If you don’t prepare correctly, direct mail can become costly and have a poor return on investment. Fortunately, there are many technologies that we can use to help you avoid this. Things are not as they used to be, where you might measure the success of your direct mail campaign by the amount of new business you acquired in the next few weeks. Marketing doesn’t exist in a vacuum, however. 

First, you should consider the kind of offer or call to action you will be using for your campaign. If your objective is simple such as driving traffic to your website, perhaps you can use a much more cost-effective postcard. If you’re a non-profit writing an appeal for a new fund, you may need to send a multi-page 8.5×11 newsletter to ensure you get new donations to support it. Play to your strengths and know how much room you need to get your message across. 

Second, make sure you’re sending to the right people. What’s the point of sending a mailing to someone who will never ever purchase your product? It can be tempting to send your mailing to as many people as possible but why not save some money? There are so many ways you can target demographics these days that you can get granular with your mailings and get the most bang for your buck.

Lastly, how are you going to track the success of your mailing? Make sure you have something in place, be it a tracking link, landing page or something else to make sure you can attribute any business your mailing gets to track your ROI.