Your Direct Mail Piece Can Become Trash or Treasure?

Every day you go to your mailbox to see it you have mail. As you hover over the trashcan to sort, how do you decide what piece you’ll read and what piece will fall through your hands to its demise?

While direct mail is an effective tool in your marketing campaign, there are some easy ways to foil your efforts. Here are a few tips to keep your mail out of the recycle bin.

Wrong Time/Wrong Audience
First, you must understand your target audience. Second, you must find a way to obtain their mailing address. If you’re planning to purchase a list, look to your current customers as a source for demographic and psychographic information. Current customers are also more likely to respond to direct mail, so consider a campaign for repeat business. Timing is everything. Having the offer in the right hands at the right time is critical. Direct mail campaigns fail, even with qualified lists when they are launched at the wrong time.

Focus on the Offer
The whole purpose of direct mail is to get people to do something. For businesses, that usually means purchasing something from you.  Focus on the big stuff. When people glance at your mailing, they’re looking for what you’re selling and the deal you’re making to sell it. So make it good! Make it fast! And make it clear! Doubt fills trashcans.

Poor Design
The quickest way to get a person to look at your direct mail is by having a clean design. Conversely, the quickest way to get them to toss it is to have a design with no purpose. Here is where you want to call in the professionals who can create the perfect piece for your needs.

Tracking Results
How will you know whether your direct mail campaign was successful unless you include a way to track it? What do you want the customer to do?  Remember, the very objective of sending a DM piece is to generate a response.  You want the customer to call you, visit you, make an appointment or whatever else you may want them to do. Therefore, within your DM piece, clearly and concisely point out what you want the customer to do, when you want them to do it and the benefits of doing so quickly.

To sum it up…in direct mail, when people sort your mail, they’re quick. They’re brutal. And if you don’t instantly capture their attention, your direct mail becomes landfill!  Remember, you’re writing for a reader who is standing over a trash can.

NJC Printing provides quality digital and offset printing to businesses in St. Louis, Missouri and throughout the midwest. Please visit our website at www.NJCPrint.com to learn more about us or to Request An Estimate.

Why College Brand Ambassadors Can Get You Business

Marketing to college students can prove to be extremely difficult. If your business could benefit from having 18-24 year olds as customers, you may be struggling to attract the youth market to the point of giving up. You’re not alone, but you can be a business that does something about it, and in turn control the college demographic in your market. Employing college brand ambassadors can be an effective marketing tool in reaching college students. Here are some ways college brand ambassadors can get you business.

College brand ambassadors are the target market.
When trying to reach a target market, why not get help from someone in that demographic? Talk to your college brand ambassador to come up with ideas on how you can effectively reach students. Often, marketing activities center around the ambassadors going out and interacting with students with your product in hand.

College brand ambassadors know everyone.
One of the most important things to look at when hiring a brand ambassador is their involvement on campus. The more groups and organizations they’re involved with, the more they’ll be in front of your target audience. The ambassadors can generate buzz just by talking about your products in these groups. Just make sure your brand ambassadors believe in your product or you’ll get nowhere.

College brand ambassadors are cost efficient.
Most college students are eager to get a job for the experience and will work for little pay. Additionally, most marketing ideas will either be viral, guerilla or social media based. These tactics are less expensive than more traditional marketing ideas, and will help you capitalize on a market that most businesses don’t know how to reach.

 

- NJC Printing provides quality digital and offset printing to businesses in St. Louis, Missouri and throughout the midwest. Please visit our website at www.NJCPrint.com to learn more about us or to Request An Estimate.