Direct mail campaigns can help advertise your local business, but how do you know whether you need to print and mail flyers or mail advertising postcards? Your local print shop can help determine which type of home mailers best serve your business. This invaluable resource near you can also calculate the cost to print and mail postcards or direct mail letters. Having this expertise a phone call or email away helps your company research and make important business decisions.
Most print shop businesses welcome in-person visits and meetings. When a consumer visits them, it provides an opportunity to view prior projects, touch and feel paper options, and see the production facility in action. It also helps to build a better working relationship between the two businesses.
Many print shops produce print and digital products. As digital advertising grew, savvy printers expanded their business models to include newer advertising methods. This fact means you could use the same company to develop all your advertising products. However, your business needs different advertising text for its direct mail products than its digital ads. When you need to use new advertising methods, consider using a print shop to get your message to your target market. This can lead to new leads and customers.
Although the rise of the Internet has led to digital printing and an increase in online marketing, direct mail and their respective direct mail marketing companies are far from dead. In reality, the rise of the Internet may very well have given new life to direct mail marketing campaigns. As we have also seen, email marketing is still alive and kicking. Many companies are still growing their digital email practice to keep page with their need for more sales leads and customers from digital channels.
Your marketing audience consumes numerous advertisements online every day, but because the Internet is used specifically for information and entertainment purposes most advertisements are forcibly ignored.
Ads are skipped.
Sidebars go unnoticed.
Email is easily deleted without so much as opening the file.
However, direct mail campaigns are successful because a consumer can’t throw away your advertisement without first looking at it to determine whether or not it’s important. And it’s in that brief second that you as a marketing company have to catch their attention, hold it, and convince them that it is important.
Effective Direct Mail Examples
What direct mail examples and campaigns have over digital marketing campaigns is that you’re interacting directly with your audience. Your advertisement is something that is tangible.
If you have fun with that tangibility odds are your consumer will take notice and have fun with it too. Use a unique texture of cardstock or paper. The sensation will set it apart from other pieces of mail in the potential consumer’s hand and will gain their attention.
Use layering techniques in the paper or cardstock to create a truly original design that’s interactive for your audience. By engaging directly with your audience, you’ll be gaining their trust and interest in your company.
Effective direct mail examples typically use bold color palettes to gain the attention of their audience as well. Unlike websites, which benefit from more subtle color schemes in order not to harm their consumers’ eyes, printed colors (unless they’re especially vibrant) are usually pretty tolerant to consumer eyes and so your marketing team can have more fun with the color choices and use it as a way to grab your audience’s eyes.
When done right, direct mail marketing can yield a return on investment ratio of 13-to-1 on average. Be sure to utilize effective direct mail marketing to truly personalize and captivate your potential consumers. Use bold colors, unique (but legible) typography, and be interesting with the overall physical design of the advertisement. Direct mail marketing is your company’s time to shine!
2019 Update – A focus on Email Marketing
Several years later, things have changed. Direct mail has continued to decrease in popularity. Email Marketing, has been rising at a rapid rate. Despite all the predictions that email marketing had peaked, there are books, webinars, how-tos and videos all directing people to use email marketing like never before. And what are the results?
Some companies are boasting that they have downsized their outbound SDR roles in favor of stronger email marketing approaches. They are doing this by heavily personalizing their emails and building serious automation of email delivery.