Best Direct Mail Formats for Leads
Strategic format use heightens impact
Your brand and business purpose lay the groundwork for effective direct-mail campaigns and how to choose mailer formats. Do your customers want confidence and trust from a financial advisor? Are they looking for a fun and convenient buying experience from a new car dealer? Do customers want a reliable and honest agent for a long-term business relationship?
Your mailer’s format should reflect who you are and what your customers want, whether you’re a financial advisor, insurance agent, a car dealer – or any small business.
Direct mail has an infinite pallet for creativity. Which direct-mail format you use follows function: what do you want to accomplish? Awareness? Leads? Visits? Sales?
See how these formats might work for your next campaign:
Postcards
The powerful attraction from color and size makes postcards a great tool for announcements, sales, urgent deadlines, and brand awareness.
Postcards are the least expensive direct-mail tools, so are perfect for every-home delivery to blanket specific market areas with your brand and special offers. They send a quick, easy-to-grasp message with a clear call to action.
Bold colors and graphics make postcards work. They command attention and deliver quick information in fun and memorable ways.
If your prospects need more information, postcards can direct them to your website or social media for details, special gifts, or free resources. This media works like trumpets and parades: they’re attention demanding and help direct prospects to becoming leads, to becoming sales, to becoming lifetime customers.
Letters
Letters carry a sense of authority and formality. They provide space to deliver more complex messages. Research has shown that for products or services with higher price or investment, people have more confidence in a complete presentation that delivers not only a message but an impression of capability, expertise, and professionalism.
A longer message is perfectly appropriate and will be read if it is well-written and explains the relevant benefits and values of your offer without bragging.
Letters and envelopes present importance. Using envelope windows, simple addressing, or a short message on a plain envelope, for example, make a statement of significance.
Especially when personalized, letters help connect your image of professionalism, expertise, and confidence to your prospect’s specific needs. Quality information overcomes offhand dismissal, and it guides prospects into greater connection and relationship with your brand.
Letters also mean envelopes carry added value inside in the form of reply devices, brochures, special inserts for testimonials, order sheets, and more.
Using various sizes, envelopes make you stand out with over- or undersized attention-grabbers, monarch-size invitation envelopes create curiosity, or envelopes with plenty of room allow for external messaging.
A well-written letter can be the start of something beautiful – and profitable.
Handwritten Envelopes
Handwritten envelopes add a special dimension of attraction, personalization, and authenticity that ink jets, crooked labels, and bar codes just can’t provide. A handwritten personal touch will say more about you and your business then just another letter.
Seeing that human touch creates an initial level of trust, and it supports higher open rates to see what’s inside.
Handwritten Greeting Cards
Handwritten greeting cards carry a special message and emotional connection to hearts and minds. Greeting cards for birthdays, anniversaries, and other special occasions demonstrate a higher level of personal care and concern.
Olde School Marketing’s unique handwritten services and subscriptions enable you to send personal greetings to customers and prospects without demands or distractions from your sales time. Your message is handwritten and signed by a human. The envelope is handwritten, stamped, and your card is inserted.
You control the distribution and who you send to. You provide the message, we provide the greeting cards and the hand-writers.
People love to get mail, and especially love to get greeting cards that bring smiles and happy feel-good messages.
Brochures
Send brochures with designs that help you tell your story in a self-contained mailer. Customers or prospects open the mail and open your brochure with your complete message, announcement, or sales presentation.
Brochures can be simple three-fold, double-sided pieces or multipage booklets.
Various paper qualities help you tell your story appropriately and achieve your marketing goal with a comprehensive, affordable, highly attractive direct-mail presentation.
Specialty or dimensional mailers
Cardboard tubes with rolled specialty charts or supporting materials for financial decisions, a gift box with a quality key ring or money clip, or other promotional products that relate to your specific offer often attract special attention and a “wow” from existing customers or prospects.
Because of the expense, think through how these products directly relate to your business proposition and the customer’s need. Distribution should be sent to narrowly defined lists or your own customer lists so you send to the right people most likely to appreciate and respond.
You don’t want to detract from your image as a professional but do want to increase appreciation, curiosity, or function that elicits strong emotional responses and business connection. Product quality, cleverness, and relevance are important in product selection.
Free, no-obligation consultation
Want to talk through some ideas on what would work best for your campaign to achieve your marketing goals? Give us a call or email us. We would love to discuss a creative, functional, and effective strategy to build your business.
Call 1-(870) 505-6580