Direct mail is an effective method of advertising. In the past, I have been less than satisfied with my response to direct mailings. They are THE most expensive way for us to obtain leads, but it is important to remember that it is not supposed to be a one time thing. People get frustrated that they are not having good results with their direct mail. However, a customer needs to see your name about 7x before they act on it. So especially if you are mailing to a new area you should not expect the same response. Once you market to the same area over and over again, year after year, your response will increase.
Additionally, there are indirect, measurable benefits to direct mail. Just because a client sees your post card and throws it away does not mean you did not get your message across. They may see your truck drive by after and think to themselves, “oh, that name looks familiar” and call you over the other guys.
I plan to continue to aggressively push our direct mail campaigns now that we have more money to work with in our marketing budget. We have recently experimented with the EDDM campaigns by the USPS which is cheap but not necessarily hitting our target market so I will have to research this a little further before I make a decision for this year.
