5 Tips for Direct Mail Planning in 2021

As we start the New Year and put this crazy year of 2020 behind us, we need to buckle down on direct mail planning. The strategies we started in 2020 and were then forced to drastically change because of COVID-19, must be updated to be more effective in 2021. The power of direct mail has grown over the last year as digital fatigue has grown. People look forward to direct mail that is interesting to them. Did you know that direct mail campaigns recently have the highest response rates ever recorded by the Data and Marketing Association at 9%?

Let’s get your 2021 response rates even higher! Here are five tips:

1. Omnichannel – Combine all your marketing channels together for a complete omnichannel experience to drive higher results. Direct mail is a key component in any marketing campaign, but is even more effective when combined with other channels.
2. Retargeting – Use direct mail to reach out to people who have gone to your website or landing pages but did not make a purchase with a special offer. You will be surprised at what a high response rate you can get from this.
3. Creativity – Grab attention with hyper creative envelopes or mailers. Use texture, colors, images and folds to your advantage. No other marketing channel can stimulate touch so have some fun with it. There are all kinds of textured paper or coating you can add to enhance your mail pieces.
4. Targeting – You must be very targeted in sending the right messages to the right people. You will need to segment your data to effectively target people by interests. In order to do this, you need to be capturing data about your customers.
5. Personalization – Use everything you know about your customers to create highly personalized mail. You can use more than just purchase history for your messaging. You definitely need to use more than just a first name to call it personalized. Create variable images, copy and colors to drive more interest.

If your data file is lean on information beyond name and address, you can run a profile of your data to append additional information such as demographics, geographics, psychographics, and behavioristic data. This can help you better understand who your customers are in order to target better prospects. This can help you gain new customers and send better offers to current customers.

Also, make sure you are cleaning your data by updating addresses when people move, removing deceased people and verifying postal addresses are deliverable. There is no need to waste money on mail pieces that will not reach the intended person.

Since 73% of American consumers say that they prefer direct mail because they can read it whenever and wherever they want, make sure you are sending them something that is of interest to them. We live in an interconnected world; your customers expect you to communicate with them through the various channels they use. The companies that do this effectively see the best results.

When you use campaigns that include both digital and direct mail, you on average receive 39% more attention than a digital-only campaign. Research shows messages delivered via direct mail can be powerfully motivating with 92% of people driven to digital activity and 87% influenced to make an online purchase. Are you planning how to be more effective at this for 2021?