Does it Make Sense to Use Direct Mail Today

Mark Hale ‐ February 3, 2016

Is it worth it to send out direct mail today? What returns can I expect from using direct mail? The answer to those questions depends on your business and whom you are trying to reach.

The returns for direct mail can be very good provided you don’t get confused between return and response. Response is getting 100 phone calls, but no one buys anything. Return is you get fewer calls, but get 10 new sales. Getting sales is more important than random activity, wouldn’t you agree?

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The fact is that standard postage averages around .26 – .27 cents per piece. Ask yourself how else can you put your message directly into the hands of your best prospects for just .26 cents? The answer to that is not many.

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Then why did you fail to get a return the last time you did direct mail? More than likely there are only a few reasons why:

Your direct mail list was old or incorrectly targeted
Your ad was poorly or incorrectly designed. Your ad either had:

Wrong message to the wrong audience.
You promoted to many things on one card – see shot gun marketing
Weak offer on your ad caused your audience to yawn.
The overall design was confusing and failed to get attention.

Insufficient or non-existent tracking. You did not have a good system for tracking inquiries so you don’t know for sure what you got.
Unreal expectations. You did not know what a customer was worth to your business. Not knowing this leads to confusion between response and return. The idea is to get a return on your investment not a bunch of activity with no sales.

Direct mail for most businesses provides good returns at a low cost. For the best results team up with a company that knows what they are doing, make sure your mailing list is targeted and fresh, that you have a good offer and that you mail multiple mailings to the list.