In any form of mail marketing, the central piece of your advertising is your mail piece. It tells the recipient what your business is about, and what you are offering. Direct mail marketing has several advantages over e-mail marketing, but those advantages mean nothing if your mail piece cannot effectively send your intended message. With that in mind, we’ll be going into the basics of designing an effective mail piece.
The Offer They Can’t Refuse
The most important factor in grabbing a potential customer’s attention is by making a great offer. There are many different types of offers you can make, but these are some common offers:
- Give a FREE gift. It doesn’t have to be something expensive; it can be something as simple as lottery tickets.
- Offer a special discount. While it may not sound as appealing as free, a $20 coupon or 15% discount could entice potential customers to try out your product/service.
- Make it a limited-time offer. Giving your offer an expiration date will help elicit a faster response from interested customers.
While your offer shouldn’t break the bank, it should be appealing enough to get the customer to call or visit your business location.
Get To The Point!
You have limited space on your letter/postcard, so use it wisely!
- Extra graphics will create clutter on your mail piece, and they will also distract your potential customer from your main message: Who are you and why should they do business with you?
- Be clear and concise about your businesses and services. Say just enough to make your potential customer want to give you a call or visit your store.
- The mail piece isn’t made to make a sale; the mail piece is supposed to bring your customers to you, where you can make the sale.
How do I find you?
Congratulations, you’ve got the attention of a potential customer! Now, how can they contact you? It may be obvious to at least put your business name and phone number on your mail piece, but just throwing it on there may not always be effective. You want to make sure your contact information:
- Uses LARGE text. Now by large we don’t mean it should fill up half of your mail piece; it should be just large enough to stand out from the rest of the text on your mail piece.
- Uses a unique style of text. Having a different font and/or color will make your contact information distinct and easy to find.
- Gives up-to-date contact information. If the customer can’t immediately get in contact with you, that’s another potential sale being lost for your business.
By following these tips, your mail piece will have a better chance of attracting new customers to your business. If after two months you aren’t getting at least a 1% response from your mailing campaign, you should consider revising your mail piece.
For more detailed examples of specific types of mail, stay tuned for future posts on:
- Designing the perfect Postcard
- Making a Flyer that POPS
- What makes a great Letter
If your business has a product or service that a New Mover / New Homeowner needs, you should talk to us. We’ve been compiling the nation’s best New Homeowners Mailing List for over 40 years. We also can provide you with New Movers list if this target audience proves a better match. Each week we capture almost 100,000 New Homeowners who move into their new property. Want to know how many of them move into a neighborhood in your area of business? Don’t let your business lose another customer to your competitors just because you didn’t send them a simple flyer you can print in your office or home. Contact us today and find out how you can start adding new customers each week. Let us help you reach the right people at the right time, when they are ready to make a purchase.