Direct Mail Marketing

What is Direct Mail?

So what is direct mail and how does it work? More importantly, how does it benefit your business? We will address these things throughout this page.

Direct Mail as you might assume is mail that is directed at a specific address. There are many ways in which this can be done in terms of the addressee. It may be addressed to an individual personally or in a more general manner such as to the ‘Home Owner’, for example. However, the more personal communication is, the more effective it will be. Something we will touch on later.

So that’s the definition, but how do you go about doing it in a way that suits your needs.  Well in truth there are a huge amount of ways to apply Direct Mail to Communication and depending on what you are aiming to achieve, this will dictate a lot of the methodology you will employ.

In order to break it all down into manageable chunks, we will separate everything into its basic attributes and go through them one by one.

Direct Mail Targeting

The first thing to decide is WHO you are trying to communicate with? This will lead you to not only what data you need but the type of Mailer you require! This will give you your first bit of the communication process that you will need. Data!

Direct Mail Data

Data (contact information) is possibly the most important part of a good direct mail campaign. If you aren’t communicating with the right people, you are going to waste a lot of time and money.

Get the WHO bit right and you will stand a much better chance of maximising your return on investment. This is easy if you are contacting existing customers, but a little harder if you are aiming to find new business in new market sectors. So, make sure that data is up to date, accurate and relevant to your aims and needs.

GDPR Direct Mail Implications

It is poignant at this point to mention the General Data Protection Regulations. Data and what you intend to use it for is now a matter of legal responsibility. From where you obtain it, to what you send to it, you should now be scrutinising, recording and managing, anything you do with it. Gone are the days of trawling the internet and directories for addresses and sending anything to them. Now you need to be able to justify yourself to the addressees and potentially the Government, to avoid costly backlash and even fines.   

This can seem like a daunting prospect some organisations, but don’t be put off, because part of Mr Flyers service is to help you make these choices and decisions, provide regulated data and help you manage any returns or removal requests from that data to keep you on the right side of customers and Legality alike.

Artwork for Direct Mail

So you have the Data, what next?

Content and Medium are your next choice, what you want to say and in what format are you going to send it, has to be the bit that requires the most thought. Knowing your market will help here, also having a creative side won’t go amiss either.  Creating Copy, Designing Content and picking the right medium on which to print and send it, is the second most important part of Direct Mail. This is how you make your impression on the recipient. And it needs to be good. A lack of effort here will show in your ROI. Don’t rush these steps.

If you are trying to hit a target audience that may have a few different influences, then produce individual materials that address each of those influences separately and use those triggers one at a time to reaffirm your message each time. A person is more likely to view you in their good graces if you have said three things over time that they agree with, rather than if you offer the same information up all at once. Most relationships take time to develop, it's human nature. If you are using Direct Mail to generate new customers, don’t expect to send one mailer out and it magically brings huge amounts in return. You will need to run a series of mailers over time, to those same people, to develop the kind of buying relationship that brings volume response. 

Familiarity, Reliability and Consistency develop the trust of your business that leads to a willingness to buy your offering over someone else’s. So, when you are planning your campaign, keep in mind that it takes time and resilience to generate a consistent customer base.

Personalisation gels data and copy together to maximise the impact of your communication. And if nothing else, it gives you a starter question to get the conversation flowing when you call.  Once all of this is put together it only remains to post it out.

How much does Direct Mail cost?

Expenditure is often one of the biggest consideration in Direct Mailing, but remember, it is cheaper to get it right the first time than to have to produce more mailers because the first campaign wasn’t targeted properly. If finances are your only reservation, then spread it out into manageable and forecastable expenditure over twelve months to ease the cash flow. This will also help with the planning of the drip-feed mailing approach you will need to take to maximise customer response to your mailers.

Here at Mr Flyer, we have the in-house resources to either provide or help you with, all of this. Copy, Design, Print, Enclosure and Delivery through Royal Mail post are our bread and butter. So whether you need assistance or want to outsource the lot, it's only another day in the office for us, giving us a call isn’t a bother, its when you get to test our mettle. Hit us up for as little or as much info as you like, the personal assistance we give is the same to everyone, no matter who you are or what you need.

Post is a bigger cost the bigger the campaign, it goes without saying, so here it is important to maximise your savings. As part of a mailing house with downstream access to both Royal Mail and Whistl,  Mr Flyer has very, very good rates. This to be fair speaks for itself really. We can tell you all day long that we are cheaper than nearly everyone out there and you will either take it as read or not. But what we can do to really prove the point is to give you a quote based on the quantities you are wanting to send, then we can prove it in black and white. It is worth noting too, that Volumes of 4000 mail items per send and above is where you can really see a drop in mailing costs. So, if you get the data, making use of this will benefit you.

If you are still in the planning and budgeting stage and you don’t even have to have something ready to go. We can give you details of cost based on a potential campaign just as quickly as an active one, with no heartache from us.

Direct Mail Implementation

So, there it is; a brief explanation of Direct Mail and what’s involved. Now to say this is a simplification is an understatement maybe, but we could write a book on the subject to be fair, a pretty long one…..or six!

If you want to know more about how Mr Flyer can make Direct Mail beneficial to your business, give us a call…..We will put the kettle on too! And If you have a Campaign idea in the works, please contact us and let us quote you today.