creating a effective catalog to increase merchandise sales

5 Tips For Creating Top-Notch Direct Mail Products

Direct mailing allows businesses and organizations to reach people who might otherwise never contact them. In the direct mail world, the entire game is about eliciting a response. Charities want people to respond by donating, and sub shops want people to see the food in the mailers and place orders.

How do you create a direct mail campaign that will elicit a response? Follow these 5 tips.

Know Your Brand

A good direct mailing campaign needs to build on a brand. You want to achieve brand consistency in both visuals and messages. If a shop sells top-tier jewelry, it wants direct mail items that are glossy and look like they come from an expensive place. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a public clinic doing outreach might need to deliberately bring the quality down a notch to avoid the false impression of inaccessibility.

Brand consistency is important, too. Use one or two font sets in all your mailers so people can learn to instantly identify your stuff. Pick one or two colors that are your company's colors for branding purposes. If you include a website address in your direct mail campaign, make sure the brand is consistent on the site with what you sent through the mail.

Establish Your Purpose

What do you want the recipient to do? A new car dealership might use direct mail to bring people to its grand opening, for example. An established restaurant may use direct mail to familiarize old customers with new menu items and buy them.

Once you know the purpose of your direct mailing effort, you can shape your message and the product itself. A store trying to attract new customers might send a coupon page to give people an incentive to stop in and buy, for example.

Learn the Mail System

Many direct mail products are standardized. If you need to save money with a direct mail campaign, study the rates and learn which products will have the cheapest mailing costs. Odd shapes are usually bad in terms of pricing so try to stick with the usual suspects size-wise, such as letter-, envelope-, or postcard-size.

Put Yourself on the List

Always get a look at the final product. See how it holds up to the mailing process. If you're not seeing a great response rate, it may be because the item is getting crushed.

Iterate

Track response rates. Study what you sent out and tie it to the data. Use the data to build the next direct mail campaign, and then iterate through campaign after campaign to sustain improvement.

For more information, reach out to a company such as Wally's Printing.


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