Maximizing Direct Mail Conversion Rates

posted by Ted on January 3, 2012

One of the biggest problems with direct mail marketing is that you don’t know you’ve got it right until you’ve already spent money on design, printing and distribution. Even then, given the lack of real opportunity for tracking results, you can only base your perceived results on instinct rather than cold hard figures. Be that as it may, there are steps you can take at the creative stages to ensure your direct mail is as optimized for conversion as it can be in order to deliver a high return on your investment.

A great deal of optimizing your direct mail for conversion rates relies on common sense and, in a way, taking marketing to its most basic level. Too often it can be easy to confuse things and look for more complicated solutions to the problem where a simple course of action would suffice.

Consumers convert better when things are marked out for them in an easy-to-understand format. If you want a prospect to give you a call, don’t just put a phone number on the bottom of your flier and hope for the best. While most people understand that the phone number listed on an advertisement is for contact purposes – actually instructing them to give you a call in simple terms might have a marked increase in those that actually do pick up the phone.

Sounds simple – and it is. The same principle applies to special offers promotions and almost anything you’re looking for your prospect to do – let them know the precise course of action you want them to follow at al times. This will likely lead to a noticeable increase in the number of people that actually do what you ask.

Avoid the tendency to be lavish with the text on your pamphlet. The bare minimum of text is always preferable to going overboard since most readers won’t take the time to read and digest everything you have to say. In fact, getting your message across in as few words as possible will work much more to your advantage and ensure you give the right impression to recipients of your mailing.

Bullets and flash points within your text are very much to your advantage in direct mailings. They have consistently proven to be more memorable and easier to digest for prospects. Getting your direct mailing read is the first hurdle to getting a return. Breaking your text into more manageable sections will increase your chances of keeping readers engaged and ultimately grabbing their undivided attention.

Building in a scarcity angle is also highly effective in prompting a response.  A certain percentage of those that read your mailer will be interested in going ahead but will put it off until a later date and may never get around to following up.  For the conversion-driven marketer it’s important to make sure this doesn’t happen with too much frequency.  By creating some kind of incentive to act NOW rather than later, you encourage those that are even slightly interested to quickly get in touch. This can significantly increase the number of prospects in your funnel and (hopefully), your conversions.

Tags:conversion rate,design,direct mail,marketing,marketing solutions,promotion,roi