As per one research conducted at the New York University School of Law, around 40% of direct mails are ended up being ‘junk mail’. There is no bigger heartbreak for a business owner when all his direct marketing efforts go down the drain because the majority of sent mail is treated as junk.
Lack of preparation and the absence of a professional mailing list broker from the process are the common reasons why businesses have to experience an overwhelming volume of junk mail.
There are certainly some ways to avoid the tag of ‘junk’ for your direct mail. Let’s have a look.
1) Pick the Right Time to Send Out
No matter how clean your mailing lists are and how good is your offer, if you have picked a wrong time then it’s very certain that a lot of your direct mail will end up as junk. Let’s try to understand the wrong timing for direct mail marketing with some examples.
- Reaching out to farmers during any harvesting season
- Sending out direct mails to public accountants during fiscal year deadlines
- Introducing a discount offer right after the holidays
So, pick the time when it is convenient and financially viable for the targeted consumer base to take your direct mail seriously.
2) Take Geography into Account
Even though the online commercial landscape has rendered geographical constraints immaterial, but there are still some ventures where distance matters. For instance, if you offer car detailing services in Columbus, Ohio, then there is no point of promoting it in Cleveland. No one is going to drive around 150 miles to avail car detailing services. If you market your venture all over Ohio, then it’s only natural that the large part of your effort will be wasted.
3) Keep the Mail Frequency in Check
Direct mail marketing is carried out in cycles. You send out a batch of mail and then wait for a certain amount of time to dispatch the next. This time window allows you to gauge the initial response from the recipients.
Having an ‘aggressive’ marketing approach doesn’t work with direct mail. If you are dispatching mail every other day, then you are just preparing the ground to annoy your prospects. Communicating with prospective customers in a spammy manner even eclipses lucrative promotional offers.
4) Avoid Mass Mailing
It’s really easy to understand that not every house in a particular neighborhood will be in need of products/services you offer. So, when you mass mail, a lot of it ends up in the hands of unconcerned recipients for whom it’s nothing short of junk. Use targeted mailing lists if you want to reduce the instances of your direct mail get completely junked out.
By reaching out to the right consumer market at the right time without spamming it, you can improve the response rate of your promotional campaign. Direct mail can also be used to re-engage with your dormant consumer base, read this article to know how to pull that off.