How to Design Direct Mail That Sells

If it sells, than it must be creative.

David Ogilvy, a legendary designer and author, says that is the very first rule for designing direct mail.

But how do you know what sells?

Here are 5 tips to keep in mind when you design your next direct mail marketing piece to improve it’s chances of success.

Inspiration is in your own mailbox.

Don’t forget that you own a mailbox too!

Just check out what is being mailed to you and see if any catch your eye.

If you’re like everyone else on the planet, you most likely receive a lot of direct mail on a weekly basis.

Set aside the ones that make an impression on you, whether because of the wording, images, call-to-action, or format.

Odds are, the company that sent you those mailers spent a good amount of money on researching the best methods.

So why not learn from their research for free?

Beat your own PR.

Just as athletes strive not only to win but also to beat their own personal records, so should you!

Try optimizing an older piece of mail and play around with the images and wording to see if you can improve it.

Sometimes even minor changes can make a significant difference in the response rate.

If you see a change, continue to send out different versions of that design to similar groups in your database, and take note to which one receives the most responses.

Then test it, and test it again!

 

Sorry, one mailing doesn’t count as marketing.

A single mailing is considered a test.

On average it will take 7-9 mailers to get a prospect’s attention.

Don’t give up if you don’t get a response on the first mailer.

With each additional direct mail piece you send, you should see an increase in responses.

Remember to personalize.

Let’s be honest, how many direct mail pieces do you recieve that say something to the effect of “Dear Valued Customer.”

A lot.

So don’t be lazy or cheap and personalize as much as you possibly can.

Letters and even graphic postcards are becoming easy to personalize.

You could also try testing Personalized URL’s or “purls.”

They can contain the prospect’s name in the web address like www.DOMAINHERE.com/John.Doe.

The best thing with is with any proper Purl system, even if John Doe doesn’t contact you, you’ll get a record of his visit to the URL if he visits it.

If the prospect is shy and doesn’t want to respond, you at least know he was interested enough to visit the site.

Then you can follow up with personalized letters in effort to capture the lead.

This is also a great strategy if you’re looking to pare down a list.

Perhaps you have a starting list of 2000 people.

If 3% of the people come to the Purl page, that’s 60 people.

It’s a whole lot cheaper to funnel your efforts at 60 prospects that have shown interest

There’s no point to keep mailing to 2000 people who may not even be interested.

Grab their attention.

Here are some examples of words that can grab the attention of your readers:

Oh yeah, and don’t forget to have fun 🙂