On-time delivery is an essential aspect of direct mail. But there are a lot of other vital components involved in a direct mail project. There are many steps involved in the direct mail process, including variable data direct mail, choosing your targeted audience, mail matching, and mail inserting.
Here’s a look at the many logistical necessities needed for a successful direct mail campaign.
Variable Data Direct Mail
One of the first steps in a direct mail marketing plan is creating the design you want to use for the project. Your organization can significantly improve the effectiveness of your communications by adding unique touches to mail items. There are a lot of customization options such as contextual graphics and different font elements. Choosing a personal approach like adding a customer’s name or title can allow the piece to feel unique to them.
You can even replace large areas of your marketing materials to reflect different demographic preferences. Choosing how to personalize your marketing materials is a crucial aspect of direct mail logistics.
Targeted Direct Mail Marketing
Another logistical aspect of direct mail is focusing on targeted mailing. You can build a specific profile targeted towards the types of members you want to reach. By choosing a particular target audience, you can guarantee your mail pieces are received and read by the right people. Here are a few ways to target the right audience.
Geo-Targeting
Geo-targeting is when you use location data to choose your audience. You can select to target a small area like a specific neighborhood or city, or you can target an entire state.
Demographic Targeting
Demographic targeting is a way to target your audience based on one or more demographics. Some demographics could include gender, age, race, marital status, or family type. You can create your targeted audience by choosing what demographics are the most important for your member-base.
Economic Targeting
Economic targeting is a type of demographic targeting where you focus on a member’s economic factors. Some of the elements may include their income, net worth, employment status, home ownership, lifestyle, and level of education. When you understand your ideal member’s financial ability, you can gain a better understanding of your organization’s conversion rates.
Direct Mail Processes
Mail inserting
Mail inserting is the process of assembling all of your direct mail materials into the correct envelope or package. With the right technology, mail inserting is a flawless procedure. Even high volume and complex mailing jobs can undergo a quick mail inserting system.
Mail Matching
Mail matching is the process of creating and inserting multiple marketing pieces into a single envelope. Each item can be placed in a specific order in the envelope. The customization of how your members view the materials is beneficial in producing a lasting impression.
Mail inserting and mail matching help ensure the right pieces are arriving at the right people. Without these two processes, it wouldn’t matter how quickly your materials arrived because they wouldn’t be arriving at the right home.
On-Time Delivery
On-time delivery is a desired aspect of all marketing projects. Organizations want their materials delivered in a timely fashion so they can start to see the results of their interaction. But without a lot of other logistical aspects like mail inserting and mail matching, on-time delivery wouldn’t be as efficient. For instance, without proper mail inserting and mail matching, the materials may be delivered on time but to the wrong people. Then the marketing campaign may not be very successful. So, it’s important to value every logistical step instead of focusing on one or the other.
Optimizing Direct Mail with Valtim
Valtim can help your organization achieve all the logistical steps involved with direct mail. We can help you customize your mail items and help you create the ideal target audience. We are aware of high-value regions and can help you cross-reference other targeting data points within pinpointed regions. With the right audience, we can guarantee improved responses and help you convert leads into supportive members.
Once the design is made, we have five mail inserting machines that can help with high volume and complex mail inserting. We use 2-D barcoding technology to ensure all mail pieces are inserted into the correct envelopes. Our technology allows for up to 9 items to be inserted into the corresponding packages.
Let Valtim help you optimize direct mail logistics.
