In one of our recent posts, we discussed some of the biggest advantages and some serious challenges of direct marketing. Following are some direct marketing tips that will help optimize direct marketing efforts for maximum gains and minimum waste in efforts and resources.
Use email marketing and inbound marketing tools to ensure better mail-opening rates. There are online marketing tools and plug-ins that enable marketing emails to evade the dreaded SPAM folder, giving them a chance to being opened and read by the target.
If your marketing communication includes some kind of offer or discount, mention that message as the first thing in your marketing communication. Include information about just how much cash benefit, in terms of discount and saving, should the customer expect on taking you up on your offer.
Understand your customer type and pick a mailing list type accordingly. For instance, specialty mailing lists give you details about your customer that helps you identify their consumption and demand traits, custom mailing lists enable you to map customers based on your offer criteria, and cloned mailing lists merely get you a set of customer data that is similar to your existing database.
Work hard on the content. Whether you call your prospects on the phone, leave them a voicemail, or send them printed flyers, make sure that besides being relevant, the content is attractive, neat and has an attention-grabbing quality. Make use of colors, words, intonation, catchphrases, fonts, and format intelligently when framing your message and putting it on a medium.
Since test marketing using direct methods is easier and cheaper, take full advantage of it. Test your methods over a handful of sample customers. Track and analyze their responses. Experiment with two or three media and see which gets you the most responses. See what's working for you and what's not before rolling out a final direct marketing campaign.
Don't smother your customers with too many and too frequent communication. Keep the volume and pace moderate. Overdoing only serves to leave customers irritated and they may block you from their inboxes and filter your voicemails and cut you out altogether.
A direct marketer needs to always keep in mind the importance of the customer and customer related data that is maintained in his/her database. He needs to update it regularly and make sure not to use such information irresponsibly. Similar to all marketers, irrespective of the methods they employ, a direct marketer always needs to be alert to changes in customer trends and tastes and shifts in quality and quantity of their demands.
While doing so, a direct marketer also needs to make sure he/she is not reliant on just one method of communicating with the customer and needs to keep reinventing the marketing message periodically to keep actual customers interested and to hook in potential customers.