Making the Most of Your Budget on Your Next Direct Mail Campaign

Direct mail statistically has the highest response rate vs. all other digital mediums combined, but we find that it is often overlooked or passed over by marketers because even though it has the same ROI as digital, it’s also one of the most expensive to employ.

The good news is that there are plenty of ways to overcome this expense by making the most of your budget to get the highest return and best value for what you invest in a campaign.

Here are some tips on how to maximize your budget on your next campaign:

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The Basics

• List – Make sure that your mailing list is clean and up to date and that that you are targeting customers at the right stage of their customer lifecycle. If you’re mailing to an old, outdated list, you are automatically losing money on mail that are never delivered. And if you’re mailing to customers at the wrong stage of their lifecycle, you are losing money on messages that are never read or opened.
• Look-a-Like Modeling - Take your list analysis one step further and use Look-A-Like modeling to identify the people with the highest propensity to be attracted to your brand, message and offer. Rather than spending your limited resources on prospects that may only be likely to respond half of the time, you'll save money with Look-A-Like modeling by allocating your money to only those in the highest response deciles.
• Offer – Provide a good offer that is compelling enough to move the customer to act. Once you have them in your store or on your website, you can use cross-sell and up-sell techniques to get them to spend more with you than they would if they hadn’t had the discount in the first place.
• Creative – Recycle images that you have used on past campaigns or other marketing materials, and try to use images that were taken in-house by your marketing team to save on the expense of purchasing new stock images for each campaign.
• Postage – Work with a Full-Service Mail Service Provider to ensure that you are receiving the highest possible postage discounts. You should also consider the postage itself – unless you are sending something that customers should immediately act on, it may make sense to mail your pieces Standard to save on the extra expense of mailing it First Class. And to revisit our earlier point, working from a clean list ensure that you aren’t wasting money on people who will never receive your message.

It may make sense for you to reallocate the money you save on these elements to upgrade mail format or paper stock. Doing so will help you create a greater neurological impact on your customers to further boost the likelihood they will respond.

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Advanced Options

• Omni DM – When you send a direct mail campaign, it’s important to have a digital retargeting campaign in place that captures leads that would otherwise fall through the cracks if they leave without offering you any of their information. Omni DM is an inexpensive way to accomplish this, adding just pennies per piece to the overall cost of your campaign. This is less than you will probably pay anywhere else for 60 days of online exposure on Google, Facebook, and Instagram that perfectly coordinates with your direct mail campaign, so your message stays in front of your customers and prospects until they are ready to act on their own terms. Using Omni DM on repeat or consecutive mailings is recommended, so you can build off the success of each previous campaign on the next one. The return you will see on an Omni DM campaign will ultimately make up for the initial investment you put in.
• USPS Informed Delivery® – Your campaigns are already benefiting from the grayscale option of USPS Informed Delivery®, but you can choose to upgrade your campaign to include a full color image and URL that allows your customers to interact with their mail before it is physically delivered to their mailbox.

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The Bottom Line

If you’re looking to make the most of your budget on your next campaign, it’s best to look for ways to save on certain aspects so you can re-allocate it to others. Doing so will maximize your budget while crafting a strong mail piece that drives high response and recovers the initial investment you put in.