In recent years, a topic of discussion has been how to increase direct mail response rates. Although some believe that direct mail is dying, and that’s why response rates are low, this is typically not the case. In many situations, your response rate is low because of your database. Database cleaning and enrichment can drastically increase your response rates as you reach your intended audience. But, of course, this may not be the only reason your response rate is low. It’s best to start from the beginning, go through your direct mail campaign, and ensure it is optimized.
With digital marketing on the rise, it has caused room for skepticism around direct mail and whether or not it works in today’s age. But this is not a this or that issue. For many businesses, it takes a combination of both strategies to get the best results. Like any other marketing campaign, it is about the response rate. If you have a low response rate in your direct mail campaigns, it doesn’t mean that direct mail doesn’t work for you or that direct mail is dead. There are lots of factors that can contribute to a low response rate.
Tips To Increase Direct Mail Response Rate
The average response rate for direct mail is approx. 5%. Now, that may seem low, but taking into consideration the average digital marketing response rate, it is approximately 1%. But for the best results, you should combine these two efforts. 88% of Canadians visit a store or website after receiving a direct mail piece. For this reason, combining digital and direct mail is the best practice for the highest response rate possible. The next question is ensuring your direct mail campaign is optimized for the desired outcome.
Clean And Updated Database
The first and arguably the most important step should be to ensure your marketing database is clean and up to date. This ensures that you are reaching your intended audience. Outdated, incorrect, or generic mailing lists are the most common way to reduce your deliverability and response rates. The best practice is to use a database cleaning program to regularly maintain and clean your database to correct any typos, moves, or outdated information for any campaign.
Audience Segmentation
The next step in your data process is to segment your database for more accurate targeting. Segmenting your database is also more accurate after you have cleaned and maintained your existing database. But, even with clean data, you still might not have all the data fields needed to segment your database in the way you want to and need for your campaign. As all data collection methods are different for a newsletter, you may only want/need an email and maybe a name, but for a contact page, you would want/need more information. But, if you wanted to leverage your full database, some elements would be missing. This is where database enrichment comes in. With database enrichment, you can add additional data elements to complete your view of your customers and prospects and allow you to segment them more precisely and confidently.
Multichannel Approach
To further optimize your campaign, you should implement a multichannel approach. As with anyone, we can get busy and become forgetful. This includes your customers and/or prospects. This is why, along with your direct mail campaign, you should also include messages through other channels such as email, text message, phone, social media, etc. All of these other channels will remind the recipient that there is an action they need to take.
Personalization
As with any marketing campaign, personalization can make all the difference. This doesn’t mean it has to be addressed to them specifically or reference something personal about them. But, based on your audience segmentation, you can tailor your messaging and offers based on your different customer types. This will increase engagement as the message and offer are relevant to them.
Easy Engagement
Make engagement as easy as possible for your recipients. One example of making it easier for your customers or prospects to engage is using a QR code on your mailer. This gives them an immediate way to engage with you and leads to more conversions. QR codes are also trackable, showing how many people got your mailer and were interested enough to want more information. If QR codes are not the type of engagement you deem fit for your offer, then personalized URLs are a good option for offering multiple response channels. The key is to make it as easy as possible for them to respond and engage.
Compelling Content
Your messaging should be clear and concise and explain the value of your proposition with a description of what they should do next. Your CTA should also be clear and concise, using 2-5 words max and using words of action to convey a sense of urgency. Once complete, review the copy for grammar, correct phone numbers, working links, etc. You could have the best and most effective copy in your industry, but if there is a broken link or a wrong number, it doesn’t matter.
Appealing Design
Typically, the design and copy are done in tandem as you need to know the general design to craft the correct amount of copy and vice versa. The design of the direct mailer is just as important as the copy. You want your mailer to stand out among the other direct mail and do not want it to get passed with the other “junk mail.” The type of card stock and quality of printing can also affect this.
Now What?
Now is the fun part. You can have your database manager(s) start to prepare the data while marketing gets to work at defining the campaign and begin to prep copy while sales build the funnel for the campaign. As with any marketing effort, your whole team needs to know the campaign and when to expect the leads to come through. This is extremely important as you do not want your team to become overwhelmed. The team needs to know the offer so as not to be blindsided when a prospect begins to reference an offer they are unaware of.
How Cleanlist Can Help
One of the more challenging aspects of the campaign steps outlined above is the database cleaning and enrichment processes. This is not typically a step you can perform in-house as the data you currently have is in your database, and if you had the means internally to clean or enrich the data, you likely would have already done so. As Cleanlist is Canada’s largest customer data company, Cleanlist can take your database and perform cleaning services, ensuring that your data fields are as up-to-date as possible. Cleanlist can then enrich that data with additional fields needed for your marketing campaign. This way, when you receive your database, you will have as much data as necessary to run your marketing campaign effectively.
The next step would be to begin a database cleaning and enrichment subscription program. This would mean that every month, your database would be cleaned and enriched so that any future campaigns can be done without considering it. This has quickly become the best practice for all campaigns, whether customer acquisition, retention, or customer care. It is hard to reach out to someone if you have old, outdated data.
