Albert Einstein said “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”  Mistakes can be learning experiences, but as valuable as it is to learn from our own mistakes, I’ve found it to be more beneficial to learn from the mistakes of others.  In 17 years of experience in the direct mail industry we’ve seen far too many companies big and small make the same mistakes within their direct mail campaigns.  For this reason, we’ve identified several direct mail mistakes for you to avoid.

 

Do the math first

Before investing money in a mail campaign, determine what results you need to produce in order to offset the costs. Without this information, you can’t make an informed decision on whether executing a direct mail campaign makes sense.  If math isn’t your strong suit, simply take advantage of our ANS calculator to help you determine your campaign budget.

 

Make list selection a top priority

Nothing plays a greater role in your mailing’s success than list selection.  No matter how good the copy or offer is, you’re not going to sell lawnmowers to Eskimos.  With over 17 years of experience, American Name Services takes pride in taking the time to learn about your organization, its competitors, the mailing’s offer and your past mailing results to help formulate the perfect campaign.  It’s vitally important for you to be involved with your mailing’s list selection.

 

Don’t be content with your sub-par creative

You have thousands of dollars invested.  You’ve been professionally trained in your field of expertise and you have trained employees.  Don’t allow sub-par creative to give a misrepresentation of who you are, what you do and why your product or service should be important to your prospective client.  Allowing a professional design team to create your marketing materials should be the easiest cost for you to justify.  Our creative department takes pride in becoming familiar with all aspects of your company, and then creates dynamic marketing material that is positioned to maximize your response rate.

 

Track your results

All too often companies will deploy their direct mail campaign with only a hope and a prayer and nothing to measure the campaign performance.   These companies need to realize that there are multiple variables that comprise a successful campaign and if they don’t have the proper tools to track these variables they will never learn from their mistakes.  With ANS’s Campaign Trakker, you can track the results of your campaign, regardless of the medium, so you know where you got the best ROI.

 

Having ANS as the marketing extension of your company will allow you to dedicate your time and energies to your profession. We create the assurance that your marketing campaigns will not fall victim to these and many other common mistakes.