Tactics for Personalizing Direct Mail
Among the numerous benefits offered by our
digital printing services at Sun Print Solutions,
personalization regularly stands out. The ability to send personalized printed pieces to various audiences across several mediums is huge for many marketing and branding efforts, often the key factor that differentiates you from the competition.
You may not have even thought it was possible before reading this, but this kind of personalization even extends to “old school” areas like direct mail. Sending the same direct mail to an entire mailing list will never be as effective as using different versions for different segments, and the more personal you can get here, the better. Let’s look at some of the options available to you in terms of personalization, plus some tactics to take in this realm.
Personalization Options
If you’re on top of your branding game, you should be collecting as much information as you can from customers and prospective customers. Here are some examples of the kinds of informational crux points you can use to separate client groups and personalize your direct mail pieces:
- Product type or qualities
- Buyer age
- Buyer purchase history or donation history
- Company type (dealer, contractor, manufacturer, citizen, etc.)
- Geographic location
- Important dates (graduation, anniversary, birthday)
- Even more granular details – today’s technology and data capture allows for incredibly specific branding in some cases, such as a clothing store mailing all customers in a given area who wear the same size shirt
Assessing the Competition
There’s no shame in looking to your competition, as well as your own past successes, when determining which personalization strategies work best for you. This is a huge part of the retail industry, for instance, where most stores keep track of what clients buy and then are able to send follow-up promotional offers based on this. Take the time to assess what your competition is doing well and see which parts of that you can transfer to your own efforts.
Personalization and Segmenting
The key point we’re trying to get at throughout this blog is this: The days of limited personalization are over for successful campaigns. If your personalization is limited to just name and contact information, you’ve fallen behind the competition – competition that’s developing distinct customer segments and purchase profiles, then using this information to craft various direct mail pieces that fit these segments.
The first step here involves cleaning up your customer and prospect databases. If your information isn’t accurate in these areas, your efforts will suffer as a result. Once you’re sure everything in your list is accurate and up-to-date, you can look for ways to add fields and additional prospects to the list wherever possible.
For more on personalizing direct mail, or to learn about any of our digital printing services, speak to the staff at
Sun Print Solutions today.
