Season’s Greetings from interlinkONE
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Three Ways to Personalize Your Direct Mail Efforts
If your company sends out direct mail (which it should be doing as part of multi-channel campaigns, right!), it is vital that you add personalization to your materials.
One benefit of doing that is it may help your materials stand out from the crowd. Also, personalizing direct mail helps us to demonstrate to our customers and prospects that we’re paying attention to them, and that we want to share relevant information and offers.
It really does boil down to this: When it comes to mail, the more enticing the material, the more likely a recipient will be to read it and take action. And a personalized direct mail piece can certainly be enticing!
If you are looking to personalize your direct mail pieces, here are three ideas worth considering.
3 Ideas for Personalizing Direct Mail
- Consider the location of the recipient and design the materials accordingly: By taking a look at the recipient’s location, you should be able to identify a data element that could be converted to personalized content. For example, if you are sending direct mail to promote your retail store, gym, or some other physical location, you could personalize the piece to show just how close the person is to that spot. This could be represented graphically, via a map, or simply in text (i.e. “you are less than 2 miles away!”)
- If you are targeting previous customers, appeal to that and possibly reference the product or service they purchased: If we are sending direct mail pieces to our existing customers, we truly have no excuse not to personalize our materials. Take the time to look at their purchase history. With that data, you should be able to ensure that the promotions and offers on your direct mail piece are truly relevant to them.
- Based on demographics that you know, select colors that may appeal to each group: This one may take a bit more research and creativity. But there certainly are studies out there regarding the effect that certain colors may have on different groups of people. If you can find a way to use the right ones for the segments inside of your target audience, you should be able to increase your response rates.
These are just a few ideas for how your marketing efforts can be improve with personalized direct mail.
Are there others that you’ve enjoyed creating or receiving? If so, please let me know in the Comments!
Congrats to our Two SLMA Award Winners
After 7,113 votes were cast (22% more than the 2010 election) for 79 nominees by 4,656 people (each voter could choose up to three nominees) our very own CEO John Foley, Jr. and our VP of Sales Karen Sheehey DeWolfe both made the “Top 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management” List.
Susan Campanale, VP of Marketing for the SLMA said, “These people are recognized by their peers as power players in the pursuit of ROI for marketing lead generation.”
Congratulations to both John and Karen!
The full list of 50 winners is available for viewing on the SLMA site. The SLMA served as the independent tabulator of votes and does not endorse the services of those listed. Voters were only allowed to vote for up to three people. Only SLMA members were allowed to nominate people to the nominees list. Non-members and members cast one ballot with up to three non-duplicated votes.
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Tags award, john foley, karen sheehey, leads, management, Marketing, recognition, Sales 3 Tips for Succeeding with Direct Mail
One of my favorite people in the print industry, Margie Dana, wrote a fantastic piece this week that was titled “How Direct Mail Packs a Punch in 7 Ways“.
If you are looking for ways to improve your marketing efforts, her article is a must-read. It provides inspiration and incentive for companies to use direct mail to reach their prospects and customers.
If Margie’s post does inspire you, I’d like to share a few tips with you as well. Here they are!
3 Tips for Succeeding with Direct Mail
For companies that run direct mail campaigns, the ability to effectively measure the highs and lows of those campaigns is vital to the success of their advertising as a whole. The following tips will have you well on your way toward making the most out of your company’s direct mail marketing:
- Utilize a tracking software system that will measure the statistics of your campaign easily and efficiently: Yes, there is no denying that it may cost less money to send emails than it does to send direct mail. However, if the act of sending direct mail to your audience could bring you better results, wouldn’t you want to do that? Of course! However, we must put forth the effort to prove that is true.This may primarily mean that we set up our campaigns and landing pages in a way so that direct mail responses are measured differently than responses to your emails, social media posts, or activities on another channel.
Response mechanisms such as QR Codes and personalized URLs can help us measure direct mail effectiveness as well!
- Select a focused audience versus conducting a blind mailing effort, thus increasing the potential for successful contacts: The days of spray-and-pray must be a thing of the past. This is certainly true from a budgetary perspective. But it also should be true from the fact that technology makes it easier than ever to create targeted, personalized materials and by doing so, we can increase our response rates.By segmenting our audiences, we can deliver direct mail pieces that may have text, images, and offers that are relevant to each individual.
- Ensure that your direct mail pieces are both informative and aesthetically pleasing: We must never forget marketing fundamentals. Sure, it can be fun to get excited about new marketing channels (i.e. I’m so excited that I can add a PURL to my mailers!) However, we must not neglect putting forth an effort to ensure our direct mail pieces look good and tell a compelling story.
These are just a few of the ways that companies can successfully incorporate direct mail into their marketing mix. If you’d like to learn more or perhaps see how interlinkONE’s software can help you in that regard, click here.
[Video] John Foley, Jr. Chats About His Trip to Singapore
Our CEO John Foley, Jr. recently had the chance to take the book tour for “Business Transformation: A New Path to Profit for the Printing Industry” to Singapore. While he was there, John conducted seminars to help printers grow their business.
In this video, I had the chance to ask John about his trip there. I hope that you enjoy it!
