You’re starting a new chapter in life and opening a small business of your own. You know that marketing is essential to bring in customers and help your business grow and succeed. While creating an online presence may be high on your priority list, your focus shouldn’t be exclusively on digital marketing. In fact, direct mail, specifically postcards, can help you the most out of any type of advertising. It’s true!
Keep reading to learn more about how this “old-fashioned” strategy keeps outperforming digital marketing and how you can make your direct mailers work even more effectively!
Why Direct Mail Has the Best Response Rate
The Association of National Advertisers has found that direct mail marketing garners a much higher response rate (up to 9 percent) than emails or other digital advertising methods (between 1 and 5 percent). But why does direct mail continue to beat more modern marketing approaches? Here are a few reasons why you should consider including direct mail in your marketing strategy.
People Still Read Their Mail
According to a study conducted by the United States Postal Service, about 50 percent of households regularly go through their mail and read what they receive, especially pieces as succinct as a postcard. In fact, postcards resulted in nearly twice the response rate as the next highest performing piece of mail: catalogs without envelops.
Mailboxes Are Less Cluttered Than Email Inboxes
With so many email subscriptions and online ads, your audience quickly becomes overwhelmed by the multitude of businesses trying to capture their attention. A postcard in the mail is more likely to draw interest because there aren’t as many businesses pursuing this form of marketing these days. Their loss means your gain!
How to Improve Your Direct Mailer’s Response Rate
Even if you currently are using direct mail to advertise your small business, there is always room to do better! Here are some ways you can fine tune your direct mailers for higher response rates.
Track Your Marketing
Numbers don’t lie, and you need to know the hard facts about what’s working and what isn’t. Use a traceable phone number on your direct mailer or provide a special landing page so you know exactly how well your campaign is performing.
Target Strategically
Even if you are trying to get more customers from a specific geographic area, you may benefit from specifically narrowing down your audience. You can cut out PO boxes, temporary housing, business addresses, and even existing customers, helping you reach more new customers.
Whether you’re brand-new or a seasoned, savvy business owner, you can’t ignore the success of direct mail marketing. Especially if you follow these tips, you’re bound to get a higher response rate and more conversions, which means more revenue for your small business!
About Strategic Marketing Solutions
Strategic Marketing Solutions provides comprehensive marketing services exclusively to small businesses. Including designing postcards, we can also offer customized mailing lists and do call tracking, showing you the results of your campaign. If you are more interested in digital marketing, we also handle PPC advertising as well as organic SEO and geofencing. Want to learn more about direct mail marketing? Contact Strategic Marketing Solutions today!