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GCD Explains Direct Mail Basics

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Article Overview: Women from all over the country recently participated in a marketing conference geared specifically for women who own small businesses. Gail Clanton Diggs, of GCD Writing and Marketing, spoke with the group about the basics of direct mail.

GCD Explains Direct Mail Basics

I often compare direct mail to a first date.

You dress yourself up in your finest clothes, put your best face forward, and hope for the best. That really is a lot like direct mail.

You take your best, strongest message, craft it as clearly, cleverly, and concisely as you can, and hope it impresses your audience enough to take action. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, but don't let that discourage you!

Direct mail really does work and it is still relevant, even in this age of online marketing. The key is conducting it in a way that is smart and cost effective.

In this article, I'll focus briefly on three key elements of direct mail. Do these things right, and you'll be well on your way to creating a profitable direct mail campaign.

Mail to the right list

Mailing to the right people or organizations is critical in direct mail. The perfect message directed to the wrong audience is, quite frankly, a waste of your time and money.

When determining who to mail your message to, I encourage you to be as specific as possible. For example, don't mail your piece about hot flashes to women under the age 30. They have no reason to care -- yet. And don't mail your postcard about retirement to a zip code loaded with college students. Again, they don't care.

Test, Test, Test

While you may think you know what your market wants, none of us really knows for certain. That's why we test.

There's an ongoing debate within the direct mail industry about how many elements should be tested at once. My opinion is to test just one element at a time so that you get good, clean results.

So, for example, next month you may want to test your offer.

Let's assume that you have to charge a certain amount for your product or service, but you want to test the manner in which your "deal" is presented.

So you mail a "2-for-1" offer to half of the names on your list and a "50% off" offer to the other half of your names. Yes, this is essentially the same offer, but you're testing how the two different approaches are perceived. (You may be quite surprised by how your market may respond to one vs. the other.)

You can test almost anything -- from headlines to body copy to colors to fonts. The key is to test anything capable of yielding results you can use in your next direct mail campaign.

Carefully track your results

The value of any good direct mail campaign is in the results. That's why it is so important that you set up your campaign and test in a manner that makes it easy to read and act upon your results.

The key is to learn something in every campaign that can be applied to your next campaign. This is how you stay in the mail profitably.

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Article Tags: audience, clothes, college students, direct mail, element, elements, first date, hot flashes, mail campaign, mail industry, marketing, postcard, retirement, test test test, time and money, zip code



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