Sometimes, even the best-laid direct mail marketing campaigns can fall flat. But wait—were they really that well-laid? If your direct mail efforts haven’t been getting the returns you want, here’s how to start figuring out where it went wrong:

1. Wrong list. Your direct mail success starts and ends with the strength of your mailing list. Without a good mailing list, the most brilliant campaign in the world is doomed to failure. Maybe you purchased a list that hadn’t been properly cleaned and wasted time sending to people not at that address. Maybe you simply targeted the wrong group of people or cast too wide or too narrow a net. Whatever happened, you didn’t get your message in the hands of the right people.
2. Right list, wrong message. On the other hand, maybe you mailed to a carefully chosen list of demographically and psychographically attractive prospects and scrubbed that list with the greatest care and you’re still hearing crickets. In that case, you need to consider that you sent the wrong message to the right people. When you were selecting those likely prospects, did you stop and consider what really matters to them? Did you focus on stability and security for Baby Boomers? Did you not give enough information about your new insurance program? There was some disconnect in your messaging between the people you wanted to reach and the way you reached them. Back to the drawing board.
3. Wrong time. Maybe your message was exactly right and delivered to precisely the right people—at just the wrong moment. Maybe you were pitching mortgages just after the 2008 housing meltdown or maybe you were trying to sell snow shovels in July. You miscalculated the timing, either because of the calendar or because of external events, and as a result, your mailing was ignored.
4. No call to action. Maybe the message was all right, delivered to your exquisitely clean list at the perfect moment. People looked at your letter or postcard with rhapsodic joy…and put it aside because it didn’t tell them what to do next. You didn’t give them a clue about what they were supposed to buy, who they were supposed to call or why they were supposed to care. It doesn’t matter how right the rest of the pieces of your campaign are if no one understands how they’re supposed to respond.

The good thing about all these problems is that they’re solvable. All it takes is a slight adjustment of strategy, a little change in the way you approach direct mail marketing, and you’re back in business. Need help finding out what went wrong with your marketing? Contact Premier Advantage Marketing, a direct marketing agency. We’ll help you untangle it all and make sure every part of your marketing is working together in perfect accord.