In an email world, sending mail the old-fashioned way can have surprising power.
In a world that is going further and further along the technological spectrum, there are some low-tech things that once upon a time would be considered “old-school” but have now become the new “cool thing.” Think about music. It used to be that people would always want digital, that was the cutting edge. Now there’s a whole bunch of audiophiles who prefer listening to music off of vinyl.
The same thing applies in your marketing.
There are several “old-school” techniques to generate leads that have become cutting-edge again. They stand out, in whole or in part, because of how the world has moved past them in most ways.
So today I wanted to share with you one of my favorite “old school” marketing tactics: Direct Mail
My experiences with direct mail started over 25 years ago doing a tremendous amount of copywriting and direct mail sales for various information products. Over a 10-year period, the direct mail letters, brochures, and marketing collateral that I created helped to generate over $100 million of business.
When it comes to direct mail, the single most important three variables are:
- The list: the list you choose is remarkably important. There’s likely nothing else that you can do that would have the same leveraged impact than the choice of list. We’ll go into detail about how to find the right list in a moment.
- Your headline: the very first thing somebody sees when they open up your letter or direct mail piece.
- The outside of your mailing piece: this includes whether you use a label or directly print on the envelope, the fonts chosen, the choice of using teaser copy or not teaser copy, live stamp versus metered mail, etc.
Finding the Right List
Let’s go into detail about how to find the right list, one of the three most important, if not the single most important, element of a successful direct mail campaign.
For most small businesses, you’re likely not going to be sending out tens of thousands of direct mail pieces. And if you do send out tens of thousands of direct mail pieces, you’re likely doing them as what are called “carrier routes” or under bulk-mail rates. The expense of sending out tens of thousands of first-class direct mail pieces or more in any typical month is prohibitive and is likely not something the average small business would do.
But given the expense, and the ease at which people market through email, social media ads, and pay-per-click, most companies have abandoned any of their direct mail, with the exceptions of hyper geographic businesses like service companies or other retail-like establishments.
One of my…
