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How to Define Direct Mail Target Market

By: Andrew Glover
August 21, 2020

Your organization must first identify your typical member and tailor your marketing to build a solid foundation. Targeting a specific market doesn’t mean you are excluding people who don’t fit your criteria. Target marketing empowers you to direct your marketing budget and brand message on a pinpointed market that is more likely to interact with you than other markets. A direct mail target market effort is an affordable, efficient, and effective way to reach prospects and grow your membership.

What Is a Target Market?

A direct mail target market is a group of potential members to whom an organization wants to share its mission statement. The target market individuals are one aspect of the total market for a good or service. People who make up a target market share similar characteristics, including geography, demographics, or incomes.

A Target Market Is Essential

It’s important to identify your target market in the beginning phase of your marketing place development. You don’t want your marketing budget to go to waste by sending materials to random people. Don’t risk losing a return on your investment. There will be a huge sunk cost in capital and indirectly from lost time if you don’t know who you are targeting for a marketing campaign.

How to Define Your Target Market

It’s much easier to determine where and how to market your organization with a clearly defined target audience. Setting your target market takes time, but once you know your ideal member, you can build campaigns around their characteristics.

Here are some tips to help you define your direct mail target market.

Analyze Your Product or Service

Create a list of each feature of your product or service. Next to each element, list the provided benefits. Once you have the benefits listed, make a list of people who need what your benefit achieves. Your organization has an established mission goal. Learn from other organizations that have similar goals. Who are they targeting? Who are their current members? Directly competing for their donation dollars may make sense in some occasions, but you may need to search for a niche market that they are overlooking.

Learn From Your Current Members

Who are your current members, and why do they donate to your organization instead of another? Search for common characteristics and interests. Likely, other individuals like them could also benefit from joining your organization. Based on your findings, figure out who is most likely to appreciate your mission goal. Think about factors like age, location, gender, income level, education level, marital or family status, occupation, or ethnic background.

Geo-Mapping Options

You can use a geo-mapping tool when targeting members based on location. Geo-mapping uses data to find your target market based on their zip code, city, or state. There are many ways of filtering data based on what characteristics you think are best for your direct mail target market.

Psychographics

Psychographics are another way of pinpointing your target market. They include more personal characteristics of a person, such as personality, attitudes, values, interests or hobbies, lifestyles, and behavior. Determine how your organization will fit into your target’s lifestyle. Ask yourself how and when your target will interact with your organization and its mission.

Evaluate Your Decision

Don’t break down your target market too far. You can have more than one niche market. However, you’ll need to determine if your marketing message should be different for each niche group. If you communicate to multiple niches with the same message, your targeting may be too granular. This will also be the case if your targeting results in too few people fitting the criteria for an effective ROI (keeping in mind that volume is important when sending direct mail). The goal is to find the perfect balance.

Direct Mail Target Marketing with Valtim

Defining your target is the difficult part. It’s much easier to figure out which media you can use to reach your audience once you know who you are targeting. Valtim can help with both aspects of your marketing campaign. We can assist in helping with your target market and building a campaign around them. Your organization will save money and get a better return on investment by defining your target audience. The individuals who receive your materials will appreciate the targeted message and value the content you send them.

Contact Valtim today to learn more about our direct mail target marketing options.

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