The whole point of investing any money at all into direct mail marketing is so you’ll get some kind of return, whether it be selling more products, getting more people to sign up for services or just attracting new customers. There are many ways to judge the effectiveness of a direct mail campaign, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how many people actually open your mailers if not one is actually responding to your offer. The response rate is the rate at which your customers not only open and read your direct mail, but the rate at which they actually act on your offer.
When all is said and done, the response rate is the biggest indicator of how successful your campaign is — and the most important — and, luckily, there are lots of things you can do to improve your campaign’s response rate.
#1. Keep your mailing list lean and mean.
The quality of the mailing list you use will have a huge impact on how successful your campaign is. Just as you periodically go through your email marketing list, removing subscribers who haven’t opened any of your emails in a certain number of weeks or months, or sending new offers to your subscribers to reinvigorate their interest in your campaign, you should also do so for the mailing list for your direct mail marketing campaign. Although the cost of your individual mailers may seem negligible, and it may not appear to be a big deal to send them to people who won’t necessarily open them, the costs can really add up over time. Why waste your resources on sending a mailer to someone who won’t open it to begin with? When you keep your mailing list lean and mean, you’ll be able to make the most out of every mailer.
#2. Test your mailers.
When people think of A/B testing, they often think of websites or maybe even email marketing, but what doesn’t often come to mind is direct mail. Direct mail doesn’t typically provide immediate results, and you have to be more patient and creative to track the results. But, regardless, it’s still essential to test your mailers to ensure that you’re investing in the right options for your company — the kind of options that will get you results. If you’re planning on doing a big campaign down the line, start out with a small, targeted one. Pick a few different mailers and send them to a small group of readers. The mailers that perform the best are the ones you should choose for your bigger campaign.
#3. Give them an offer they can’t refuse.
From the design of your direct mail envelopes to the content inside, there are so many different pieces that determine the response rate of a direct mail marketing campaign. However, maybe the most important aspect of your campaign in terms of response rate is the quality of the offer itself. You have to give your readers a compelling reason to act on your offer, and for that, the offer needs to be a good one. To come up with an offer that will truly compel your readers to act, you first have to get to know them, and for that, you’re going to need data!
Would you like to learn more tips for increasing your response rate? If so, make sure that you stay tuned for our next blog. In the meantime, do your part to make sure that each and every mailer you send out gets opened by choosing the custom business envelopes from Worcester Envelope Company. We use Flex8 printing to provide you with professional, high-quality results. Contact us today for your free product quote.