5 Things You Must Do to Run a Successful Physical Send Campaign
Creating an effective marketing campaign can be done with ease; if you’re doing it properly. Email marketing has become a preferred marketing method by most businesses, due to its low cost and easy automation capabilities. Its effectiveness however, has taken a drastic decline in the last ten years due to consumer fatigue. As a result, companies are returning to a direct mail approach with physical packages sent to targeted buyers to create higher engagement and help them achieve their strategic goals.
If you’re interested in executing a direct mail campaign, here are 5 things you must do to run a successful campaign.
Research Your Target Audience
In the sales process, there are two types of contacts: Decision Makers and Influencers. Determine who you plan to target with your campaign and understand the stakeholders involved in your sales process. Deciding who you plan to engage with will help you develop your message and content.
Depending on the cost and scale of your campaign, it could be beneficial to do some additional research. Being reliant on prospecting lists purchased from a third party can be risky especially if your cost per impression is high.
Helpful tools such as
LinkedIn Sales Navigator or your target company’s website could help you verify information about your prospects. These searches can help determine who your target reports to, and verifying the location in which to send the item.
Craft the Appropriate Message
When targeting new prospects, it’s important to create awareness and provide an educational element with your collateral. What does your company do and how is it that your product or service will provide value to your prospect?
To elevate your awareness, be sure to include
branded components. Your branding doesn’t have to be over the top, subtlety can go a long way. Including a
personalized note can make sure your campaign stand out more and makes is seem it wasn't done on mass scale, which can often lead to campaign’s diminished success.
If you’re unsure where to start, contact a direct mail marketing professional,
here.
Set Goals & Objectives
Setting clear goals and objectives with any campaign are necessary to ensure you stay on task and have the ability to measure your campaign’s performance. The ability to measure will allow you to compare your results against your goals as well as previous and future campaigns. To be successful in achieving and measuring your goals and objectives, it’s important not to create too many or too few. Setting too many goals could make it challenging to achieve results in all areas. Creating too few will likely leave many aspects of the campaign unchecked and unmeasured, leaving uncertainty to the overall performance. Be sure to communicate your strategy and key metrics with the campaign’s stakeholders. This will ensure everyone understands their role and the initiative is executed as planned.
As a self-help checklist, it’s helpful to use the acronym
SMART (
Specific,
Measurable,
Aspirational,
Realistic, and
Time-bound) when setting out to define your goals and objectives with your campaign.
Proper Follow up
The send and pray method has never worked; at least not for any company I’ve ever worked with. When a client shares that their initiative was unsuccessful, the most common misstep is that they executed zero follow up. Physical send campaigns are generally intended to create awareness and educate your target audience. More specifically, they are intended to create opportunities for your sales team to engage with prospects or clients. Planning and executing a proper follow up strategy within a specific time-frame will ensure your campaign achieves great results. Lastly, be sure that proper tracking is implemented so you can accurately measure results once your campaign has concluded.
Here are 5 Ways to Make Your Next Follow-up Your Best Follow-up.
Review and Measure Effectiveness
Not every campaign is created equally and because of that you cannot measure the effectiveness of every campaign the same. The most common unit that businesses measure to determine the effectiveness of campaigns is sales revenue. After all, without revenue, there’s no ROI. There are other metrics, however, that should be considered. I’m not saying don’t measure revenue at all, but take a step back before making a final determination to a campaign’s overall effectiveness. There is an endless list of what you may want to analyze. Here’s a short list to get your started.
- Engagement
- Interest
- Pipeline
- Referrals
- Revenue
Analyzing the results of your campaign is a critical component to your future marketing efforts. Tracking areas of success is just as important as measuring areas where the campaign was ineffective. Properly digesting all of the information will help your organization tailor your future efforts to improve areas of strength and weakness.
For more tips on how to create a successful direct mail marketing campaign, contact Tim Myers, Business Marketing Specialist at 603-418-7457 or by email at
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