Having a correctly targeted mailing list is critical to getting a return on your direct mail marketing investment.
There are basically three things that can cause direct mail to fail:
- Bad list or incorrect list for product that is being promoted. An outdated list is as bad as an incorrect mailing list.
- Poorly designed message with usually a combination of either wrong product for the mailing list, a confused message, no call to action, offer not being competitive, or too many products being offered in one mailer.
- Inconsistent mailings. Trying to time the market does not work. You don’t know how many people on the mailing list who will be in the market for your service at any given time, so the only thing that works is sending out multiple mailings to the same mailing list. Your results will build over time and you will see greater returns. (Use our easy ROI calculator to quickly see what your returns need to be in order to make direct mail worth-while for you.)
Notice, a bad mailing list is at the top of the list things that can go wrong with your direct mail. Some people try to get mailing lists for free or little money. The rule of thumb here is a few dollars saved on a mailing list could cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars on wasted postage and little or no results.
You can identify your best-qualified prospects in several ways and can waste a lot of time and money going through the process. One of our Wilson Printing USA marketing consultant can help you identify who your best-qualified prospects are for your service and get a mailing list of those people.
