
Direct
Mail Benefits
By Andrew R
Michaels
It may be hard to believe nowadays, but there's a
lot
more to marketing than the Internet. Offline marketing techniques still
work, and work well. Direct mail still especially works well, according
to a survey by Universal McCann, who found that direct mail spending
has kept climbing in recent years by about 8% per year.
Just
check your mailbox - I bet you get at least one direct mail piece
nearly every day. And you look at that piece and either put it away for
later, act on it or throw it away. If you do any one of those actions,
you at least read it, and that's the point of direct mail: get people
to recognize your company and products. By reading who the direct mail
piece was from, you've just created a memory. The next time you see
that company's name, you'll reach back into your memories and remember
it so it'll feel familiar to you. That's one benefit of direct mail.
Here are some other direct mail benefits:
You
can target people more accurately. You can buy mailing lists that will
tell you about the households you can mail your brochures, postcards
and direct mail pieces to. You can find out who has kids, who has pets,
people's average annual income, further broken down by demographics -
you get to know these people and you can tailor your message so that
they'll feel compelled to take action. You can't do that with just an
email address.
It can drive traffic to your Web site. According
to the Direct Marketing Association, nearly 33% of people respond to
direct mail online. Instead of telling people to call you for
information, they can visit your Web site whenever they want to get
more information. No phone sales pressure, no one trying to sell them
anything in their face.
Direct mail pieces are more personal. Not
only do you get to the target you really want to reach, the target
feels like they get to know you a little better. Touching your postcard
or feeling your shiny brochure paper makes people feel more in tune
with your company and your product. They are interacting with something
you've created. On the other hand, they can't touch your emails.
People are curious. Brochure and catalog printing
are great vehicles for getting into people's homes. People like to
browse through catalogs, even if they aren't interested in buying, just
to satisfy their curiosity and see what's out there. These people
wouldn't go out of their way to go out and pick up your catalog, but
hey, if you're going to send it to their home ....
You have time
to get into details. With direct mail pieces like brochures or letters,
once you hook the consumer with a great headline and photo, they'll
want to read more info and you can give them the info they want. You
have ample space with many direct mail pieces to describe your product
(after detailing the benefits of the product). For those consumers who
need to gather as much information as possible, direct mail gives them
that detailed information and the options to read it at their leisure.
buy-direct-mailing-lists.com does not
endorse or claim any of the content in the above article to be factual.
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