Ten tips to reduce your direct mail cost

Darren Parker-Mead is a specialist in Direct Marketing, having spent over twenty years in direct mail print and production as well as sourcing direct mail both client and agency side. Darren specialises in helping organisations reduce their direct mail spend and works with a wide range of clients from small sole traders through to major PLC's.

Ten tips to reduce your direct mail spend

By Darren Parker-Mead

Direct marketing remains a powerful method of getting a message in front of your customers, or your potential customers.

However, many marketers fail to follow simple guidelines that can dramatically reduce their DM spend. I've worked with many organisations for years with a simple view of breaking-down each element of the campaign. This has demonstrated not only cost savings but improved response rates incredibly and seen return on marketing investment soar, leaving budget for other campaigns - surely a must for any hard-pressed marketer!

Follow these simple tips and watch your returns improve or contact me directly to discuss an individual project or full campaign.

1. Data, data, data, data! - I can't stress this enough (I'm even going to shout 'data' at you again to emphasise the point!), the single most important element of any direct mail campaign and if the adage 'garbage in = garbage out' was ever most suited to any marketing campaign its DM. Its amazing how investment in a little time at the start of a campaign can reap such spectacular rewards, but it can. Don't send 50,000 pieces when you can stream out the rubbish and send 30,000 pieces and get the same response - you're just wasting your budget.

2. Postage - Are you still using Royal Mail for your postage? Well, don't, you're throwing money away. Since the de-regulation of the mail market there are a host of great deals on postage. At FastAnt I've set-up a system where we can check the market for your campaign - it doesn't matter if its a thousand items or a million there is a deal out there for you!

3. Be green - Being environmentally conscious not only helps the planet, but there are lower than usual postal rates by following guidelines called Responsible Mail. Want to find out more, well give me a call.

4. Design - Yes, we know your creatives have conjured up a stunning piece of work thats going to win all sorts of awards - but will it produce effectively during print and mailing? That stunning piece of work can prove very costly if you don't get it right, so make sure you speak to a mailing specialist at the beginning of the process to identify any potential pitfalls.

5. Integrate - Direct Mail works best within an integrated campaign. Work your DM to work with your other campaigns in a co-ordinated and themed mix of elements for maximum impact.

6. In-house or outsource - We often find companies producing their own direct mail in-house. The belief is that this is the most cost-effective method of getting mailings out. My findings are that this isn't always the case and that even very low levels of direct marketing are more cost-effective at a specialist supplier.

7. Call to action - I'm still amazed how many pieces of DM cross my desk without a clear prompt for the recipient to respond in some form. At the start of your creative process decided what the objective of the DM is and then build your design with the aim of triggering this response. It sounds obvious, but many DM pieces miss this and it can be the difference between a poor or strong response.

8. Follow-up - A trick many marketers miss is the follow-up. If you've sent a DM piece why not follow-up with some telemarketing or another smaller DM campaign? This is a neat little trick that can really push the response levels higher, but often neglected.

9. Clean up after yourself - Are you sitting on that great big pile of returns? Well get them logged and off your database! Just think of the cost of mailing those again, because I've seen that happen so many times when a quick flag and suppression could have saved hundreds of pounds in the long-run.

10. Use a specialist - Well I wasn't going to list this without a shameless plug for FastAnt was I? But with all joking aside make sure you involve the specialists as early as you can, it really does help. We're happy to provide you with our time for free to help co-ordinate your mailings, give me a call and let me help!