In order to succeed in an increasingly competitive business environment, you need to ensure that your direct mail marketing campaign is up to scratch. To help you do this, you need to be doing something that too few of your competitors are doing, which is developing clear objectives.
This approach of identifying your objectives and what you want from a campaign and how you will eventually measure success is crucial in developing a proper strategy. With proper objectives, you can then more accurately plan future direct mail campaigns and decide what differences you would like to see.
To help steer you in the right direction, and to get your next campaign off to the right start, here is a clear three-step plan to developing your direct mail campaign objectives.
What does success look like for you?
As an initial part of planning your objectives, you need to write out exactly what you want to achieve from your direct mail campaign. These should be basic goals like “making more people aware of your brand”, or “generating new enquiries”.
This may sound quite simple, but so few businesses actually perform this step. In actual fact, the more simple you can make it, the better. You will hone in on these success variables more in the next step.
Make your success measurable
Now you know what you want in a basic sense, it’s time to better define what you actually want to see. This means placing tangible figures and targets to each of your success variables.
You should turn phrases like “reach more customers” into “generate 100 new leads”.
All of a sudden both you, and everyone else in your marketing team, knows clearly what the objectives are and what they’re aiming to achieve. These figures will then be in mind right through from the initial design process to the eventual campaign execution.
Make your direct marketing targets attainable
There are two key aspects of making your targets attainable. One part is looking back at past data and any other competitor analysis to decide what reasonable results are.
Secondly, you need to develop clear strategies you will implement which will allow you to hit them. For example, you should define what you will do differently this time around to improve upon your conversion rate.
It is up to you how many objectives you have, though it is advisable to limit them as much as possible. Similarly, for the objectives you do have, they should be as focused as possible and there should be a clear plan in place to reaching them.
The next part of the process is to then design your marketing materials and find high-quality and reliable suppliers who can fulfil the needs of your company. This is where Calderstone comes in.
DIRECT MAIL PLANNING GUIDE
To help you create a perfect direct mail marketing plan we’ve produced a handy FREE direct mail guide with details on the steps you need to take to create your own perfect catalogue.
You can download our guide here.
Calderstone
We can assist you with the entire direct mail marketing process, right through from design work, to delivering the finished materials to your customers. You can find out more about the service we offer, right here.
And if you have any other questions, do not hesitate to contact our friendly customer services team.