Are All of Your Bases Covered?

Here’s a direct mail game plan to help ensure a winning season.

Spring is the time we get back in the swing with baseball.  It’s the season for direct mail, too.  Are you covering all of your bases in your direct mail program?  Even seasoned direct marketers can slip on best practices in the midst of managing a hectic marketing schedule. 

Taking some time to proactively review your game plan can save you headaches in the middle of a job or campaign and will ensure better results.

Map out your marketing plan for the year

You need to focus on the big picture first.  Too many managers skip this step and just start working on the next mailing plan. But you must create a road map to know where you are headed.   

Take a spreadsheet and map out all of your planned marketing activities by month.  Then estimate the corresponding revenues, costs and profits.  From this, you can work backwards to create production schedules based on your promotion dates that will help get your campaigns out on time.

Don’t get hung up on not having all the answers.  Even a guesstimate is better than nothing.  It will help you see where you are missing information.  A good plan is a dynamic document that evolves and changes over time as you acquire more knowledge and respond to what works and what doesn’t.

Timing is everything

Timing your marketing activities around your customers and prospects – and not your own schedule – is a key factor in improving response rates. You need realistic production schedules that everyone on your team buys into to make your mail dates.  A missed mail date can mean the difference between the success and failure of a campaign.

Optimize your media mix

Today’s multi-channel marketing  means more media opportunities than ever—direct mail, e-mail, websites, search engine optimization, advertising, TV, radio, direct sales, retail, publicity, trade shows, social networks and the blogosphere.  Although everyone is talking about new media, direct mail is still the most reliable foundation of most successful direct marketing campaigns.  To find out what’s right for your organization, test new media ideas, track your results and calculate your return on investment (ROI).  Then develop a media mix that incorporates new ways to communicate with your customers and prospects, but optimizes your results.

Know your customer

One of the best ways to find new customers is by knowing your current customers.  Your current customer portrait can tell you what selections will increase the response from your prospect mailings.  Whether your customers are individual consumers or companies, a customer portrait analysis that matches your file against a compiled universe will provide you with a battery of information—demographic, geographic, firmagraphic, lifestyle, purchasing behavior, ZIP + 4® level data, occupation, education and more—that can be translated to specific new list selections that help lift your response. 

Increasing your leverage

Do you know what element of your direct mail campaign can give you the most leverage?  It’s your mailing list.  If you’re like many of us, you begin a campaign by working on the mailing piece—reviewing and revising designs, rewriting and editing copy.  This can go on endlessly.  All of a sudden, it’s time to send the piece to the printer and you haven’t ordered the lists.   But the lists are the MOST important element in the campaign.  How can you create an effective mailing piece if you don’t know who you are targeting?  After your lists, you should concentrate on the offer, timing and creative design and copy – in that order.  

Don’t blow the budget on expensive creative

There are many stories in direct mail about how the plain, inexpensive mailer continues to beat out the fancy new creative, time and again.  Creative doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective.  Spending the bulk of your money on an effective list may help you more.

Do inexpensive lists save you money?

No.  This is where you want to put your money.  In general, you pay for quality, and this is no time to be frugal.  Selections can add to your list costs, too, but if you’ve done your homework and know which selections have the highest affinity for your offer, then this money is well spent.  One of  the best ways to know if a list is working is to track your results and analyze the results.  Test new lists and selections frequently and set up controls so you can benchmark against previous results.

Your customers are your best list of all

It might sound like a silly question, but are you mailing your customers and leads?  Sometimes we get so involved working on our prospect list plan we forget about our own customers and the leads we need to cultivate in our contact database.  In general, you will generate higher revenue and profit by mailing to your customers more often than prospects. Just be careful not to overdo it.

Don’t forget high quality data hygiene

Postal rates are too high these days to send pieces that will end up undelivered or in the trash.  Make sure you keep your customer file up to date and work with a knowledgeable marketing services provider to clean your lists and run a merge/purge to eliminate duplicate records.  Treat your direct mail like you’re sending out an invitation.  You want everything spelled and presented accurately, and only one piece per person!

Make an offer that can’t be refused

After your list, your offer is the next most important element of your campaign.  As you test different lists and creative pieces, be sure to test different offers.  “Free” is always compelling, but will probably provide you with a lower quality lead or customer.  It is especially important to track both your upfront and your backend results for different offers.  The ROI results may surprise you.

Don’t call me, I’ll call you

Would you actually say that in a mailing?  Probably not.  But without a clear call to action and contact information, you might as well have said it because nothing is going to happen.  Make sure you tell the mailing recipient exactly what you want them to do and how they can respond.  Include a toll-free number, an easy-to-remember e-mail address, and your website address.  Repeat this information throughout your mailer.  Include an order form, if appropriate.  Be sure any form captures all the information you need a prospect to provide—name, title, organization, address, e-mail address, phone, fax—and be sure to leave enough room for the information to be entered completely and legibly.

Tracking is key

The beauty of direct mail is the ability to get very reliable, trackable results that can help you improve your results each time you mail.  There are some common ways that companies track results.  If you are sending an order form, you can print a key code on the order form or have the letter shop add a key code when the mailing is addressed.  Some companies add a prefix to their item number that is unique for each mailing.  For e-mail, you can create unique e-mail addresses.  Prospects can be directed to an online landing page for web orders that captures the unique response information prospects provide about themselves.  If you’re not currently tracking your results, consult with a marketing services company that can help you set up a system.

Keep your eye on the competition

Last, but not least, keep tabs on your competition.  You need a unique value proposition to compete with other players in the market.  Create a document that compiles important points of comparison that you can continue to build on.  Request copies of your competitors’ collateral material or pick it up at trade shows.  Secret shop your competitors to evaluate the quality of their products and customer service.

Work as a team

When you develop your marketing plan you need to work with all departments in the organization to be successful.  You need to understand the overall mission and goals of the executive team and the overall business plan.  You need to work closely with the sales team to provide the support to help sales managers meet their quotas.  You need to coordinate with finance and accounting to provide reliable cost estimates and revenue forecasts.  You need to work with production and fulfillment to ensure inventory is available and customer service can handle the volume of leads/orders.  It’s a good idea to create an internal marketing update/newsletter that you can e-mail to everyone to keep them informed of the latest activities.  It never hurts to do a little internal direct marketing, too.

A successful marketing plan isn’t created overnight.  It can take years of testing and fine-tuning to create a plan that gets you the best results and supports your goals for growth. To accelerate your learning curve and help reduce your risk, work with an experienced marketing service provider like Acxiom that can assist you in implementing a plan that is founded on best practices.

The Acxiom team helps you grow your business

At Acxiom, we help companies increase their market share and create enduring customer loyalty.  Whether your order is $20 or $25,000, we will help you create the best marketing plan to generate new leads and grow your business.

Our knowledge of the direct marketing industry and the unparalleled quality of Acxiom data is the combination that can lead to your success.  Our dedicated account team will work with you to make the process easier.  We know you’re busy enough doing your job.  Rely on us to do ours, and see the results.

Call us for a free consultation 800-732-9250
8:00 – 6:00 ET Monday through Friday

E-mail us any time with your questions:
IBLExpress@acxiom.com

To order Acxiom mailing lists online, go to:
www.mymailingleads.com

Note: The ZIP + 4® trademark is owned by the United States Postal Service®.

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