Direct Mail Printing Tips that Make Cents
Mark Hale ‐ April 22, 2014
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While direct mail is more expensive than electronic messaging, direct mail marketing continues to bring in more money than any other advertising channel. Why?
The reason is that no other medium allows you to target your market so directly as direct mail does.
Direct mail comes in many different forms: postcards, sales letters, note card mailers or self-mailing brochures.
Many businesses, with the economy the way its been the last few years (including many of your competitors), have switched advertising channels to the Internet or email marketing only. Web ads and email marketing definitely have a place, but they are only a part of your answer. Because there are no spam filters on your prospects home mailboxes and there are fewer of your competitors in the mailbox, direct mail allows you to stand out and get noticed. This means that you will generate more sales.
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Direct mail allows you to put something solid in the hands of your prospect. The attitude during the last few years was “we are switching everything to digital, nothing printed.” This is fine, but the fact is when it comes to buying, people are still touchy-feely. They like to hold and touch. The solid nature of direct mail makes your message more real to the prospect, and if your ad is designed properly with a good competitive offer you will drive more traffic and sales to your business.
Contrary to popular belief, bulk mail rates have not risen very much in the last few years. It is still very affordable. In fact with the post office’s release of the Every Door Direct Mail program you can mail (up to) a jumbo 8.5 x 14 size postcard to your prospects for around 17 cents postage per card, and you don’t need to buy a mailing list. What else can you do that is for sure going to end up in the hands of your prospect for just 17 cents.
Here are a few ways to optimize your direct-mail expenses and get the most bang for your advertising buck:
- Use full color printing. With the advent of four color process printing and digital printing, the cost of full color printing has come way down. Full color printing allows you to bring your message to life.
- Beware of bleeds (printing that runs to the edges of the paper). Bleeds can sometimes require larger sheets that need to be trimmed, resulting in higher costs.
- Plan mailings in advance to save on potential rush charges.
- Make sure you have a good mailing list. A bad or outdated list is one of the three reasons why direct mail can fail. We can help you find a targeted list for your business but you have to know who the best prospects are for your service. If you are using your own list of customers and prospects, ask us to de-dup the list for you. We can also run a National Change of Address (NCOA) on your list, updating addresses. This will save you money on wasted postage cost.
- Make sure your message is targeted to the people you are mailing to. A poorly targeted message will not generate response, this is true with any type of advertising you do.
- Make sure you have a compelling offer. The offer is the most important part of your direct mail piece.
- Your ad needs to be designed properly. There are ten crucial elements to designing an effective direct mail piece. A poorly designed ad wastes more money in lost sales than you can believe.
- Choose a company to help you that is a full service printing and marketing company. Wilson Printing provides graphic design services, prints postcards and other direct mail in house, AND is a full service direct mail house. By providing all these services we eliminate the middleman and can save you money on your direct mail marketing.
Our team here at Wilson Printing USA can help you navigate the choices in front of you when it comes to getting the best form of direct mail for your business and more importantly a type of direct mail that will get you noticed by your target prospects. Because we are not a “postcard” company who has to sell postcards, we are free to direct you to the type of direct mail piece that will work best for your business.
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