Direct mail is when advertising materials or products are addressed to consumers’ homes or business customers’ offices. Such include postcards with just an offer, catalogs with products on display, coupons, letters from charities asking for donations, direct mail services in Loveland, CO, or free samples provided by companies.
Costs of Direct Mail, Broken Down
Depending on how much business spends on designing, copywriting, direct marketing lists, printing, and delivery, direct mail pieces can price anywhere from 30 cents to even more than $10 per individual. Many of these tasks may be produced internally by certain organizations, that just charge for printing and mailing. (And occasionally companies believe they have the resources to manage this internally, but they don’t provide the appealing designs and messaging they had hoped for. As a result, we always suggest communicating with professionalism or an agency to assess both the cost and the quality of the work. Others, however, choose to deal only with suppliers since they understand that doing so is outside of their expertise and they agree with choosing to do so.
How to Improve a Direct Mail Campaign’s ROI
Add email only! The Harvard Business School article “Why Email Marketing is King” describes how direct mail and email marketing combine to create an insanely effective campaign that is far more successful than each of the separate marketing strategies and generates a 25% response rate. It’s important to practice. Elizabeth Arden, a titan in the cosmetics and fragrance industries, famously said: “Repetition builds reputation, and reputation builds consumers.” A direct marketing campaign is an ongoing process. One should mail four to six items to observe results.
The General Sales Executive Association reports that the response rate for one mailer is 2 percent, 10 percent after the fourth, and an astounding 80 percent after the sixth! Therefore, a direct marketing campaign may be a very effective technique to sell any company to its target population provided it is planned and constructed properly, the right budget is used, and the program is carried out strategically and often. So go to work on your next innovative mailer with your marketing team, or get in touch with your go-to team for marketing solutions including print management to find out how to best plan!