We have spoken a lot about the return of Direct Mail in the print business. There are more than enough opportunities and data to support that email marketing no longer is as effective as it was 10 years ago. Spam filters, spam rules, and list building is frankly harder to get good leads than keeping your mailing list up to date.
Now that you are considering offering direct mail services to your clients, there are some things you need to consider, as to keep costs down and limit errors. Most important, you need to make sure you are taking advantage of all the discounts offered by the United States Postal Service. They have different programs available to give your customers low-cost options for delivering consumer mail to different zip codes or commercial mail to business addresses.
You also have to ensure the data is good. The USPS does penalize mailers for bad addresses, bad documentation or bad bar codes on the direct mail pieces. So, a little homework needs to be done to ensure you are not adding unnecessary overhead to a potential profit center in direct mail.
Just a refresher on Direct Mail benefits:
- Direct mail response rates outperform digital channels by a long shot. Direct mail achieves a 3.7% response rate with a house list and a 1.0% response rate with a prospect list. All digital channels combined only achieve a 0.62% response rate (Mobile 0.2%; Email 0.1% for a Prospect list and 0.1% for House/Total list; Social Media 0.1%; Paid Search 0.1%; Display Advertising 0.02%). The telephone had the highest response rate at 9-10%.
Help your clients, reintroduce them to the benefits of direct mail. Show them the creative opportunities to reach customers outside of a cheap flyer. It’s back.
