Five Direct Marketing Mail Tips

Launching a successful direct marketing mail program is a challenge for everyone, but especially the small business owner.

Many businesses are relying less on traditional direct mail and opting for increased email and web marketing.

While it is important to have an optimized website that brings in free targeted traffic, it is equally important to develop a strong direct mail program that flushes new customers into your business and complements your e-commerce program.

This article details five tips for ensuring you get the most from your direct mail program.

Direct Marketing Mail Tip#1: The Never-Ending Mailing

For the small business owner, direct mail can be an expensive proposition.

By the time you rent lists, buy your paper & envelopes, pay for creative work and then factor in postage, you might quickly find yourself over budget.

Here's a way to spread out some of your direct mail expenses over the entire year. You simply mail out a smaller number of pieces each and every week.

For example, suppose you own a financial consulting business. Using a combination of Google local search, your Chamber of Commerce and local business organizations, you can easily identify hundreds of potential customers within a 25-mile radius of your office.

Each week, you identify ten businesses that would be a good target for your services and mail them out a letter.

The key is the consistency in which you mail out the letters each week. Mailing out ten letters a week will net over 500 letters a year. Doing twenty a week nets over 1,000 a year.

This is a great way of continually contacting potential clients and flushing in new prospects.

Direct Marketing Mail Tip#2: Don't Sell Your Suspects

Remember, when you are mailing to businesses that don't know about you, your letter should not focus on making a sale. People that don't know about your business are known as Suspects. You might suspect they have an interest in what you have to offer, but you're not sure.

With Suspects, find something of value you can give them in exchange for permission to market to them in the future. Trying to sell your services before you have built trust and confidence is futile.

One of my favorite methods of converting Suspects to Prospects is to offer them a free downloadable report or tip sheet in exchange for a newsletter signup.

What? You don't have a company newsletter? Then be sure to read the article Ten Ezine Startup Tips.

Direct Marketing Mail Tip#3: Stand Out From the Crowd

While there isn't anything wrong with the old #10 envelope, you can stand out from the crowd by deploying the #12 envelope.

What's the difference?

The #10 envelope is 4-1/8 x 9-1/2" while the #12 is 4-3/4 x 11". This slightly larger size will get more attention while still allowing you to use regular 1st class postage.

You should be able to find #12 envelopes at your local office supply store. If you can't find them, they can be ordered from Action Envelope.

Direct Marketing Mail Tip#4: Track Your Results

Every piece of direct mail you send should have a way to track results.

Remember, if you can't measure it, don't do it.

This means that you must be very clear in your direct mail letter to define the action you want the recipient to take.

One of my favorite ways to monitor response is to send people to a website for a free product redemption.

For example, if the goal of my direct mail letter is to get people to download a free report, I would create a unique web URL within my site and then use a service such as Google Analytics to help track activity on that page.

Using your website like this is a fast and efficient way to measure and monitor your direct mail results. If you don't yet have a business website, then check out Site Build It!

Direct Marketing Mail Tip#5: Test, Test, Test!

You might think you've got a great hook for your direct mail letter, but unless you test it, you'll never really know how good it is.

Whenever you do a sizable mailing (500 pieces or more), come up with two different offers you feel are compelling and send half the list offer #1 and the second half offer #2.

Track the response of each offer and see which one pulls the best response.

During your next mailing, you can take your winning offer and test it against a new idea. In this way, you can eventually build a library of high-responding offers.

While testing direct mail offers is a bit slower than testing a sales page on your website, it is no less important. Be sure to only test one parameter at a time. Otherwise, you won't know which change caused the jump (or decrease) in response.

Together, these five direct marketing mail tips will go a long way. Start using them in your small business today!