You may not realize it, but your company has a personality. That personality is your brand, and your brand determines how your customers think and feel about you, and what they expect from you. Your brand may be carefully calculated and executed, or it may be something that has evolved organically over time. Whichever is true for you, however, you need to make sure that your direct mail campaigns match and complement your brand. Here is how you can do that.
Use Consistent Design
The graphic design for your direct mail campaign should match your website, printed marketing materials and other items that you use for branding purposes in style and general feeling. Make sure that your direct mail piece reflects the look and feel of those items, or you risk confusing your customers.
Keep Your Message Consistent
Whether you are promoting a particular element of your product or service, a special offer or something else, your message should be consistent across all of your platforms. Be sure to co-ordinate printed marketing materials and direct mail campaigns with your website and social media platforms. Blog about related topics, and add a call to action to the bottom of your email signature. Great marketing campaigns are consistent across all platforms, and that single-minded message helps to reinforce the idea for your customers.
Keep Your Outreach Activities Consistent
Customers have always, and will always, require more than one contact with an idea or offer before they are willing to buy into it. That means that whether you use direct mail, social media, or something else, you need to allow enough time, and enough interactions with your customers, to convince them to take action. Great direct mail campaigns are not built on one flyer. They are built on regular content and a consistent message.
Keep Quality Consistent
You may not realize it, but the quality of your flyers, printed marketing materials and direct mail materials has as much to do with the impression you make as the words and images you use.
The quality of the paper, the clarity of the graphic design and other factors all play a role in the subconscious picture your potential customers form about your company. You do not need to spend a fortune on your direct mail campaigns, but you also do not want to allow saving a dollar to damage your image.
Customers like Things That Are Familiar
The single biggest reason that you want to be consistent in your direct mail campaigns (and all of your marketing for that reason), is that customers like companies, products and services that are familiar. It is the reason why companies proudly announce that they have been around for fifty years, and it is why you need to be consistent in the type of marketing you choose, and the frequency of contact.
You need to use your direct marketing campaigns to become a household name in the minds of your prospects, and the single best way to do that is to maintain regular contact and be predictable and dependable. Familiarity builds trust, and trust builds businesses.
