1. Enhanced Data – First and foremost get the right list, and get it right! It is very critical that you set the criteria for the recipients of your direct mail piece. What does that mean for your business? Let’s break it down. 60% of your mails success depends on the list itself. It is imperative that you obtain a mailing list with the correct target audience for your product or services. If you send your direct mail pieces to the wrong audiences, your message would irrelevant and your money is wasted. As important as it is to have the right audience in mind, equally important is to have a list that is current. Not only are you saving money on postage by using a clean and current data, you are actually increasing the success of your direct mail campaign.

Read more at http://blog.oneims.com/2008/03/18/five-tips-for-a-successful-direct-mail-marketing-campaign/

Just like you’d never want to step into a room full of people with mismatched clothes, you don’t want to present a marketing campaign that matches all your marketing media. If you’re doing a direct mail marketing campaign, make sure your website also reflects and features your direct mail piece’s products or services.

Having a cohesive marketing campaign will make sure that all your customers, whether old or new, know about the new changes in your company. In addition, the cohesiveness of your campaign will make it even stronger and believable. You don’t want a customer receiving your direct mail piece to go to your website only to find nothing that reflects your new campaign.

So start the New Year off on the right foot and make sure all your marketing media reflects your goals and ongoing campaigns. The OneIMS team can help you create a cohesive marketing campaign including website redesign or development, direct mail campaigns and much more! For more information visit OneIMS.com

Read More at http://blog.oneims.com/2008/03/02/up-selling-yourself-in-printing-why-paying-a-little-extra-may-be-worth-it/

Read More at http://blog.oneims.com/2008/02/01/principles-of-advertising-1-%e2%80%93-know-your-audience/

1. Get the Right Prospects at the Right Time
   This is by far the most crucial portion of setting up a successful marketing campaign. Before you set out with the rest of your campaign, make sure you have clearly defined your target recipient. The better you do this, the greater your ROMI will be. So the first step is to know your target recipient, that can include age, income, interests, past purchases, marital status and much more. Today, mailing lists providers such as OneIMS, can help you target the right businesses or consumers. Having the right prospects makes a difference. So don’t waste your time and money on campaigns that don’t target the right prospects. Not only is having the right list of prospects important, having the list at the right time is also important. Data gets outdated quickly. Don’t let your data get stale. People move, get married, buy new things; things are always changing. Make sure that you obtain your mailing list right before you are ready to launch your campaign to ensure that you have the most up-to-date, accurate information. 

2. Set Your Campaign ObjectivesYou wouldn’t go out to the dealership without knowing what kind of car you wanted would you? Of course not. That what would be wasting your time and energy. Similarly, before you launch your campaign, you want to set out your objectives. Ask yourself what it is that you want to accomplish with this campaign. Lead generation? Brand awareness? An event/open house? New product launch? Whatever it is, make sure that you clearly define your objectives. This not only will allow you to gear your direct marketing campaign in the right path but will also be very useful when determining the success of your campaign.  

3. Create a Call-to-Action
   No matter what kind of campaign you are launching, make sure you include a call-to-action. Whether it’s a discount offer, a free consultation, a promotion or a free gift, make sure to always include a call-to-action. Deadlines are also another way to obtain responses from your prospects. Make sure your call-to-action is clear and not buried in text. It should be evident and the driving force for your prospects to contact you. 

    

4. Provide Multiple Ways of Contact
   Today, many people prefer to answer promotions via the Internet or e-mail. A smart campaign will provide a full range of contact options to its prospects. Your tech-savvy prospects may prefer to use an online method to respond to your offer, while your more conventional prospects may come into the store or call you. Your tech-savvy prospects may not have the time to call or make stop at your store but have enough time to click away and respond to your offer. Your more conventional prospects may be intimidated by the web. In order to make sure that you are not excluding any of your potential customers, make sure you provide various ways of responding to your call-for-action. Using more sophisticated and technological methods such as personalized URLs (PURLS), you can even capture real-time results. That means you don’t have to wait 2 or 3 months after your campaign to evaluate your success. You can see instant results. 

    

5. Run a Sample Test
   Before your campaign goes full blown, make sure you run a sample test. What do I mean by that? If you mailing list is providing you with 10,000 prospects, you should send out your campaign to 10%. Based on the feedback and reactions, it may lead you to a better campaign. Take note of the response rate, the questions that arise and most of all, who responds. If your market is clearly identified, say you are launching the same campaign in two different cities, and you get responses from only one city, then you wouldn’t want to spend as much time or resources on the same campaign in the other city. Perhaps there’s a need to change your campaign and tailor it to that non-responding city. 

    

6. Set Realistic Expectations
   While there are many sophisticated methods of making sure that your direct marketing campaign piece reaches its destination, response rates from direct marketing campaigns still remain at only 1% to 2%. By making sure that you have chosen the right prospects, you are maximizing your chances of having a higher response rate. Create feasible expectations for your campaign. Estimate the amount of responses you expect to have and compare them against your actual response rate. This will also help you measure your campaign’s success. 

7. Evaluate Your Campaign’s Success
   Once your campaign has launched, be ready to evaluate its success. A well-planned campaign will allow you to easily verify response rates, calculate sale conversions and new leads. More sophisticated campaigns, such as those using PURLs, can give you real-time results. Evaluating your campaign is just as important as creating a successful campaign. It’s a stepping-stone to better, more efficient future campaigns. By carefully analyzing the elements of your campaign that worked and those that did not work, you are creating blue-prints for successful, future campaigns. 

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