Direct mail- a marketing strategy that has been in use for quite some tome now and has even showed great results. Another marketing strategy that has also proved its potential is promotional products. As both of them are great marketing techniques many companies are choosing to combine the two for a mind-blowing outcome. Promotional products when combined with a well written direct mail can fetch you unbelievable results and can greatly improve direct mail response rates. Direct mails along with promotional products make for a marketing strategy that is absolutely unbeatable.
There are certain things that can tremendously improve the response rates to your direct mail campaign. Every company today uses these technique and no matter how well written your direct mail is it is a strategy that has become quite clichéd. When you write a direct mil ensure that you are giving your clients a reason to respond. You could offer them some attractive discount or introduce them to a new scheme altogether.
When pairing promotional products with direct mails ensure that the promotional product you choose is easily mail able and won’t cost you great bucks for mailing them. Go or simple items like a greeting card, note pads, mouse mats, calendars, letter openers, book marks, pens, and so on. This serves you with a dual advantage that of sending a promotional product and at the same time not paying extra for it.
Promotional products that you dispatch along with the direct mails ensure that they are somewhere related to the theme. For instance if your company offers home loans you could send in a notepad in the shape of a house or a house shaped key chain. This helps to create a much stronger impact.
Promotional products along with direct mails create the right impact. A simple direct mail is often perceived as a sheer marketing strategy where in the company has nothing to do with its clients. But when you choose to send a promotional product alongside it is perceived as a thoughtful gift and it actually takes clients into thinking that you are not simply using them for your profit motives. Direct mailing strategy has been used by many businesses or the results it can offer and at the same time promotional products are no less as they can take your business to new heights. Combining these two means having the best of both. Combine the two and check the results for yourself. You might be good at penning mails but procuring the right promotional product can be quite a job. So to get your promotional products log on to www.ideasbynet.com
There are many ways to test your direct mail, but one tried and true approach is to keep it simple. Choose just one variable. Test the variable. Variables include things like your offer, content, list source, and package design.
An Example
Testing the type of direct mail package answers the following questions:
What type of direct mail package provides responses at the most efficient cost? Should it be a letter package or self-mailer?
Let's assume you are a nonprofit organization attempting to increase donations. The letter package is typically more expensive, the self-mailer, usually lower in cost. Can you spend less and acquire the same or higher level of donations with a self-mailer? To find out, initiate your test with these steps:
First, a few assumptions for this example - you have a test list of 10,000 names and addresses.
Contents of your Letter Package include :
8-1/2 x 14? personalized letter with a tear-off coupon
Brochure
Reply Envelope
Outer Envelope
Contents of your Selfmailer include:
A trifold brochure with tear-off reply card
Step 1 - Calculate the costs of each package.
We're going to produce both packages at a quantity of 5,000. Each package will have the same expense categories. List the category and calculate the costs:
Design and writing
List
Printing
Lettershop/Mailing
Postage
For this example, assume a cost of $6,000 for the letter package, $4,000 for the self-mailer.
Step 2 - Develop the creative/offer.
Write your content
Work with your designer to develop the creative approach
Apply the creative to both packages, keeping the message the same on both packages. Yes, of course you'll be able to expand the message on the letter package since you'll have lots more space to add content, that's okay.
Step 3 - Include ways to track responses
The most simplistic tracking method is to use a small preprinted code on the reply device of each piece. For our example the letter package will have a code LTR-1, the selfmailer will be SLF-1.
Ensure that your list is divided into equal segments. It's not just the quantity that should be equal - the quality of the names on the list should be equal too. In other words, don't pull 5,000 known high-end donors for the letter and 5,000 average donors to the selfmailer. Mix them up to make a homogenous group and then divide them into 2 files.
Mail the 2 packages at the same time. No delays between the mailings.
Count all of the returns. Quantify the number of returns segmented by the letter package and selfmailer code. Responses received via mail are easy to count, if you accept phone donations, have your phone reps ask for the code on their mailer. If you direct donors to your website, ask for the code on the web form.
Step 4 - Analyze costs and returns
Quantify the total return for each campaign in dollars - Call this ?Income.?
Quantify the number of responses for each campaign - Call this ?Donors?
We know the quantity of pieces mailed, 5,000 each campaign - call this ?Quantity.?
We also know the cost for each mailing. We'll call them ?Letter Cost? ($6,000) and ?Selfmailer Cost? ($4,000).
More assumptions. Your responses will certainly vary from these, but it's common to receive fewer responses from a selfmailer, so I've used the following:
You've received 250 Donors from the letter package. Income $12,500.
You've received 200 Donors from the selfmailer. Income $10,000.
Income minus Cost = Net income.
Net income from the letter package is $6,500 ($12,500 - $6,000)
Net income from the selfmailer package is $6,000 ($10,000 - $4,000)
In this example, even though the cost of the letter package is 50% higher, the return pays for the higher expense. In the roll-out stage, using the numbers above, you could estimate that a mailing of 50,000 pieces, as a letter package, would return $5,000 more Net Income than the selfmailer. As a side note, the income would be even higher since the roll-out costs per thousand pieces mailed would be far lower than the test mailing.
Both Gareth Parkin & Dan Odonnell are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Dan Odonnell has sinced written about articles on various topics from Promotional Advertising. There are many other ways to test your variables and to quantify response rates. For answers about testing other variables, visit our. Dan Odonnell's top article generates over 2400 views. to your Favourites.