Direct Mail Formats: How to Choose the Right One and What Are Their Benefits?
Direct mail campaigns need a lot of planning regarding the target prospects, timing, budget, and formats. These factors also determine the scope of your campaign and help you predict results.
Hence, it is crucial to gather all your teams, align your goals, and then decide on the marketing outline.
You need collateral that grabs your audience’s attention and best communicates your marketing message. It should be pleasing to your prospects and have the ability to take them ahead of their customer journeys.
There is a wide variety of direct mail formats you can use, from small postcards to letter packages. Each type has its advantages and characteristics that you must consider before picking one for your mailing strategy.
In this blog, we will talk about all the cool direct mail formats that you use to increase your campaign’s engagement levels. Let’s begin!
How to Choose the Ideal Direct Mail Formats For My Campaign?
Some marketers make this decision at the last minute or even leave it up to the designing team to choose mail collateral. Naturally, it becomes more of a preference than a well-thought plan.
If your business also does so, you need to break this pattern! It is time to take a step ahead and put more thought into your direct mail format ideas. Here are some aspects that can help you select the ideal collateral type:
Your Marketing Goals
Determining the purpose of your campaign can help you make the right decisions at every stage. It is essential that when a prospect views your mail, they understand its meaning and act accordingly.
You may conduct a mailing campaign for the following reasons:
- Promoting a new product or service
- Launching a new franchise
- Introducing a new range of products
- Generating fresh leads to increase sales
- Upselling to existing customers, etc.
Usually, all direct mail formats are ideal for specific sets of situations. Therefore, understand your goals in-depth and see which marketing mail type matches them the most.
The Product or Service You Want to Sell
A retail product may not need you to produce and mail expensive and creative direct mail formats. However, you need to invest more and develop something unique for selling a luxury item to a niche audience.
Your Budget
The most crucial deciding factor is your marketing budget! If you need to execute a campaign on a tight budget, use direct mail formats affordable to print and distribute in large volumes.
Your budget affects two things the most:
- The quality of your mailers
- Mailing volume
Most marketers focus on either one of the two to conduct a result-driving campaign!
Target Audience
Your target prospects also dictate your choice of advertising mail format. You cannot send the same type of mailers to every segment of your audience and expect the best outcomes.
Businesses must segment their audience into different groups depending on their demographics. It allows them to design custom mailers that are relevant to their requirements.
Your Messaging
Does your mail format have enough space to fit your message? Is your collateral not matching the theme of your messaging? These questions can help you pick direct mail formats that help your copy pop and drive more responses.
Which Direct Mail Formats Are the Most Popular?
Below, we have compiled a list of direct mail types that you should look into for conducting effective and profitable campaigns:
Letters
Marketing letters are personal, explanatory, and persuading. They can help you build personal relationships with your audience and ask them to complete the call to action.
Letters have a professional or formal look, but you can personalise them to connect with the readers emotionally. Hence, it is one of the best direct mail formats that wins over prospects with specially-curated messages.
Compared to other creative direct mail formats, letters are simple and elegant. They also don’t have any unique design elements. Though that would work great for some B2B products and services, you should think of ways to make them look less like spam mail.
You can try using colourful envelopes with one-line teasers that entice recipients to open your letter and read ahead.
Highlights:
- Best for B2B communications
- Highly personalised and educational
- Helpful in adding inserts like reply cards
- Strengthen company-customer relationships
Postcards
Postcards are rectangular-shaped direct mail formats ideal for communicating short messages. You can use them in landscape or portrait orientation based on your artwork. PostGrid’s direct mail services offer several postcard design templates to enable you to create your artwork effortlessly.
If you want to increase your open rates, postcards can help you achieve this goal because they don’t require envelopes. Recipients can simply flip the postcard and see your message.
Postcards come in various sizes, from standard 6 x 11 to oversized. The large-sized ones help you stand out from the other mail items that a person gets in their mailbox. Also, it makes a better impression and motivates prospects to respond.
Highlights:
- Small and compact
- Attention-grabbing
- Flexible to use
- Long-lasting
- Useful as coupons
- Excellent for promoting events
Self-Mailers
Self-mailers are also direct mail formats that don’t require an envelope for direct mailing. But, they are different from postcards because of their foldability. You can send self-mailers that are double-fold, triple-fold, gate-fold, Z-fold, etc., according to the number of sections you want to include.
Flyers, brochures, leaflets, etc., are also self-mailers that you can employ for your campaign. They are relatively inexpensive to produce and are more visually appealing than letters.
Furthermore, these direct mail formats are usually not personalised, making them easily shareable
Highlights:
- Affordable and easy to track using QR codes and pURLs
- Easily incorporated into broader marketing strategies
- Increase brand visibility
Catalogues
If the word catalogues bring bulky books to your mind, it is time to change that misconception. Businesses continue to print such heavy catalogues but not for mailing.
Instead, they produce smaller versions and mail them in direct mail formats to help recipients get a glimpse into their products. Then, they can visit the company website online or view the digital catalogue to learn more and order.
Catalogues are not apt for every company, but they can do wonders for industries like interior items, paints, veneers, electrical equipment, etc.
Highlights:
- Ideal for demonstrating several products in one place
- Giving numerous options to prospects to induce sales
- Driving recipients to your website
Newsletters
They are one of the most underrated cool direct mail formats because businesses don’t know how to use offline newsletters. But, it is simple! You can start by printing out copies of the same newsletter you send to your prospects via email now and then.
Then, compile a targeted mailing list to mail your newsletters and drive responses. The key is to add an exciting offer and upfront CTA to guide readers on what to do next.
Highlights:
- Best for educating prospects and customers about the latest news and industry trends
- Showcasing your expertise in the field
- Keeping readers hooked on upcoming issues and engaging them on other platforms
How Can PostGrid’s Direct Mail Formats Help You Boost Your Campaign Results?
PostGrid offers several direct mailing collateral options to fit your expectations. But, it offers something way more helpful—automated solutions. Yes, you got that right! Our services allow you to conduct direct mail campaigns online without you having to do anything.
PostGrid’s direct mail API lets you design and print your direct mail formats in only two business days. Our vast network of established printers helps print your items in top-notch quality and prepare them for mailing. From stuffing to affixing postage stamps, you can outsource every minor step using PostGrid.
Thus, you can save tons of effort, costs, and time—assets invaluable to a company! Also, you get many other features, like:
- Address verification
- Mailing list compilation
- Zapier integration
- Real-time tracking
- Campaign insights
- Dedicated customer support
- API docs, etc.
Conclusion
There are many direct mail formats that you can try out for your mailing campaigns. Thankfully, PostGrid offers A/B testing to help you determine which mail types work in your favour. You can send out small batches to check the performance levels and modify your campaign.
Furthermore, PostGrid’s direct mail fulfilment service allows companies to automate everything and sit back. Thus, they can conduct large-volume, highly-effective campaigns from the comfort of their homes or offices. Furthermore, they also have the choice to send on-demand direct mail formats as and when the need arises.
Are you willing to incorporate PostGrid’s automated direct mail API into your system to create and mail the best direct mail formats? Request a demo now and see PostGrid in action!
Ready to Get Started?
Start transforming and automating your offline communications with PostGrid
The post Direct Mail Formats appeared first on PostGrid.
source https://www.postgrid.com.au/direct-mail-format/
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