Unique Direct Mail Solutions to Drive New Leads
The allure of the digital world may make it easy to overlook direct mail as a viable and profitable marketing strategy, but those statistics make it easy to see that overlooking can hurt your business’s growth. To be fair, it can still be difficult to make your advertising campaign stand out amongst the clutter of a mailbox. Here are four different ways in which you can ensure that your direct mail marketing campaign stands out from the rest, allowing you to successfully diversify your companies’ marketing strategy and grow your business.
Pen Machine Addressing Mailing/Hand Addressing
A lot of advertising mail can look or feel impersonal, with your address printed in a generic typed font and generic statements covering the piece. Every direct mail usually looks the exact same way! As a result, such advertisements often end up in the recycling bin right away, as recipients try to filter out pieces that don’t appear to be personalized. That’s why either pen machine addressing or hand addressing your mail can be a valuable strategy to increase the visibility of your advertisement and help it stand out in a large stack of mail.
These methods are simple and exactly what they sound like—writing recipient addresses using any number of sharpies or pens, or even a pen machine —but are remarkably effective. Hand-addressed mail adds a personal touch to advertising, making people pause before moving on to the next letter and generating a positive emotional response in potential customers. Recipients feel more valued and appreciated when they see a handwritten address.
Post It Note Mailing
Another fantastic way to enhance your advertising campaign is by using a Post-It note, one of America’s most indispensable office tools. The method isn’t tricky by any means: simply attach a Post-It note containing a personalized message, website, or phone number to your direct mail advertisement. As well as being part of your initial advertisement to each customer, the Post-It note can also be kept for later and hung on a fridge or above a desk for future reference. In fact, this message on the Post-It note can also be hand addressed or pen addressed, maximizing the amount of value and personalization towards the recipient.
The human brain is drawn to the note when first scanning the piece of mail. Post-It notes are also a great way to add personalization to your mailings, and as we discussed above personalization can greatly increase your response and open rates.
The numbers are all in favor of using Post-It notes for your direct mail advertising campaigns. In fact, a 2015 survey demonstrated that attaching a personalized sticky note to a survey generated a response rate of 69 percent, while sending that very same survey out with no sticky note at all led just 34 percent of recipients to fill it out and respond. That’s just one example of how using Post-It notes can improve your direct mail marketing campaigns.
Variable Data Printing
We’ve talked a lot about personalization and how it can positively affect your marketing campaigns. Variable data printing (VDP) is just another way to add a personal touch to your direct mail advertisements. VDP is a method of digital printing which utilizes existing data to customize different elements of an advertisement, from greetings to images, website URLs, text, and graphics. Doing so enables each piece of mail you send out to be targeted specifically to the recipient and the recipient only. This allows for a unique level of personalization that can grab each customer’s attention.
Giving your messages a personal touch resonates with a vast majority of customers. Studies say that between 75 and 80 percent of customers enjoy it when retailers or other businesses personalize suggestions or advertisements. Additional research has shown that personalized mail pieces have a response rate of six percent, while a generic piece generates a response rate of just two percent.
For instance, you own an auto dealership and would like to generate brand awareness in neighboring communities. VDP can print “Hey Joe, Our Exclusive Truck Offer” and “Hey Alyssa, Check Our Newest Models of SUVs”, addressing each recipient by name and with different offers!
Scratch-Off Mailing
If you want another unique way to get potential customers to engage with your direct mail advertisements, try scratch-off mailing. By putting a scratch-off box on your advertisement, you are inducing the customer to interact directly with your product. The extra seconds they spend scratching may cause them to remember your product, contact information, or company more clearly. Under the scratch-off material, enclose a coupon, discount code, or a subscription link in order to try to get them to take the next step towards choosing the products you are advertising.
It has been shown that doing this is a good way to increase your return on investment (ROI) and response rates, and you can even combine scratch-offs with variable data printing to add a more personal touch to your direct mail marketing campaign.
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Conclusion
People may still claim that direct mail marketing is not effective, but the reality is that it continues to be an effective way to generate responses to advertising. Direct mail advertising also provides a valuable avenue for businesses to diversify their marketing strategy and expand into other marketing channels. Of course, the above methods are just four of many ways to help your direct mail marketing campaign succeed. There are countless ways to ensure that you are tapped into the potential that direct mail advertising provides.
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