Direct mail is one of the most effective techniques to engage with your customers, but if you’re still looking to increase your response rates, we’ve got 6 important tips to help you.
1- Use an eye-catching, professional design
If your mailshot looks basic, boring or like your common advertising ‘junk mail’, people will be very unlikely to open it, let alone read it. By giving your mail an attractive, professional design and layout, it will automatically look more appealing to the recipient, the more appealing your mail looks, the more likely people are to open and engage with it.
2- Make sure your direct mail is personalised
One of the most effective ways to get people to read your direct mail is to address them directly within it, adding that personal touch. You can also choose to add personal content within your mail that will appeal to the individual customer, for instance, by giving them product recommendations based on what they have bought from you previously. A survey by Ricoh found that 98% of consumers think personalisation is important, and 56% said they would be more inclined to use a retailer if offered a good personalised experience. By personalising a customer’s direct mail, you are showing customers that you know them, which is a great way of increasing your response rates.
3- Give your Customer an Incentive
If anything will make someone take action- it’s giving them an incentive. If the aim of your direct mail is for people to read it and then buy your products, then why not include a discount voucher to put towards doing so? Recipients are more likely to visit your website, shop etc. if you make it easy for them to do so, like giving them a voucher so they know they would be saving money by shopping with you. Companies like Amazon prime and Netflix also use this technique by offering free trials to their services to make people more likely to engage with their direct mail.
4- Integrate your direct mail into a bigger marketing campaign
You can easily increase response rates by integrating your direct mail campaign within a broader marketing campaign. For example, 51% of people surveyed by Royal Mail said that they prefer receiving both direct mail and email. By targeting customers through email marketing and social media as well as through direct mail, your chances of getting through are much higher.
5- Use a call to action that will make an impact
It would help if you were direct and straight to the point in your mailshot, tell the recipient what you want them to do after they read your mail. The use of strong calls to action like ‘Call us today to receive a quote’ will give people more encouragement to respond. Using phrases like ‘Act fast, massive savings available now’ also implies some kind of urgency in your direct mail, which will make them want to take action quickly.
6- Integrate your mail with technology
Technology is very much taking over nowadays, so by adding things like QR codes to your direct mail, it makes it much easier for people to access your website and increase your response rate. In an eMarketer report published in September 2017, it was said that there would be 42.5 million UK smartphone users this year and that two-thirds of the UK’s population will own a smartphone by 2019. They also said at least 35.6 million people, or more than half of the UK population, will use a tablet at least monthly in 2017. With so many people having such easy access to tablets and smartphones, integrating your direct mail with technology like QR codes would be a very easy and simple way of getting customers to engage with your business.
