BEST PRACTICES
5 Tips for Powerful Headlines
Whether it’s direct mail or signage, email or print advertising, a great headline stops your audience in its tracks. Paired with relevant images, a great headline grabs people and makes them say, “I need to pay attention to this!” Especially if it’s targeted or personalized in some way.
Here are five insider tricks to increasing the stopping power of your headlines.
1. Tap into breaking news.
Tying your products and services to current events increases the relevance to your audience and the urgency for them to act. Financial services take advantage of uncertainty in the stock market. Retailers of snow blowers and electric generators tap into predictions of early winter storms. What current events can you tie into?
2. Advocate for your audience.
Everyone wants an advocate—someone who will look out for them. The message is: We care. This is a technique used to great effectiveness by accident lawyers. “Hurt in an accident? We can help!” Read More.
10 Tips For Writing A Successful Email Marketing Campaign
1. Create a multi-channel campaign by coordinating email with other marketing efforts. Match a personalized email campaign with a personalized direct mail campaign, mentioning the same offer in both. Using cross-media marketing has consistently proven to increase response rates.
2. Keep your customer database clean and updated. Keep track of how customers responded to your last campaign and remove those who do not wish to be contacted in the future. Keeping an updated list allows you to focus your efforts on customers with the greatest likelihood of conversion. Read More.
Mindful Social Media
1. Know Your Intentions
Before you post, ask yourself: Am I looking to be seen or validated? Is there something more constructive I could do to meet that need?
2. Be Your Authentic Self
Talk about the things that really matter to you. Read More.
5 Tips for Outstanding Direct Mail Design
With any direct mail piece, the goal is to entice people to respond to your offer. But with great direct mail pieces, you can hook them before they even get to the offer. Engage people’s curiosity from the moment the mail piece gets into their hands. Here are seven tips for capturing readers at the outset:
1. Use the upper right-hand corner.
This is a tip lifted from the playbook of highly effective catalogers. The upper right-hand corner is where our eyes go first. Then our eyes proceed along the top of the page, then continue down to the rest. Use the upper right-hand corner to place teaser copy or compelling data such as “99% customer satisfaction rate!”
2. Keep it clean.
When the layout is cluttered, it’s hard for people to focus on any one thing. Use white space to draw the eye and make information easy to absorb. Instead of heavy blocks of text, consider using bulleted or numbered lists. Read More.
Direct Mail Checklist
In today’s world of complex creative and nonstop marketing assault, it’s easy to forget the basics. Before designing that visually extravagant mailer, take a step back and make sure you’ve covered the fundamentals.
1. List. Who are you sending the mailer to? Is the list current? Are you mailing to the right people? Are the names up to date? Are there duplicates (or even triplicates) that need to be culled?
2. Basic segmentation. Even if you are not using full personalization, your mailing should still have basic segmentation that allows you to speak relevantly to your core target audiences. If you’re selling homeowners or auto insurance, for example, you’ll speak differently to families with children than you will to retirees. Read More.
Direct Mail and Social Media Pair for Profitability
Direct mail and social media: the perfect pairing for profitability? Absolutely! Increasingly, we are seeing these two channels complementing one another in the multichannel mix. What makes them work so well together?
Consumers love social media, and the more engaged consumers are with your brand’s social media efforts, the better. Higher levels of customer engagement—regardless of channel—lead to strong customer loyalty and higher long-term sales. Social media is great for that. But print offers benefits that social media doesn’t. Studies show that print’s tangibility leaves a deeper footprint in consumers’ brains and results in higher levels of (and more accurate) recall. When direct mail and social media are used together? Marketing dynamite! Read More.