With the plethora of digital tools available to the modern-day marketer and business owner today, it’s easy to assume that direct mail advertising is dead. As popular as this notion might be, this cannot be further from the truth. While it’s true that direct mail has its disadvantages over digital methods, such as email marketing and video ads, this traditional medium has its advantages too.
This method literally takes you to the hands of your customers, is tactile, and can be memorable if executed correctly. To help you utilize it to full efficiency, here are four direct mail design tips for an effective direct mail advertising campaign:
1) Personalize Your Email
The rules for creating personalized marketing material doesn’t change. Even during the heyday of the printed word, marketers tried to make compelling content by knowing more about their customers.
We don’t necessarily mean knowing each one of your customers. Instead, we suggest segmenting your customers into groups and base your content on those demographics. The more relevant data you have, the more compelling your content will be!
Just be sure to remind your client how, when, and where you got your information, or there will be some serious questioning later.
2) Make It Pop
Using eye-catching design is everything in direct mail advertising. For both the envelope and its contents, use eye-catching colours, bold fonts, and engaging copywriting.
Ensure that your mail stands out when your customer sifts through their mail. Provided that your design is still on-brand, your direct mail advertising efforts will not be in vain!
3) Don’t Forget the Call to Action (CTA)
The CTA is a simple text line that tells your customer what to do next or inspires them to take action. These simple statements are very important because they can prod your customer to the next phase of your sales process. Ensure that it is direct, engaging, and has a sense of urgency—it’s the only way that it will become effective!
An example of a good CTA is “Mail your donation today to get your free care package, exclusive to the first 200 donors only.” This CTA is good because it prods your customer to take action and uses engaging words like “free.” It also has a sense of urgency because it limits the reward to the earliest donors!
4) Use Other Marketing Channels
Direct mail is also called snail mail for a good reason. Despite the merits of direct mail, it does have its own weakness, which gave rise to electronic mail in the first place.
To maximize its impact, use direct mail to complement other initiatives, such as in-store promotions and social media marketing, among others. With data from your email marketing campaign, you can personalize your direct mail creative and make it more engaging. Since different consumers respond differently to a brand in each unique channel, it’s best to cover as much ground as possible!
Conclusion
The problem with digital marketing is that it’s become so ubiquitous that audiences have had to develop skills and tools to tune them out. For example, the barrage of emails that regularly plague customers prodded the development of spam filters—which will instantly render your well-meant promotional mail useless!
Even if your promotional email does get through, chances are your customer will ignore it all the same. If you want to stand out from your competition, make sure to add direct mail advertising to the mix.
Third Essential is an Indian digital marketing & web development agency offering top-notch marketing services to marketers and business owners alike. Besides designing, and preparing your paid marketing campaigns, our digital marketing services will help you hit your sales goals. Contact us today to learn more about our services!