Mail Advertising Work!

Did you know that more money is spent on direct mail advertising than all other types of advertising combined? There’s a reason for this. That’s because mail advertising works and it works well!

For a mail advertising campaign to work it must be done correctly. There are three major that have to occur for a mail advertisement campaign to be effective.

First you will need to have access to a good mail list. Whether you have put the list together yourself or you have purchased it you’ll want to be sure that the addresses and names appear correctly and that the names on the list are people who would likely be interested in your product. If you are selling Ipods you would most likely be wasting your money if you targeted a market that was over the age of 65.

The second event that must occur is “action.” Your offer must elicit the customer to respond. Your campaign will work best if it evokes the fear of loss, of losing out on the special offer. This type of campaign works much better than a campaign that elicits the expectation of gaining something. For example Buy one get one free works much better than 50% off. Limited Time Offer works much better than don’t delay. Your advertising needs to motivate the potential customer to “act now.”

Lastly you need to take utilize the special rates the post office offers for bulk mailings. The postal system offers discounted rates for various types of bulk mailings so check with your post office to see where the best savings can be had. Your advertising agency will not necessarily know which method of mailing will save you money so you should find this out before you begin the design of your ad campaign.

One of the most common questions that arises when a company is thinking about trying a direct mail advertisement campaign is where to start. You need to start by knowing what you want your mail advertising campaign to accomplish for you.

You might set a specific amount of revenue you would like to see the direct mail campaign produce. In order to recognize that specific amount of revenue you will need to send out a specific amount of mail advertisements. There is a formula that is used to calculate the number of mailings you will need.

To use the formula you’ll need to know three things. The amount of revenue you want to generate from the campaign. What you want your closing ratio to be. For example let’s say 40%. This means for every 100 people that receive the advertisement 40 will buy your product. You’ll also need to estimate what the response time will be. An excellent response is about 2%. Yes I know you are thinking that’s really low. Actually 2% is a very good response rate. Most people do not respond to mailings. A 2% response with a 40% sell through will earn you a nice living!

By knowing what you wish to achieve you will be able to calculate how many mail advertisements you will need to send out to meet your projected revenue. There are also other formulas available to use to help you calculate profit margins.

If you don’t follow the rules for direct mail advertising there is a good chance that you will loose money. Small towns always do better with direct marketing campaigns than larger cities do.

Direct mail advertising is an excellent way to make sure your name stays in front of the customer all year round. It keeps you in constant contact with the customer and keeps you front and center in their minds. This is important for repeat business. Follow these suggestions and you’ll find that your direct mail advertising campaign will work well!


Deon Melchior is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit ArticleClick.com. Article Click is a free content article directory. This means that as a publisher you may reprint the articles that are included in our site, as long as the article is unedited and the author box is included with it's live hyperlinks.