It is not that difficult to have an effective direct mail campaign that draws in customers both new and old. It only takes a little bit of work to create an effective system for your company.

The first and most important concept to make sure to take care of when having a direct mail listing is to have a clear objective of what you want to accomplish with your mailing. Do you want more customers or do you want to offer an incentive to get the customers that you have already to come back to purchase more? Having an idea of what you want to accomplish with your mailings will help conserve money and make your direct mailing campaign effective.

Make your direct mailing campaign personal. People like to receive letters in the mail from friends and relatives and not junk mail. Making your direct mailing campaign more like a letter to a friend than a junk mail add will keep your advertisement from being thrown away.

Give incentives everyone loves to get something whether it be a discount or a free item. An incentive can be aimed at returning customers to keep them coming back for more or to new customers not yet familiar with your company. Incentives can work for either customer category.

Why should they use your company? Put in the direct mail campaign the benefits and reasons why they should come back to use your again or use you for the first time. Make sure they know why you are better than any of your competitors out there. However, keep this relatively humble. No one likes an inflated ego.

Never forget to leave a way for them to contact your business. Should they come into a store, call your over the phone or visit your website. It would be a travesty to have a customer that wants to use your product and is sold on your advertisement but has absolutely no way to reach you to take advantage of that new found knowledge.

Taking these steps will help make your direct mail campaign effective in bringing in customers to your business. Not only to save you money but to also increase your profits. With these things in mind you too can run an effectively keep your business in the minds of the average consumer, bringing your business to the next level.

Direct mail is starting to go green both by choice and by necessity. It is the industry leaders who are going to come out on top and be victorious in this race.  The ability for a company to convert mail to web will be the clear winner and unfortunatly will result in a marketing environment with very few direct mail marketing industry titans.

How is direct mail going green?

PURL Marketing, This is a new technology that has burst onto the marketing scene in the last few years.  This is transforming a URL into a personal message and converting that prospect to a customer when the message is received.  A PURL looks like: JohnDoe.MyDomain.com.  When the user clicks they will be redirected to their personal website to fill in information.

Well you might say why?

Two Reasons:

1.) The environment. As the polar ice caps are melting away at a record pace. The effect on how business need to adapt are greater than ever. Some say we need a major change in the way we do business in order to stop the effects of global warming. However, any change is good change.

2.) Consumers want web 2.0. Consumers want a new version of interaction with the businesses and brands they know and trust. They want to be able to quickly research and find a solution to their problem or pick up a phone and call or log onto the Internet to find out what they are interested in. Consumers are more and more becoming computer Savy techies and businesses need to adapt to that change in culture.