7 Tips for Optimising Your Direct Mail Campaign
The seven ways to optimise a direct mail campaign are: define your audience, personalise your mail, create a great design, add value to your mailshot, be persuasive, create a call to action, and analyse your results. A successful campaign can bring a great return on investment and boost your business, and each of these tips compounds the others – the right message, to the right person, in the right design, with a reason to act now. Here are The Direct Mail Company’s seven tips in full.
| Tip | What to Do |
|---|---|
| 1. Define the audience | Know exactly who you are mailing and tailor everything to them |
| 2. Personalise your mail | Use names, purchase history and location to make each piece personal |
| 3. Create a great design | Stand out on the doormat with brand colours and high-quality images |
| 4. Add value to your mailshot | Include a deal, discount or offer code worth acting on |
| 5. Be persuasive | Lead with benefits, keep it short, and use simple direct language |
| 6. Create a call to action | Tell the recipient exactly what to do next, with urgency |
| 7. Analyse your campaign | Track responses against goals and improve every send |
1. Define the Audience
You need to know who you are sending your direct mail to, which means understanding the right target audience. Your messaging and design must be tailored to the audience you have chosen and how they are likely to respond to the mail you send. Segment into more specific audiences based on each stage of the buyer’s journey – for example, treating brand-new prospects differently from returning customers.
2. Personalise Your Mail
Personalised direct mail has a great impact on the response and open rate of your campaign. Create personal messages for your customers: use their names, but also give them a custom message informed by their purchase history and where they live. Personalising your mail in this way connects with the recipient and makes them feel like a valued customer rather than one of many.
3. Create a Great Design
Your mail should have a design that stands out and catches the recipient’s eye, ensuring it gets looked at rather than ignored and thrown away. Experiment with formats such as flyers, postcards and brochures, and make sure you use your company’s colours and high-quality images so your direct mail is unmistakably yours.
4. Add Value to Your Mailshot
You need to add value for your audience by offering them something – a deal, a discount on a product, or a special offer code. This gives them a reason to purchase your product or service now, and helps turn recipients into customers. Think about what you can do for your audience: what do they need, and what do they want? Test different offers with different segments to decipher which offers your audience responds to.
5. Be Persuasive
Your mailshot should persuade the recipient to act. Focus on the benefits your company provides and how you can solve their problems. Grab the reader’s attention with simple language and get straight to the point – keep it short, because a concise piece is far more likely to be read in full. Use bullet points and short paragraphs to highlight the important points that persuade your recipients.
6. Create a Call to Action
A clear call to action drives your recipients to act and helps turn them into customers. Think about what you want the customer to do after receiving your mail – calling your business, booking an appointment, or learning more about you. Add a feeling of urgency with a time-limited call to action so they feel they must act instantly, and make it clear so the recipient knows exactly what to do next.
7. Analyse Your Direct Mail Campaign
To optimise properly, you need to improve continuously, and that starts with setting trackable goals before your campaign begins. Track whether people have answered your call to action through an offer code, landing page or tailored URL, then measure the results against your goals to find out what is working well and what needs improving on the next send.
About The Direct Mail Company
The Direct Mail Company is a professional mailing house offering 5-star customer service, with mail fulfilment services trusted by small and large clients in the UK and overseas. Our services include bespoke data processing, printing solutions, mail fulfilment and bulk postage rates. Many of our clients come to us to save money on their postage: due to the high volumes of mail we send each year, we offer the lowest possible postage rates for your bulk mail, using DSA providers such as Whistl, Citipost and UK Mail. These companies complete the sortation for Royal Mail, which is how we achieve the lowest postage rates. For more information on outsourcing your direct mail campaigns to The Direct Mail Company, call us on 0333 038 3797 or email sales@thedirectmailcompany.co.uk with your enquiry.
Optimising Direct Mail: Frequently Asked Questions
How do I optimise a direct mail campaign?
Define your audience, personalise each piece, design to stand out, add a valuable offer, write persuasively, include a clear time-limited call to action, and analyse your results against trackable goals.
Why is personalisation important in direct mail?
Personalised direct mail improves response and open rates because using the recipient’s name, purchase history and location makes them feel like a valued customer rather than one of many.
What makes a good direct mail call to action?
It tells the recipient exactly what to do next – call, book or visit – and carries urgency, such as a time limit, so they act instantly rather than setting the mail aside.
How do I measure whether my direct mail worked?
Set trackable goals before the campaign, then monitor responses through offer codes, landing pages or tailored URLs and compare the results against your goals.
Who can help me run an optimised direct mail campaign?
The Direct Mail Company handles data processing, print, fulfilment and bulk postage in one place. Call 0333 038 3797 or email sales@thedirectmailcompany.co.uk
