Ready For Better Direct Mail Response Rates? Here's An Action Plan That Works. By Michael Del Chiaro

You can direct business even in soft times with direct mail. The technique is having a straightforward but efficient action plan to coerce great direct mail response rates. Here's an action plan that works for any size of business and for any type of product or service offering. Before you get your direct mail action plan laid out, you need to have a great supplier who can back you up. A skillful dealer, like My1Stop.com, can even assist fine tune your direct mail action plan. So, be sure to communicate your plans with your supplier before you start your direct mail campaign. Here's a simple but effective three stage action plan to push up direct mail response rates . . .

Develop A Keenly Attentive Mailing List
Mass mailing is old school. Don't regress back there. Instead, try generating smaller more highly focused direct marketing lists. Segment your products or services into groups. Then develop separate lists for each cluster. Get Niche specific. If you're a heating and air conditioning business, segment your direct marketing lists depending on household income scales and match your goods and services accordingly. If you're a start up church with a young minister, develop a list of under 35 year olds in your area for starters. Get a list from the local colleges, propose to co-op ads with the local music store (using their list), get imaginative - but stay alert.

List Building Tools For Your Direct Mail Action Plan:

o Construct Your Own List Out Of Categories.
Buy names, barter for names, social-media for names, and network for names.

o Segment Your Products and Services. Niche Specific.
Focus. Segment product groups into specific products - match them to your lists.

o Lots Of Smaller Lists Get Bigger Results - At Lower Costs
There are no longer many advantages to mass mailing big lists.

You'll see in a minute how digital printing turns small direct mail lists into huge opportunities - small lists and digital printing are a necessity for your direct mail action plan.

Provide An Enticing Purpose And Make It Extremely Relevant
OK. So you have your well focused lists. Great start. Now you need motives that are very significant to each unique direct marketing group. Here are a few examples. Let's say you sell heating and air conditioning units and services. To your higher income household list, you would propose high end big BTU units - the attraction is discounted executive vent cleaning - which is highly relevant to what you do and the prospects requirement. For mid and lower income household lists you would offer smaller units with the enticement being ultra green and ultra low operating expenses. You can see the value of the direct marketing sectors now - just think if you had a "green" list for this offer! Using digital direct mail printing lets you personalize every piece in every list - you can personalize the names - the offer -the images - anything that creates more relevance for the beneficiary is the thing to do!

Incentive Building Tools For Your Direct Mail Action Plan:

o Develop Different Incentives - Or Bids -For Each List Group
This sets you up for big response rates.

o Develop Encouragements That Are Highly Relevant And Motivating.
Consider discounts on products and services relevant to the offer.

o Personalize The Offer To Each Individual Recipient
This will make the most of the list segments you made earlier.

Remember. There is no reason to do mass mailings and there is no reason to make the same offer to all of your lists. The printing won't cost much more to do two or three separate mailings - that's an advantage digital printing merchants offer. The consequences will be much better for each

Test. Test. Test.
This is a simple thing to do. You have your direct mail segmented lists, correct? OK, now segment them again - into fourths. You want three test sample groups and a large remaining main group. Test different direct mail designs and offers on each of the three smaller groups to see which design - which proposal - grabs the biggest response rate. Again, the relatively low costs of digital printing make it feasible to send a direct mail test of 5,000 or maybe even fewer pieces.

Testing Tools For Your Direct Mail Action Plan:

o Segment Each List Group Into Four Parts
Three test groups - one large non-test group.

o Build A Different Offer For E Test Group
You can alter the design too - but make certain the offers are different.

o Track The Response Rates
Whichever offer gets the most responses is the one to go with to the entire group.

How large should the three test groups be? Let's say you have 50,000 names. Go with 5,000 each for the test groups! That will leave 35,000 for the best offer. So 40,000 (or 80%) of your list will have received the best bargain - that should give you outstanding direct mail response rates!

My1Stop.com is the direct mail superstore. We work with our customers on direct mail marketing action plans every day. Please visit us online or call, today.