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Adam's Advice: 8 Tips for Making Direct Mail Work (5-8)

This week, we'll look at the final four tips to making your direct mail campaigns work for you.

5. Have an irresistible offer. You can't expect people to respond to your mailings if you don't give them a great reason to.

• The offer may be presented in the letter itself, or printed up as a separate piece that accompanies the letter (such as in the form of a coupon or certificate, or other promotion)
• Make it enticing. The better the offer (for the recipient), the better the response. Create a desire.

6. Make the reader take action. Your offer may be great, but it won't produce results unless you give the reader a way to respond.

• Structure your offer in such a way that you will get a response (i.e. Call now to receive this special offer, or Visit us online to register for your free gift)
• Include a deadline. Deadlines instill a sense of urgency. If you do not have an expiration date, you will not get the responses you're looking for.

7. Make it easy for the recipient to take action. We're all short on time and have come to expect things that are easy, fast and convenient (think fast-food, online banking and TIVO). The harder it is for your recipient to do the action you've asked, the less response you'll get.

• Include a pre-addressed, pre-paid envelope if the offer is a mail-back response.
• Give them a real person's name to ask for if you're asking them to call.
• Give them a web address that takes them directly to the page they need to go, if asking them to go online (don't just send them to your home page and expect them to figure it out).
• Include multiple ways to respond whenever possible (i.e. Call, Fax, Mail or E-mail!).

8. Keep good records. Be sure to track responses to your direct mail campaigns so that you can determine your return on investment and identify the campaigns that work best for you.

• If testing multiple markets or offers, include a code (i.e. Promotion Code: XYZ123) on your response piece (mail-in card, coupon, etc.) that will enable you to identify which campaign the response came from.
• Remember to start small. Sending a test mailing of a few dozen or few hundred letters (depending on the size of your overall audience) can give you a good estimate of the response you can expect from the total market. If response is good, roll it out to everyone in your audience!
• Log your responses daily, or as often as possible.
• Log the repeat business you get from the initial respondents to truly measure the value of that first direct mail campaign they responded to. The "lifetime value" of a client is much more important than just the initial response.
• Analyze your data and plan your projections for the next campaign so that you obtain the maximum results.