Numerous companies have included marketing with direct mail in their promotional activities for years. The kinds of marketing pieces that are mailed out include letters, postcards, catalogs, brochures, and more. The direct mail process includes a couple of different steps which are: putting together a piece to mail out, choosing lists that the marketing piece will be sent out to, mailing out the piece, and studying the results of the mailing. Each of these areas are reviewed in detail below.

To start, a direct mailing piece has to be created. The type of piece created depends on a company’s particular needs and financial constraints. The piece can be anywhere from a plain postcard to a decorative brochure. At the time that a specific kind of mailing piece has been established, a graphic professional is employed to design it. The mailing piece will most likely go through a few different versions before everyone on the marketing team gives it their full approval.

At the same time that a direct mail piece is being created, lists of people who the promotion will be sent out to must be selected. Direct mailing lists can be rented from list brokers. Furthermore, sources of names can also come from the company itself; past customers and inquiries are some of the best lists to send out marketing pieces to. For instance, a company that markets baby products may want to send out a postcard promotion that highlights its new baby bath wash. The mailing could be sent to people who have signed up on the firm’s website and a compiled list rental of people who subscribe to various parenting magazines.

When the marketing piece is ready to be mailed out and the lists have been selected, the lists are emailed to a mail house, while a copy of the creative piece is sent to a printing facility. The mail house will merge all of the lists into a master list and remove any duplicate names from it. The printer will print the marketing piece, and the printed copies will be shipped to the mailing company. The piece can either be sent out first class or regular rate, depending on what the firm wants. It is a lot more expensive to send out mail first class, but mail also gets to people much sooner via first class than it does by the regular rate.

It can take up to 2 weeks for the mailing pieces to reach their destinations. At the time that the mail reaches people, the business sending out the promotion uses the marketing performance indicators of hit rate, performance profit, and ROI (return on investment) to measure how well the piece did. Hit rates are the number of people per thousand promotional pieces sent out who responded to the company’s offer. Higher hit rates are better. ROI equals the revenue divided by promotional expenses multiplied by one hundred, and performance profit is revenue minus expenses. Higher ROIs and performance profits are better, though if they are too high, it may be a negative. This is since astronomically high performance profits and returns on investment indicate that a marketer could have spent more money to capitalize on revenue potential.

In conclusion, direct mail marketing involves a profusion of steps. These include putting together a piece to mail out, choosing lists that the marketing piece will be sent out to, mailing out the piece, and studying the results of the mailing.

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