How to Build a Better Direct Mail Offer

Key Takeaways

A strong direct mail offer should provide clear value and make sense for the audience receiving it and be easy to understand with an easy-to-understand call to action.
A way to improve your direct mail offer that is more generous isn’t necessarily a better offer. Consider the quality and profitability of responses that it generates.
Testing different offers with your audience can help determine what type of offer resonates with your audience.

Introduction

While having a good mail piece, mailing list, and target audience are all important, they can all fall apart if you fail to have a good offer for your audience. Sure, you might get someone’s attention, but if you fail to give them a compelling reason to respond and claim your offer, your campaign could struggle to generate the results that you’re trying to get. While building the best offer can be hard, remember to match the offer to the audience.

What Is a Direct Mail Offer?

Your offer is what you’re presenting to the consumer in exchange for them taking some desired action during your direct mail campaign. There are several examples of offers, such as:

20% off a purchase
Free consultation
Free trial
Receiving a gift with any purchase
Limited-time pricing

And so much more. Your offer doesn’t exclusively need to be a discount for the recipient; it could be a complimentary service or product. What your offer is should be determined on a campaign-by-campaign basis, based on your industry, target audience, campaign objective, and many other factors.

Make the Value of Your Offer Clear

If you’re trying to improve your direct mail offer and your audience doesn’t see a value to your offer, they are less likely engage with it. Your offer should be clear enough so that someone only needs to give your mail piece a quick glance to understand what you’re offering to them.

Match Your Offer to Your Audience

Every campaign that you run might be targeting a different audience. If this is the case, what works for one audience might not resonate with another. While the offer that you have on your mail piece might still be valuable, it might not be worth engaging with if the wrong person receives it.

For example, if you’re trying to improve your direct mail offer and targeting a new clientele for your next campaign, offering a new customer discount could be appropriate. If you’re targeting a business audience, then offering a free industry report or consultation might appeal to them more. No matter what you have on your mail piece, the offer needs to make sense for the audience who receives it.

Give Your Recipient a Reason to Act

Getting your recipient to claim your offer without delaying can help you to improve your direct mail offer. While you need to encourage your recipient to act to claim the offer, you shouldn’t artificially create urgency or scarcity. If you have a genuine deadline for your offer, clearly communicate this with the mail piece’s recipient. For example, if your offer expires on a certain date, make that expiration date easy to find.

Make It Easy for Your Audience to Respond

There are different response mechanisms that you can have for your mail piece, such as a QR Code, tracked phone number, website, or in-person redemption. What the best response mechanism is can help you to improve your direct mail offer, choosing your response mechanism can depend on your audience, offer, and campaign objective. However, when looking at which response mechanism to use, it must be easy to respond. If the respondent is required to jump through metaphorical hoops to claim the offer, what percentage of them will actually see it through to completion?

Don’t Overcomplicate Your Offer

When creating your offer, the recipient should be able to understand what you’re offering, what they need to do to claim the offer, and understand any terms and conditions that apply. If someone needs to read your offer multiple times to understand what you’re trying to offer to them, your offer might need some revision. If you’re trying to improve your direct mail offer and want to make sure your offer is easy to comprehend, ask someone who will be honest with you what they think of your offer, and see if they’re able to understand it.

Test Multiple Offers

If you’re unsure which offer is going to resonate best with a certain audience, doing a test can help to clear it up. If doing a test with multiple offers, try to make as many of the other aspects of your campaign the same as possible, such as mailing at the same time, and keeping your audience consistent. If you test different offers with different groups using a different mailing list and creative at the same time, it could be difficult to determine which variable caused the difference in performance.

Consider the Cost of the Offer

One of the biggest things to consider when you’re trying to improve your direct mail offer is what the cost of the offer is for you and your company. Just because your response rate is high doesn’t mean that you have the best offer. Imagine I’m testing two different offers:

Offer A: 10% off

1,000 responses

Offer B: $100 gift

1,500 responses

Offer B generated 500 more responses over Offer A, so Offer B is the correct offer, right? Well, how much did those responses cost? Did those 500 more responses turn into long term customers for your company? How many of those responses actually converted into becoming a customer for your business? When looking at any metric, don’t look at it in a vacuum without analyzing other metrics. A list of metrics that should be analyzed when trying to improve your direct mail response include:

FAQ

Q: Does my direct mail offer need to be a discount of some sort?
- A: No. Offers could include discounts, but they can also be a free consultation, financing, informational resources, gifts, estimates, free/discounted trial periods, and more.
Q: Does a bigger discount mean a better offer?
- A: No. While a more generous offer could generate additional responses, this could also attract customers who could be less profitable. Evaluate conversion, acquisition cost, return on investment, and other metrics to make an educated decision on what offer is best for you.
Q: Can I use a different offer depending on my audience?
- A: Yes, you can. What offer resonates with one audience might not work with another, so doing testing across multiple audiences can help to determine which offer performs well with different audiences.
Q: How do I know if my offer is working?
- A: Track responses and the results that those respondents produce, and then compare them against your campaign goals and other tested offers, if applicable.

Conclusion

If you’re trying to improve your direct mail offer, having a solid offer is an important part of bringing your campaign together. While having a good creative, audience, mailing list, and more can be important, if you fail to get your mail piece’s recipient to respond to your offer, your work could fall apart. If you can improve your direct mail offer by giving your target audience a compelling reason to respond while also making the offer make financial sense for your company, you can help build a stronger direct mail campaign.

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