Introduction
There’s a huge variety of different types of Direct Mail items that can be used to compliment your marketing efforts. These items are only governed by your imagination as simply put – if you can get it through a letterbox you can send it as part of your Direct Mail Marketing.
It’s not really that simple though, the larger you get the more specialist you get and the result is a huge cost per item. At this level engagement is high, and with the right targeting the returns are high – but there’s always more you can do with your marketing budget, so here’s 6 forms of Direct Mail that you can easily use in order to achieve your marketing goals.
Postcards
Probably the most cost effective Direct Mail Marketing item that you can send, certainly the most widely used and there’s great reasons for that. With a postcard your offer, imagery, look and feel are all there right in your customers face the moment they pick up their mail, no other item has that impact.
That’s why marketing specialists use this type of item for special offers and promotions.
The downside of a postcard is that you are limited with the amount of information that you can give to your customer, that makes it harder to use for times when you are trying to give your customers more information about you, maybe when you are in the Awareness stage of your sales funnel.
Self Mailers
A slight expansion on the humble postcard, a self mailer could be as simple as an A4 sheet folded in half and sent in the post, it could be more. This offers more space for your content and you can reap all of the benefits of being able to offer eye catching designs and imagery that stand out to your clients, whilst furnishing them with a vast amount of content.
Personally, I think the self mailer is one of the best forms of Direct Marketing you can use, however there are cost implications. In order to achieve the largest postage discounts, in line with those achieved on postcards, you will need to glue the mailer shut or apply a number of tabs. This is an expensive finishing stage and can therefore be cost prohibitive.
Because of their diversity, self mailers are great to use at all stages of the sales process, no matter what your aim is they can be adapted to suite.
Letters
The humble letter actually tends to sit between the postcard and self mailer options in terms of cost, but it doesn’t have the same level of initial impact you can achieve with both Postcards and Self Mailers. However, what you lose in initial impact you can gain from the content that you are able to put into a letter.
A well written, engaging letter works well for generating awareness. This is perfect for the prospecting stage of your funnel, especially if you are selling B2B or high value propositions. A letter builds trust, much more trust than an email, as such it starts off a relationship with loyalty and a high level of brand understanding and recognition.
Dimensional Mailers
These are a specialist type of mailer. 3 dimensional creating great intrigue, and engagement within the recipient. These are expensive items to produce and mail, but the costs are often justifiable when you take into account the response rates that are often achieved.
If you are looking for high worth prestigious clients, these mailers are perfect. Mail them in small volumes but reap the rewards, because they are so different.
Dimensional Mailers can be used at any stage of the sales funnel, however they often work best as part of the Conversion or Retention stages, as you can be perceived as putting in a lot of effort to keeping you customer.
Making a customer feel special or like a VIP always helps loyalty and encourages repeat purchases, Dimensional Mailers are a perfect fit for these tasks.
Catalogues
Even in the online world an offline catalogue has a lot of benefits. First and foremost amongst those is the ability to create lasting memories, it has been proven that offline material uses a different part of the brain than online. The parts of the brain activated by touch improve the recipients ability to recall messages and remember products.
It’s also been proven that mailers stay active in the household for more than 28 days, giving a reach within the whole household, not just those who browse your website. Often having a physical item in plain sight is enough to drive an online sale.
All in one Packages
Simply put this is everything or a number of the components that we’ve already spoken about, all gathered together and put into a single package and mailed. These are normally quite sizable items, so they cost a lot to produce and mail.
The aim however is to fast forward the sales funnel and make it a single hit, you’re giving your prospect everything that they need to make a decision to purchase in a single hit. These packages are powerful marketing beasts, but only in certain instances.
Software companies and the like selling B2B solutions tend to do well with these types of mailings, but anybody selling B2C is going to struggle with cost vs return.
Conclusions
As with everything marketing its all about getting ‘the most bang for your buck’ as they say, different scenarios require different approaches. I hope that this post has helped give you an insight into the different options available. There are a multitude more options available if you need an insight into something we’ve not covered just get in touch and one of our specialists will be able to assist.
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