Getting ready for your next direct mail promotion or campaign and wondering how to maximize response rates?

You’ve come to the right place.

Here are five key tips for your next automated direct mail promotion or campaign.

5 Tips for Direct Mail Promotions

Direct mail is a great channel for marketing promotions. According to the Data and Marketing Association, your direct mail is likely to outperform all digital channels by a factor of 10-30. And if you optimize your campaigns, you might do even better.

Use the following content as a checklist to optimize your direct mail promotions.

1. Differentiate Direct Mail Promotions From Email Blasts.

Because Inkit’s direct mail platform is so user-friendly, some marketers are tempted to simply re-format email promotions as postcards. However, what works in email rarely works in direct mail promotions. While the bones of an email blast may be just fine, you should flesh out the details differently for print.

Rather than blasting out a ton of information, consider the fact that direct mail reaches your customers in their homes—most likely while they sift through a pile of only 3-5 offers. As you create campaigns and design postcards, think of direct mail promotions as a way to build relationships with your customers. This helps ensure customers will look forward to seeing mail from you, driving repeat business.

Pro Tip: Engage your customer with useful information, exclusive discounts or the opportunity to provide feedback.

2. Be Prepared to Grab Their Attention in 8 Seconds.

Mailboxes are certainly not as cluttered as email inboxes, and many Americans even enjoy sorting mail. This gives you a leg up when it comes to grasping attention, however people still make quick decisions about what goes in the “junk mail” pile.

While your direct mail has a much better chance of garnering attention than email, you still only have a few seconds to make an impression. To capture your reader’s eye, consider sending brightly colored large mailers. And, include unique images and an easy-to-read, compelling headline.

3. Provide Actual Value in Your Direct Mail Promotion’s Offer.

If you’re investing in direct mail, you need to make sure you’re offering something valuable. Direct mail audiences are more focused than digital audiences—who are constantly bombarded with input from every direction. But if you want your direct mail list to stay engaged with your content, you’ve got to provide something good. Most often this is a special discount or an exclusive offer. However, if your goal is re-engagement and you only want to reinvigorate your online funnel, consider teasing valuable online content. This might be a special invitation to join a feedback circle or to access a how-to article.

Direct mail has staying power, so you may want to include your valuable content on the actual mailer if it is something that could be passed around a household or stuck on the fridge.

4. Make Sure You Know Your Direct Mail List.

Know your audience. It’s the no. 1 rule in marketing, but a lot of marketers tend to let this one slide with direct mail. Instead of attempting to really understand a potential segment of targeted consumers, they simply buy a direct mail list or blanket an entire zip code with a generic mailer. While area mail does have a place and time in marketing (such as when a brick-and-mortar wants to introduce itself to the neighborhood), this usually does not make sense for e-commerce marketers.

One of the main benefits of Inkit’s direct mail software is that it works just like marketing automation platforms. You can create a hyper-targeted direct mail list using the information in your customer or prospect database; and you can trigger direct mail based on actions and events just like you might trigger emails.

So, before buying a direct mail list or blasting all of your customers or prospects with the same information, work on understanding customer segments and delivering customized direct mail promotions.

Learn how we can help you create customized, personalized direct mail.

5. Track Your Results

You might think this could go without saying, but we actually find many marketers don’t realize they can track direct mail promotions. One of the biggest benefits of using Inkit’s direct mail API or one of our integrations is that you can effectively measure direct mail performance. There are a number of ways to track direct mail results. Consider trackable discount codes, PURLS, unique landing pages for value-add content or QR codes..

Use These Tips to Improve Direct Mail Promotions

Just because direct mail has been around since the dawn of marketing doesn’t mean your promotional strategies should be ancient, too. We created our direct mail software to enable marketers to customize and automate direct mail campaigns for effective customer relationship-building.

If you have any questions about your next direct mail promotion or how to optimize direct mail, we are happy to help. Contact us for a direct mail automation demo today or reach out to our support team if you are already a customer.