The Keys to Unlocking Success In Direct Mail

 Repost from Joel Shattuck, COO of BuildFive.com Origional post can be found here.

Real Estate Professionals have been mailing post cards and letters to generate leads for decades. Over this time, some marketers have been clearly more successful than others, seemingly holding the key to direct mail success in real estate. Many others, unfortunately, remain unsuccessful or merely adequate in utilizing direct mail to generate leads. These marketers become frustrated and disillusioned by the mystery of how to make direct mail work for them. They often stop mailing or remain sorely content with the mediocre results they get from their direct mail. It doesn’t have to be this way.

There’s really no special “trick” or “magic guarantee” to making direct mail work for you. Direct mail success is driven by many variables, some we can control, others we cant, including a little bit of luck. However, there are a few keys to the strategy of direct mail that will help ensure more success. Direct mail experts have proven time and time again that these key principles will improve the success of your direct mail. Pay attention to these principles, contemplate them in the context of your business and what you have to offer, and you will execute a more logical and well thought out direct mail campaign. Ignore them, and you risk squandering valuable marketing dollars, effort and time on a direct mail campaign that has little chance of success.

Key 1. The right offer or message:
Without a strong offer, discount, call to action, or compelling message, your mailer has almost no chance of motivating anyone to respond. Why would they?
- Make it relevant to your business, service or niche.
- Make it unique from your competition.
- Make it a high perceived value.
- Motivate your prospect to take action.

Key 2. The right creative presentation:
Don’t discount the importance of good design in your mailers. Experienced graphic artists understand the elements of direct mail design and know how to position your offers, and messages in a compelling and inviting way. Find one with a good portfolio in direct mail and ask for specifics on how their work performed in the mail.
- The design should showcase the offer, discount, call to action, or message.
- The design should make this impossible to miss. It should be in your face.
- The design should be a clear reflection of you and your business.
- Paper thickness, print quality, use of graphics, color and varnishes can all affect response. Better quality and design tend to produce better results.

Key 3. The right list:
You could have the most compelling offer, and the greatest design, and it can fail miserably in the mail if you don’t have a qualified list of potential leads.
- You prospects demographics should match your services.
- The list should be as accurate and current as possible.
- The list should be easy to validate, update, and manage.

Key 4. Timing:
Timing is one of the keys we have some control over, however, once you send your mailer, it falls to the fate of the post office, mail clutter, competition, and the availability of your prospect to the offer. Mailing your offer several times to the same lists improves your chances of getting your message in front of a potential lead. Your best leads could come from the first mailing or the last. Its important to make this a key part of you mailing strategy to ensure you exhaust your lists and extract all the leads that they hold before moving on to a newer, updated list.

Key 5. Test, test, and test again:
One of the biggest mistakes direct marketers make is assuming they “know” the answers to the first 4 keys. They “think” they know exactly what prospects want or need, when they need it, how that message needs to be presented and who should receive the offer. Savvy direct marketers know all to well, that oftentimes other approaches can have better results than ones we “assume” work best. I encourage you to test your assumptions, challenge your conventional ways of doing your direct mail and test against your current mailers with new ideas, offers, creative design, and mailing lists. Over time, your direct mail will evolve with your business, your leads, the market and maintain higher levels of response than if you were to stick with the same old mailers.

I hope that these few tips and keys to success will improve your direct mail success.

Joel Shattuck, COO

BuildFive.com