You can drive business even in sensitive times with direct mail. The technique is having a straightforward but effective action plan to drive great direct mail response rates. Here's an action plan that works for any size of business and for any type of product or service offering. Before you get your direct mail action plan laid out, you need to have a distinguished provider who can back you up. A great dealer, like My1Stop.com, can even assist fine tune your direct mail action plan. So, be certain to communicate your plans with your supplier before you start your direct mail campaign. Here's a simple but effective three stage action plan to drive up direct mail response rates . . .

Develop A Keenly Focused Mailing List

Mass mailing is old school. Don't regress back there. Instead, attempt generating smaller more substantially prepared direct marketing lists. Divide your products or services into categories. Then develop individual lists for each category. Get Niche specific. If you're a heating and air conditioning company, section your direct marketing lists based on household income scales and correspond your products and services accordingly. If you're a start up church with a young minister, develop a list of under 35 year olds in your area for starters. Get a list from the local colleges, offer to co-op ads with the area music store (using their list), get imaginative - but stay alert.

List Building Tools For Your Direct Mail Action Plan:

o Build Your Own List Out Of Categories.

Buy names, barter for names, social-media for names, and network for names.

o Segment Your Products and Services. Niche Specific.

Focus. Segment product categories into particular products - correlate them to your lists.

o Lots Of Smaller Lists Get Larger Results - At Lower Costs

There are no longer many rewards to mass mailing big lists.

You'll see in a minute how digital printing turns small direct mail lists into huge opportunities - small lists and digital printing are a necessity for your direct mail action plan.

Provide An Enticing Goal And Make It Highly Relevant

OK. So you have your well focused lists. Great start. Now you need motives that are very relevant to each unique direct marketing group. Here are a few examples. Let's say you sell heating and air conditioning units and services. To your upper income household list, you would propose high end big BTU units - the attraction is discounted executive vent cleaning - which is very important to what you do and the prospects need. For middle and lower income household lists you would offer smaller units with the enticement being ultra green and ultra low operating expenses. You can see the usefulness of the direct marketing segments now - just think if you had a "green" list for this offer! Using digital direct mail printing lets you personalize every bit in every list - you can personalize the names - the offer -the images - anything that establishes more relevance for the beneficiary is the thing to do!

Incentive Structuring Tools For Your Direct Mail Action Plan:

o Develop Diverse Incentives - Or Bids -For Each List Group

This sets you up for big response rates.

o Produce Incentives That Are Highly Pertinent And Motivating.

Consider discounts on products and services relevant to the offer.

o Personalize The Offer To Each Individual Recipient

This will make the most of the list segments you made earlier.

Remember. There is no reason to do mass mailings and there is no reason to make the same offer to all of your lists. The printing won't cost much more to do two or three separate mailings - that's an advantage digital printing suppliers offer. The results will be much better for each

Test. Test. Test.

This is a minimal thing to do. You have your direct mail segmented lists, right? OK, now segment them again - into fourths. You want three test sample groups and a large remaining core group. Test different direct mail designs and offers on each of the three smaller groups to see which design - which proposal - grabs the biggest response rate. Again, the relatively low costs of digital printing make it feasible to send a direct mail test of 5,000 or maybe even fewer pieces.

Testing Tools For Your Direct Mail Action Plan:

o Separate Each List Group Into Four Parts

Three test groups - one large non-test group.

o Develop A Different Offer For E Test Group

You can modify the design too - but make certain the offers are different.

o Track The Response Rates

Whichever offer gets the most responses is the one to go with to the total group.

How big should the three test groups be? Let's say you have 50,000 names. Go with 5,000 each for the test groups! That will leave 35,000 for the best offer. So 40,000 (or 80%) of your list will have received the best offer - that should give you exceptional direct mail response rates!

My1Stop.com is the direct mail superstore. We work with our customers on direct mail marketing action plans every day. Please visit us online or call, today.