5 Ways to Get More Direct Mail Impressions for Your Marketing Campaigns
Learn to increase direct mail impressions for optimizing your campaigns and grab the attention of your targeted audience with more effective direct mail strategies
When used smartly, direct mail can go a long way toward reaching your company's target market with your marketing message. It has higher impression rates than email and other online channels since people always open their mailboxes to take out the content.
How to get even more direct mail impressions? Optimize direct mail campaigns and reach customers with tips from our article.
Difference Between Reach and Direct Mail Impressions?
As the name suggests, direct mail impressions are the moments when someone sees your mail. It could be the packaging, the content, the design or perhaps, the whole experience. Impressions measure how many times your audience views your message.
Direct mail impressions and reach are often confused in marketing.
Direct mail impressions are directly connected to the number of mail pieces you send and how well people receive them. On the other hand, reach is the number of people who open your mail. Reach is a much less accurate measure of your direct mail campaign's effectiveness since it focuses mainly on the number of people who opened your mail.
Sending as much mail as possible to many customers doesn't guarantee the success of your campaigns. It's easy to see your direct mail succeeding if more customers walk into your stores, order your products, and attend your events after the start of the campaign. But that's a mere scratch on the surface – your efforts could be generating more (or less) results than you think.
The only way to be sure is by counting your direct mail impressions as follows:
Start by tracking how much mail you deliver to potential and existing customers. The number of impressions your direct mail campaign generates depends on how many mail pieces you send. You can count the number of pieces you deliver with the help of your mailing list.
(Your mailing list lists people who have agreed to receive direct mail marketing materials from you, such as coupons, catalogs, sales promotions, newsletters, etc.)
Apart from this, track your campaign results. Professional marketers keep track of their direct mail marketing efforts to understand what works and what doesn't. You can monitor key metrics such as direct mail CPM impressions, open rates, response rates, conversions, engagement, reach, etc.
Open rates. Direct mail has a 90% open rate. However, this metric is too broad to help get a hint of your direct mail impressions. The number of people who actually open your mail depends on various factors, including the visual appearance of your mail, your brand, their interests, and the accuracy of delivery.
Response rates. Keep track of how many people respond to your mail. If you send out 1,000 pieces to 1,000 recipients and get 100 responses, you will know that you've generated 100 impressions in your campaign.
Engagement. Direct mail sees a 96% engagement compared to social media's 54%. Engagement refers to how recipients interact with direct mail. This could include opening mail, responding, taking action, and more.
It's essential to include an incentive with each piece you send out, so recipients will know what they are receiving when they open it. For instance, you could add a coupon they can redeem at your nearest store. You could also include a gift with a personalized signature or at least a CTA with instructions.
If someone opens your mailing and doesn't see something of value, they probably won't read the rest of the message.
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5 Ways to Increase Direct Mail Impressions
Today's digital world marks an era of stiff competition as brands struggle to capture the attention of their customers through all means at their disposal. It takes 5-7 impressions before a person remembers your brand. In addition, your marketing efforts need to be efficient and targeted to keep up with the competition.
Here's how to optimize a direct mail campaign and drive more direct mail impressions.
1. Do Audience Research
Audience research should always come first if you wish to measure direct mail impressions accurately and improve the rates. Find out as much as possible about your potential customers to accurately forecast how many people may respond to your mail and how much money you can expect to spend on marketing.
2. Identify the Need for Targeted Marketing
It's not enough to send mass mail to the same people month after month. You need to know what specifically motivates them to take the action you want them to take.
That's where targeting comes in. Instead of mailing mass mailings to everyone, target specific audiences. Start with the people that share your interests to have more impressions.
To determine what your specific target audience wants to know, you can create a list of questions that they would ask a real-life expert. This can give you more information than a generic mailing list ever would. Or, target them based on what types of product or service you can offer that would benefit them.
3. Select the Right Product and Service to Market
A lot can be said about how customers interact with your mail. However, not many will show interest in your product or service if it doesn't resonate with their needs.
You want to choose a product or service that provides high value to your customers. For example, if you are offering a seminar on starting a successful business, you would want to select something that your audience will find helpful.
If you are selling jewelry, your audience would be more likely to respond if you were offering an exclusive gift with a purchase instead of sending them a postcard talking about your product.
Does your company deal with products that aren't in demand? Direct mail marketing still has something for you. Focus on sending mail to prospects every once in a while instead of multiple times throughout the year.
Target people within your local area - people who would be interested in what you have to offer. You would be surprised to learn that 57% of customers buy from local businesses to keep the money close to home.
4. Calculate Your Budget (Cost per 1000 Direct Mail Impressions)
Setting a budget is probably the most critical step in planning for direct mail marketing. The budget should be based on what you feel comfortable spending and what kind of return on investment (ROI) you expect from your campaigns.
The ROI is calculated by subtracting the investment from the total revenue and dividing this number by the investment. For example, if your company spent $1,000 on its direct mail campaign and generated ten new customers who spent $500 each (a total of $5,000 in sales), your ROI would be 400%.
Once you know the budget, you can allocate direct mail marketing costs and grow your audience more effectively.
Solutions like Inkit Send integrate with your current systems through an API to automate the entire mail printing, delivery, and tracking cycle. Since automation speeds up mail production and delivery, you can cover more people and achieve more impressions in less time.
Besides, automated direct mail is more personalized and relevant than regular mail. Being trigger-based, it always arrives at the best time. As a result, people are more likely to open mail pieces and interact with them.
