Best Practices for Mail to Consumer Marketing

5 years ago | Posted in: Business, Technology | 647 Views

Direct marketing is considered one of the most effective forms of marketing as it gives a company an opportunity to channel its marketing efforts directly to a given customer base. This option ensures return on investment by directly drawing on board more customers. Mail-to-customer marketing is a form of direct marketing that allows companies to send hard copy mails to potential customers. The success of this form of marketing is highly dependent on the ability of the company to implement various strategies targeting the optimization of marketing initiatives. Here are some of the optimization efforts that companies should employ to make direct mail marketing as effective as possible.

Identify the market well  

Before undertaking direct mail marketing, it is important to pinpoint the particular customers that the company intends to target. The process of identification of the market for which the campaign will be channeled to should be data-driven and appropriately evaluated in terms of financial returns. Research has shown that working with a narrower target market and audience is more effective and offers a better return on investment. This is because the company would have an opportunity to effectively market across that audience as thoroughly as possible. The process of identifying the market should take into consideration, among other factors, the social, economic, and geographic profile of the targeted customers.

Focus on selling benefits rather than features   

A company, when composing the message to be mailed to customers in the targeted area, should focus on outlining the various benefits that they would get from purchasing a particular product or service. This is as opposed to outlining on the mail the features of the product or service being marketed. Modern-day consumers need to know whether particular products and services being offered are worth purchasing. For example, it would pay for a food joint to advertise itself by outlining features it offers such as free shipping, promptness in delivery of customer orders, and availability of a free parking lot for customers rather than telling consumers how much they would have to pay for certain meals.

Be simple and brief

Mail-to-customer marketing also requires marketers to observe etiquette as far as the composition of the message is concerned. It pays to be as brief and to the point as possible while avoiding lengthy explanations that take time for the reader to digest. Outlining the key points by using bullet points rather than paragraphs makes it fast to read and easy to remember. Besides, using the right material to compose the message also increases the ability of customers to relate well with the marketing initiative. Printing the mails on half fold brochure templates is the most suitable and appropriate option as it creates a neat appearance and a good impression. Besides, such templates are easily customizable.

Personalizing the campaign   

When marketing through direct mail, it is important to personalize the message as a way of enhancing the company’s customer relations management. Such personalization doesn’t have to be too complex. It only requires the company to have some background knowledge of each customer such as their names, duration of the last visit to the company, and personal details such as birthdays. Addressing the customers by their names creates a special sense of importance and recognition that can generally influence the customers to maintain their loyalty to the company.

Measuring success 

It pays to regularly take a break and evaluate the extent of success of a direct mail marketing campaign. Such a valuation should primarily focus on the costs incurred in conducting the mailing campaign, the net return on that investment in terms of newly acquired customers, and any particular areas that should be improved on such as the need to expand or change the market being targeted.

Conclusion  

In conclusion, direct mail marketing can be an effective channel of marketing, but only in situations where it is excellently applied. Building upon direct mail marketing gives the company an opportunity to directly interact with customers. Observing the various best practices would guarantee the company to harness a good return on its marketing investments.

 

Jeremy is a tech and business writer from Simi Valley, CA. He’s worked for Adobe, Google, and himself. He lives for success stories, and hopes to be one someday.hat it brings to your business as a whole.

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