Back in the day, the only way to get your marketing materials in front of potential customers was directly through their mailbox.

Fast forward to the era of email, websites and mobile apps, and you now see less direct mail than you used to. Translation? It’s an opportunity to be one of the few in your market that uses direct mail to get in front of potential customers.

How can you leverage snail mail to build your customer base and make the process pay for itself and then some? Here are six ways to make direct mail work for your business:

Personalize

An important rule of direct mail is to make it as personalized as possible for the recipient. That means having their name on the address. If you have access to a direct mail service that hand-writes short notes then this can be an effective way to drive-up open rates and prospect engagement; it’s a more expensive option and best used on occasion to keep the recipient intrigued. Nobody can pass-up a handwritten letter.

Relevant

In every aspect of marketing your brand it is important to know your audience — and direct mail marketing is no different. Make sure you’ve done your research and are targeting the right recipients when sending out your mailers. You want the people receiving the mail to think of your promotional material as useful and relevant to their business needs.

Commitment

A general rule of thumb in marketing is that it takes 5-7 touch points with a prospect to be remembered. When launching a direct mail campaign, you should plan on running it for the entire year to get the best results.

Patience

It takes time to see a return-on-investment in any marketing or advertising initiative. At any given time direct mail will yield less than a 1% response rate, and of that you may close 25% of those leads. Prepare yourself for the long haul. It will pay-off over time.

Budget

Make sure you know what you can afford to do in order to keep your marketing campaign sustainable. If you send out 1,000 postcards and blow your budget then you’ll be dead in the water. Better to start small and build your empire over time.

Call-to-action

Perhaps most important of all, you need to give your audience a reason to contact you by providing a call-to-action (CTA). For instance, you can offer a special deal if they like your page on Facebook or follow you on Twitter – building your social media following while also providing a CTA. Change your CTA often to see which ones work better than others. Regardless of your offer, make sure you provide your phone number, website and email to make it easy for them to reach you.

Want a little help developing and executing an inbound or outbound marketing strategy? Give us a shout! Manzer Communications has offices in Austin, Denver and Houston, but our reach is global.