Marketing and all things related

There are so many facets and nuances to creating an effective direct mail campaign.  I thought I'd take a few minutes to provide a list of the top ten direct mail mistakes I frequently see in mailings I receive.  Here we go...

1.  Using a bad mailing list - Marketers should focus on quality not quantity when it comes to mailing lists.  Work with your list provider or printer to scrub your list to ensure it's targeted and clean.  Run it through the National Change of Address (NCOA) and remove addresses that are not valid.  With the high cost of postage these days, don't mail pieces that won't make it to a targeted recipient.

2.  Not taking advantage of postage discounts - If you're mailing in bulk, work with your printer or post office to ensure you're getting the best per piece postage rate.  Your file can be sorted to meet postal requirements for special discounts.  As an alternative, your mail pieces can be delivered to bulk mail centers (BMCs) or other postal facilities rather than your local post office to help you take advantage of additional postage discounts.  Explore your options and choose the postage discount plan that works best for your mailing.  The U.S. Post Office website provides a lot of information about direct mail and postage discounts.

3.  No seeds - Are you sure your mailing was delivered?  Is timeliness of delivery important for your mailing?  It's always a good idea to include seeds in your mailing.  Seeds are recipients that you add to your mail file for the sole purpose of ensuring your mailing was delivered in a timely manner.  At minimum, always include yourself as a seed in all of your direct mail programs.

4.  No tracking mechanism - You invested a lot of money into a direct mail campaign, so it's critical to know if it was effective.  You'll need to calculate your return on investment (ROI) to make sure the mailing helped you generate sales and boost profits.  You'll also want to determine who your responders were and create a demographic profile of those people for future marketing campaigns.  Your responders have already proven themselves to be a profitable target audience.  You can track a direct mail campaign in many ways.  For example, you can include a coupon with a code or unique identifier on each mail piece.  When a recipient responds to the mailing, your promotion can require him or her to present the coupon or mail piece.  You can use the code or unique identifier to track the results back to a matching unique identifier on your mail file to flag responders.

5.  Poor design - The design of your direct mail piece is critical.  Not only does the design help capture your audience's attention, but it also helps convey your message.  People are busy and don't have time to read long letters or search through a confusing layout to find your message.  Car dealerships are famous for creating direct mailers that are ineffective.  Typically, car dealership mailings are so cluttered with information that it's difficult to find pertinent information.  I end up throwing most of them in the garbage can because it takes too long to decipher the offer.  Choose a design that enhances your message rather than detracts from it.

6.  Wrong message - It's critical that your direct mailer clearly communicates your message to your audience.  In fact, you may want to create different versions of your mailer if your message needs to change to speak more effectively to different target audiences.  Versioning can be expensive, so you may have to forego printing extra colors or a coated paper stock or other bells and whistles for additional versions to fit in your budget.

7.  No personalization - A direct mailer needs to speak to the recipient.  You're not in front of your customer selling your product, a piece of paper is.  Personalizing the mail piece can be an effective way of giving credence to your message by letting the customer know the message is meant especially for him or her.  Including the customer's name in the address area, greeting and other areas of the mail piece can help your mailer stand out from the dozens of generic mailings people receive in their mailboxes each week.

8.  No teaser copy on the envelope - If you paid to print your return address, logo or other information on your envelopes, don't stop there.  You paid for that real estate.  Use it.  Here's another place to catch your audience's attention with short messages that entice them to open and read your mailer.  Use this opportunity to create a message that makes your mailer stand out from the rest.

9.  Forgetting size matters - In my mailbox today, I received eight direct mail pieces.  How can you make your mailer stand out in the sea of direct mail?  Use the tips already mentioned above, and don't forget that size and shape can help, too.  An unusual size or shape can make a big difference in terms of which mailer stands out in a recipient's mailbox.  Of course, keep postal requirements in mind when you're creating the size and shape of your mailer to ensure your piece will qualify for the postage rates you planned for in your budget.

10.  Not proofreading - Nothing ruins a direct mail piece faster than a misspelling.  Don't forget to proofread.  Then proofread again.

Those are the ten mistakes that I see most frequently.  Can you think of any others to add to the list?

For more information on direct mail, the Direct Marketing Association is a great resource.