Maximising ROI in your direct mail campaigns

PostComm has approved Royal Mail’s plans to increase the price of business mail by up to 19 per cent from May 2011. This will, without doubt, hit the direct mail sector hard and companies could be forced to move to digital marketing tactics.

However, direct mail is still a great marketing tool for cost effectively targeting current and potential customers. It's personal, responsive, measurable and cost effective.

There are many benefits to using a direct mail campaign – these are just some of them:

Personal: Direct mail allows you to communicate directly with an individual on a one to one basis and make sure your message reaches them.

Engaging: You can be really creative with direct mail to engage your customers.

Tangible: Direct mail gives you a direct, physical presence of your brand and product in your customers’ hands – how many other marketing channels enable you to do that!

Targeted: The more information you have about your current customers, the better you can target potential ones. Direct mail enables you to precisely target customers using the information you have. And the more targeted your mailing list, the more cost effective your mailing will be.

Flexible: Direct mail can be created in many different formats including leaflets, brochures and samples to illustrate products and services to their best advantage.

Responsive: Research by Royal Mail shows that people really respond to direct mail - spending up to 10 minutes reading mail shots. They digest the information in their own time and at their own pace, and then decide to act, or not.

Measurable: Because you track responses to direct mail campaigns so easily, it is a very measurable form of marketing. Direct mail results enable you to continually learn and refine your mail shot.

Cost effective: By sending a targeted direct mail campaign which is measurable, you are able to work out the cost of every response. Accurately profiling your customers will help maximise your return on investment and ensure your direct mail campaign is cost effective.

Businesses who are involved in sending out direct mail communications must ensure they comply with the Data Protection Act, which regulates the use of personal data such as a names and addresses in a marketing database. Individuals who don’t want to receive unsolicited mail can register with the Mailing Preference Service (MPS), which operates a suppression file.

And as with telemarketing campaigns, the key to a successful direct mail campaigns lies in accurate data, which has been segmented to target the customers that are most likely to respond. By accurately targeting, you will get the best return on your marketing investment.

Red Alchemy supports clients with campaign development, creative execution, data acquisition, data cleaning, database management, fulfilment and postal management.

We provide a free marketing audit which includes ways to improve your response and ways to save money (e.g. to maximise postage discounts).

Email john.ashworth@red-alchemy.co.uk for further details or call us on 0113 249 9220