Articles explaining the fundamentals of direct mail and what it is at its core.
A penetration report gives you the ability to target direct mailing efforts further than zip code mailing. Targeting areas where your products and services are more likely used, ensuring your marketing budget is used effectively. Penetration reports allow us to target the neighbors of your customers, those that are more likely to be interested after hearing about you.
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With SocialMatch your target market will see your ad on their Facebook & Instagram feeds BEFORE the mail piece even reaches mailboxes and without them having to visit your website. The 14-day program begins on the mail date.
Using a cutting-edge barcode technology system, we track the mailing delivery process of your order. Know exactly when your mail pieces are due to arrive, so you can plan for the influx of new customers. We provide you with tracking on your mail delivery all the way down to the per piece level.
With Informed Delivery® integration, a preview of your mailer will be sent by the USPS every morning to subscribers alerting them of when it will arrive in their mailbox. Additionally, right under the grayscale email preview of your mailer, the email will be enhanced with a full-color display advertisement with a link to your website or landing page.
With call and text tracking you can give people the option to respond the way they prefer. All responses are tracked and recorded with detailed data reporting. People can text and receive an auto response directing them to take the desired action from downloading an app to purchasing online.
Your direct mail campaign is sent out and tracked with our mailing tracking system. If a customer or prospect leaves your website without taking action, they will be retargeted with your display ad on the Google Display Ads Network directing them back to your website.
Text and image ads matching your campaign’s design and special offers follow your website visitors around the internet after they leave your site.
In one study, retargeted ads led to a 726% lift in site visitation after four weeks of retargeted ad exposure!
Social Media Follow-Up is integrated into Spectrum Mail Plus to offer you the opportunity to increase conversions by pairing your direct mail campaign with Facebook and Instagram ads.
When the user logs into Facebook or lnstagram, they will be shown an ad from your website right in their Newsfeed, where they’re more likely to interact and view the ad.
You never knew who came to your website from your mailing…UNTIL NOW!
Spectrum Mail Plus uses an advanced measurement solution able to track and measure the effectiveness of all media including direct mail.
Download your hottest leads daily and utilize their physical mailing address to deploy direct mail retargeting programs!
Now you can identify them by name and mailing address and add them to your next campaign or remarketing campaign as highly qualified prospects.
Easily monitor each element of your Spectrum Mail Plus campaign online LIVE through our convenient client-side reporting dashboard. Download your hottest leads, sorted by geography, to set up and deploy direct mail retargeting programs that further increase conversions!
Fed up with the changing algorithm of search engines like Google making it more difficult to advertise online? Not reaching your target audience on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram? Finding it hard to keep up with the ever changing digital marketing landscape? Wish there was an effective way to reach your target audience and convert prospects into customers like crazy?
Well, there is. And, it’s actually been around for a long time – direct mail marketing. Need some inspiration for your next direct mail advertising campaign? Check out the different benefits of these great direct mail examples for creating winning mail campaigns.
Not convinced you need to use strong offers or coupons? Look at these 6 Reasons your direct marketing campaign should include coupons. Read article >
Instead of just sending out a traditional solo direct mailing, Spectrum Mail Plus seamlessly combines your direct mailer with seven digital technologies to maximize your campaign’s impact. Increase your ROI by reaching your target audience on multiple channels simultaneously.
We hope you found these direct mail examples to be inspiring to your next campaign. Adding any of these features to your direct mail piece will help ensure its success.
Need help with developing a direct mail campaign?
Contact us to develop a winning direct mail program today! Contact Us >
Direct mail in essence is easy to understand, however, executing a campaign isn’t. Spectrum Marketing Companies has been delivering direct mail campaigns that get RESULTS for decades. Working with us makes everything easier when it comes to your marketing.
A savvy business person knows that it is wise to diversify their marketing efforts, rather than to focus exclusively on one channel. In this day and age, it’s easy to consider more traditional methods of marketing your business to be old news, but what you might not have considered is that nearly two-thirds of people have made a purchase as a result of a direct mail piece!*
Marketers have seen a wide range of traditional advertising become less and less effective in recent years. Some of the reasons for the poor ad performance are obvious, while others require a little more exploration.
Newspapers – Circulation and readership are down so there’s just not enough people seeing your advertisement.
Billboards – The days of relying on consumers to read your billboards as they drive by are gone. Typically, passengers were counted as likely consumers of the message. Most drivers and passengers are talking or focused on their phones or tablets with limited focus on anything outside of their direct line of site, including billboards.
TV / Radio – Digital recording and on-demand TV has enabled consumers to skip advertising. To make matters worse, entire market segments are consuming shows and content through services like Netflix, Hulu, Satellite Radio, and Spotify, that eliminate the potential for effective local advertising altogether.
Email – What started out as a potentially dominant marketing tool has been diluted due to a heavy volume of spam and junk emails. Email has been further diminished by the transition to mobile devices with as many as 75% of the market reading most of their email on smartphones or tablets. The high-impact nature of reading on a desktop monitor is now gone and the subject line needs to be compelling or it will likely be skipped over in the millisecond evaluation made by mobile users.
Social Media – While social media will continue to evolve, it is seen by many as potentially hitting a break point where consumers are feeling overwhelmed by the social pressure to participate in sometimes dozens of platforms. From leaders like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to newcomers like Snapchat and Yik Yak, consumers are spending so much time keeping up with the latest trends and generating content that marketers need to question where the real commerce is taking place.
Digital / Online– Search engine marketing and optimization are critical components to any marketing strategy and in most cases provide a reasonably strong ROI. However, this marketing component is heavily reliant on the consumer making a buying decision and actively searching for solutions to make a price comparison. The “in market” consumers are only a small part of the potential market, typically 3% at any given time. As marketers, we need to rely on strategies that pull more prospects into the market BEFORE they choose to enter on their own. Promotional efforts will often limit the extent of competition evaluated at the same time and will greatly increase the number of prospects. It’s great if online efforts generate 50 leads per month at a low cost per lead, however, if a business needs 300-400 prospects to meet its objectives, expanding beyond online efforts aimed primarily at those currently in the market is important.
Using coupons makes it easy to target your campaigns to specific groups of customers. Want to promote a baby product to new mothers? Design a coupon with pastel colors and pictures of items associated with child care – rattlers, pacifiers, or baby bottles, for example. Selling professional services? Capture interest by designing a coupon with your target audience in mind. Someone in need of a bookkeeper would probably respond better to a conservative design than one with a lot of different colors and font styles.
In our experience, we’ve found that oversized direct mail pieces, such as the monster mailer, are 15% more likely to be noticed by a prospect who hasn’t done business with you yet. At 8.5″ x 14″, this piece still fits into both urban and rural mailboxes and turns your message from a 3 second reader into a 30 second reader. These mailers see a higher response rate because of their increased real estate for a bigger and bolder design for your offers.
It is common to question the effectiveness of direct mail pieces in today’s digital world. Surprisingly to some, the answer to these questions is a resounding, “yes!” and for many reasons. Learn more about the top reasons why direct mail advertising is still a great marketing solution.
Any direct marketing endeavor that you invest in needs to have a positive and quantifiable return on your investments. The “will it work?” question is most important. In survey after survey, study after study, from those commissioned by the US Postal Service to those commissioned by the Direct Marketing Association, the efficiency and cost effectiveness of direct mail is validated and affirmed with high response rates. In fact, the acquisition cost of a new customer via direct mail is actually lower than that from email, and other forms of electronic media.
Return-on-investment: Direct mail, when accompanied with a viable and trackable offer, allows you to know how much revenue you generated from it and how many new customers you earned. You can then compare that to the lifetime value of a customer, or the annual value of a customer, and come up with a very sophisticated analysis. Unlike display ads and most digital ads, direct mail success or failure is easy to track. The math is easy to do. In many cases, customer acquisition mail yields a 10X or greater ROI, and when sent to your customer base can yield 20X or better. This means that an investment of $4000 should yield you $40,000 or more in business that you otherwise would not have earned.
The US postal service reaches every home in America six days a week. One offshoot of the electronic age is that the companies who provide mailing lists know so much about every home in America, that direct mail (combined with IP Targeting) is the most targeted 1:1 marketing channel available today. A message can be sent to only those people whom you want to receive your message. Whether it is an entire street or neighborhood, or only households with children under twelve or homes with certain incomes, you can obtain a mailing list so that you can send mail with the right message to that audience.
Mail is intrusive. Every day, someone from every home in America has an opportunity to get the mail and interact with it. Unsolicited mail pieces are expected, and even sought by the majority of mail recipients. For reaching and sending a message to your own customers, direct mail is expected and frequently received. While email fatigue is a real trend and people delete advertising messages at the push of a button, tangible direct mail pieces are read and often evoke an immediate desire to respond or save the piece for future use.
Young people like to get mail as much as anyone. Check out this article to learn more.
How will you know if mail will work for you? Ask us to help you develop a plan, and we can help make your mail exceed your expectations! Our direct marketing specialists are experienced in your industry and market. Leverage a proven campaign strategy to successfully grow your business.
In order to get customers to come through your doors, you invest tens of thousands of dollars in signage, building appearance, and marketing over the life of your business. In they come, eager to shop, browse, or order their favorite item from your menu.
Some come in just to browse and don’t make a purchase, others do buy something or enjoy a meal at your restaurant. But do they all leave with enough information to come back for another visit if they didn’t make a purchase?
Knowing that it costs so much to actually get a customer to enter your facility, it is surprising how little so many businesses do to keep people coming back. And even if you think you are capitalizing on every customer, check out these ideas to make sure that you are doing all that you can. It’s often the simple things which will yield more business for you.
First and most obvious: will the person get the feel for what you do, what you offer, and the way you offer it? Signage tells the story because many people will not ask for assistance. And if you sell a variety of items, will signage direct them to the proper area of the location? Will a table tent show diners a list of special drinks, desserts or upcoming events?
Special pricing and special offers should always have signage that informs customers of what is available.
You’re smart, or you wouldn’t have been able to get your business off the ground. Now look around and act like a customer. What can I do better or differently?
What should you do better or differently to convey the information you want? Will a customer miss your special sale items because they are not properly highlighted? Signage does not need to be obtrusive to be effective, but it does need to be visible and contain information that creates interest and urgency.
Next and equally important: will the person leave with something to bring them back? This could be a coupon offer for their next visit. It could be a brochure with sales information and/or pricing for your products or services. It could be a take-out menu or a catering menu. It should be something, so consider your business and what you could do to capitalize on every customer and bring people back to buy again, or to give them a reason to buy if they didn’t buy today.
Finally, do you have a referral program? It can be simple and easy to set up, but you should offer your customers something if they bring you a new customer. In its most basic form, the referral card can be a business card sized piece that offers a discount – no matter who uses it. However, there are many viable options for referral programs that are easy to implement.
Bringing a customer through the door is expensive. Maximizing the marketing value of their visit is not.
In marketing, results testing shows that subtle differences in a headline or presentation of information can increase results. Marketing professionals understand the value of communication, both written and verbal, and your objective as a business person is to be confident that your marketing message is maximized and as powerful as possible.
In marketing, results testing shows that subtle differences in a headline or presentation of information can increase results. Marketing professionals understand the value of communication, both written and verbal, and your objective as a business person is to be confident that your marketing message is maximized and as powerful as possible.
With direct mail pieces or ads in Spectrum Monthly, you have literally seconds to capture a potential customer’s attention and bring them more deeply into your message.
Headline words: You, You’re, and Free are almost mandatory. As in examples like: “You’re gonna love this!” or “FREE this weekend only!” Two other biggies are SAVE and SALE, but those are often overused and have less impact unless there is an obvious coupon or discount shown near the headline.
Other compelling words include: RESULTS, PROVEN, and SAFE. Or you may need to convey efficiency with words like FAST and/or EASY. There is another old standby which still captures the attention visually: NEW! Add urgency with the words NOW and ONLY and LIMITED. Show you mean to back up your claims with a word like GUARANTEE. When you consider this in total, there are other words that may stand out to you to include, such as benefit, healthy, tested, long-term, etc.
Now take a look at your advertising messaging. Does it include these words in the headline and the sub-headings of your message? For many companies, the headline of their message is a logo, which is always wrong and ineffective. No one wants to buy “Joe’s Tree Service.” They want to buy: “Beautify your yard this month and save.” Then they see an offer, and then they will find the logo to see who to call.
When you invest money in an advertising campaign, it should include the most powerful message possible from the reader’s first impression!