20 Plus Dos and Don'ts of Good Direct Marketing

In a previous post I promised a list of direct mail dos and don'ts so here they are in no particular order:

Do:

• Focus on your target audience as well as who you don’t want to mail to
• Personalize your messages
• Use direct mail to acquire, retain and win back customers
• Make it easy for me to respond (include 800#s, URLs, mail response and
  today, mobile text messaging)
• Think through your strategy and make sure everything is in order before
  the mailing (sales, fulfillment etc)
• Create a sense of urgency
• Provide an offer or incentive for me to respond
• Get creative and think about what is going to make me take notice of your mailing
• Test everything (lists, offers, formats, messages, etc)
• Make your mailings interactive to get the reader involved
• Use active and directional words in the copy
• Set goals and read results
• Use direct mail to sell your products or generate leads
• Hire a specialist if you never worked with direct mail - you won’t be
  disappointed.

Don’t:

•  Focus exclusively on the creative or offer - the list is the most important part of the mailing
• Mail dated material to close to the due date
• Copy your competition - how do you know their mailing works?
• Try to wow me with fancy creative and forget about the benefits (what’s in it for me)
• Forget a call to action - you would be surprised how many mailings miss this one
• Try direct mail once and give up - it takes time to build a great program
• Rely on one media channel
• Get complacent with your mailings or results - you can always test and do better
• Assume since you like something your audience will too
• Use direct mail as a branding tool and expect sales results
• Refer to direct mail as junk mail

OK that is more then 20 and I am sure there are more.  If you have additional points you want to make please share them in the comments section. 

Josef Katz