addressing a letter directly to a person of interest with an enticing message such as “Gift Card Enclosed or Gift Certificate Enclosed” printed on the outside of an envelope will almost always get customers to open it. A gift card or certificate has a higher perceived value than a discount coupon — and customers will almost always spend more than the value of the gift card when they visit your store.
A card
A flyer
A colorful one-sheet flyer, tri-folded and addressed on the outside, can be surprisingly effective as well as inexpensive. When you use a creative design, it can set you apart from the competition and increase brand awareness.
A postcard
Postcards large and small are an easy way to make sure people see your message without any extra effort. You can capture your audience’s attention with eye-popping graphics, and it’s the most inexpensive piece of mail you can send in bulk.
How AVS Leads can help:
For over 35 years, AVS leads has helped businesses reach their target market. We not only help you identify and define the demographics of your potential customers, but we also provide you with their mailing address and a variety of direct mail services to deliver your message. If you are interested in learning more about how AVS leads can help you with holiday direct mail marketing for your business, contact us today for a free consultation.