Know the Reasons Why Your Direct Mail Campaign is Failing
Direct mail as defined by Wikepidia ‘is the delivery of advertising material to recipients of postal mail-Advertising mail includes advertising circulars, catalogs, CDs, “pre-approved” credit card applications, and other commercial merchandising materials delivered to both homes and businesses. It may be addressed to pre-selected individuals, or unaddressed and delivered on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.
If you have been using this medium to deliver your message, you probably know by now its strengths and weaknesses. But if you are still not getting the results from your direct mail platform then something is probably wrong. Have you evaluated why you think your direct mail campaign is not working?
A friend of mine who has a little bookshop wanted to attract more people from the community to come and have a look at his shop. He had custom bookmarks printed with titles of some of the books he had in his shop. He painstakingly wrote the names of the people to make it appear that they are personalized bookmarks and mailed it to some 100-name mailing list. A few weeks after, he noticed that there was still no significant increase of people visiting the shop. What went wrong? How could he have done it better to ensure the he got the results he wanted? Is there a way to get people to respond to something like this?
Let’s look at my friends bookmark ad strategy and find out what went wrong. First, I offered to check his 100-name mailing list and did some random tests. On my eighth address, I noticed that the name in the bookmark is different from the present occupants. It appears that the former occupants were tenants who have since moved to another place. I asked the present occupants what they did with the custom bookmarks and they admitted that they threw them away since they do not know the forwarding address of the former tenant anyway. The same was true for the twelfth, fifteenth and twentieth houses, and so on and so forth. I did not continue the check because I knew right then that a good percentage of the bookmarks did not reach their intended beneficiaries.
It is a given that any mailing list has a certain percentage of outdated or invalid addresses. It is a given that people move, change their civil status, etc.; but whatever reason, there would be no 100% accurate mailing list. Having established this fact, normal response to a good direct-mail piece would not be more than 2 per cent. So what is the point of writing by hand each and every name of the 100-name mailing list to your personalized bookmarks? There is not much point in sending out a measly 100 pieces to start with.
There were other problems with the direct mail strategy of my friend. While chatting with some of the more receptive recipients, they disclosed to me that they were not impressed with the design of the bookmarks although they admitted that it appeared as personalized bookmarks because of their handwritten names. In other words, the custom bookmarks were not attractive. Most of them looked at it and tucked it in some book or something. While it did its purpose of being a bookmark, most of the recipients did not even bother to read what was printed on it.
It could also be that the offer was badly timed. In my conversations, with the recipients they admitted that they do not feel like buying any book at this time. They would rather buy for their family because they are feeling the economic crunch.
For whatever reasons, I guess my friend has to evaluate his strategy. The 100-name mailing list and the bookmarks may not cost a lot but one thing is for sure, it failed miserably.
Cliff Bergfeld is connected in one of the best Personalized Bookmarks Printing company. His company can guarantee you the quality of their custom bookmarks.
