Direct marketing is a deceptively simple concept. There doesn’t seem to be much to it, just sending out an advertising postcard or flyer which talks about the virtues of your product or service. However, to get to that simple final result, it takes considerable planning and preparation. The campaign has to be shaped and every detail designed to make the final mailing cost efficient and effective.

I. Determine the Campaign Goals and Strategy

The first step in the process is deciding what you’re looking for as an end result. You need to determine what you want to accomplish with the marketing campaign and how to best accomplish that goal. Each of the steps in the process will then be taken with the primary goal of the project in mind.

There are several issues that you need to consider at that stage. You need to determine the target audience for the campaign. You need to determine the print medium which you are going to use for the campaign. You also need to give consideration to the tactics that you want to use in your advertising, whether you want to use a flashy attention getting approach or a more subtle design. You also need to give some thought as to your target audience and how best to reach them.

As an illustration, we are going to walk through a sample direct mailing campaign. For the purposes of this article, the client will be an online printing concern called Joe’s Printing, which operates a website called Joesprinting.com. In planning the campaign, Joe’s has determined the following:

• Joe’s wants to increase awareness of its website and advertise a special they are running for 25% off for all new website customers.
• They have chosen to send out postcards advertising the site.
• Joe’s owner does not want to make this a flashy advertisement and would prefer to keep the card simple and utilitarian.
• Joe’s is a relatively small operation, such that it needs to have its postcard mailing done outside their own shop. Its goal is to reach small businesses and individuals who do a certain type of printing on a regular basis.

These represent the basic goals and strategy which Joe’s has devised for its campaign. With these ideas in mind, we can now move onto the next step.

II. Designing the Advertising

The next step is to design the actual mailing. Again, this needs to be done with the goals of the campaign in mind. There are several things which you can do to help create an effective design. You need to be careful in choosing your images and color schemes. Too much color or too many garish images can turn off the potential customer just as readily as a bland card without color or images can. Keep your text use to a minimum, saying enough to make the customer interested without losing their attention by putting to much language on the card. Also, always remember to give a call to action on the card, telling the customer what you want them to do.

With our example, Joe’s wants to design a subtle card which advertises the website and the new customer special. So the three elements which should be most prominent in the design are the company name, the website address and the 25% discount. Here’s a sample that one of our designers prepared for the purposes of this article:

As you can see from the picture, the elements are all emphasized with different text and colors. The text is limited to the bare essentials. There is a specific call to action, telling the customer to go to the website. This is a simple design which meets all of our needs for the campaign.

III. Preparing the Proper List

The next step is to prepare your mailing list. And like Santa Claus, you need to make your list and check it twice (or more than twice) to make sure that all the good little boys and girls (in this case, the people who want your product or service) are on it. Targeting customers for your list properly is imperative to having a successful direct mailing campaign. You need to determine which customers are most likely to purchase your product and/or service and direct your mailings to them

Lists can come from a variety of sources. The easiest and most common is a company using its own existing client list as its mailing list, using a mailing to notify its existing customers of a sale or new office. However, many times a business is looking to use an mailing to draw in new customers. Many companies, including My Post Card Printing, sell or can procure targeted lists which can help get your message out to potential new customers. The important thing is to know who you want your message to get too and to make sure your mailing list is calibrated to reach those people.

Looking at our example, Joe’s is looking to find new customers in addition to its established client base. Since they do not have the facilities in house to do large industrial jobs, they are looking to small businesses and individuals who have ordered print jobs in the past. Since they are looking beyond their customer base, they’re choosing to purchase a list of potential printing customers from My Post Card Printing.

IV. Getting the Right Printing and Mailing Partner

Having a great design and list is relatively useless if you don’t get the card made right and mailed out properly to your potential customers. Choosing the right company is an important step in determining whether your campaign will succeed. My Post Card Printing is a full service company which not only provides great postcard design and printing services, but offers a full spectrum of mailing services as well.

Once your project is completed and printed, the mailing is then mailed out to the individuals on your list.

V. Tracking Results

Just because your campaign has been sent off for printing and mailing, it doesn’t mean your work on the campaign is done. The next step is to track the results of the campaign. This can be done by simply keeping track of how many responses you get from your mailed postcards. By keeping track of this information and analyzing it, you can determine what worked and what didn’t with your mailing and then adjust accordingly. The ability to personalize postcard mailings is one of the many reasons why they are so effective as a direct marketing tool.

One way that you can help yourself track results is by sending out two different versions of the particular mailing. For example, for an internet giveaway, 50% of the mailings can have the person enter the code 12345 on your site and the other 50% can have the code 54321. You can then send these out to certain segments of your market, maybe sending the 12345 code to companies on the East Coast and the 54321 to the West Coast, or one to people over 35 and the other to people under 35. The point is that with a minor change, you can make your record keeping much easier and figure out where to focus your attentions in the future.

VI. Conclusion

It’s easy to send a random postcard out to thousands of people. But that will most likely result in no real results from the mailing. The goal of a direct mailing campaign is to reach as many potential customers as possible. By making sure you have your card designed properly and being sent to the right people and using a list focused tightly on your campaign goals, you can create a successful and cost effective direct marketing campaign which will boost your business.