Summer GouldSubway says to be fresh, you have to refresh, this is also true for your direct mail strategy. Sometimes marketers get stuck in a direct mail rut. They have found a direct mail format that works and just stick to it. Over time, the ROI is shrinking, but not enough to spend time making changes. This is easy, but not the right thing to do. When you get to this point you need to refresh your direct mail approach. This goes beyond thinking outside of the box, by creating something else. What do I mean?
It’s time to use inductive thinking to get to a better creative space. What is inductive thinking? It is when you observe something and you use that information to create something new. Why use it? Because this type of thinking causes you to ask questions, challenge rules and take risks you would not normally take. This leads to new and better direct mail ideas.
Five steps to refreshing your direct mail strategy:
- Doubt Everything – Question what you think you know about your direct mail. This includes all your beliefs, perceptions and assumptions. Only after you do this are you open to new creative thinking. This is the hardest part of refreshing your direct mail approach, but it is worth the effort. This step gets you thinking differently.
- Probe the Possible – You start this with the questions or issues you discovered in step 1 to see which areas of focus will be most important. Beyond that you will want to dig into customer insights which are extremely important. You need to go into the minds of your customers to discover why, where, when and how they choose to buy from you as well as why others don’t buy from you. You are searching to refine any questions or problems you see with your direct mail campaigns.
- Diverge – In this step you will take what you learned from steps 1 and 2 to focus on the one true problem you wish to address. In many cases this will be how can I increase my direct mail response rate. You will then come up with as many ideas as you can no matter how crazy they are. Get creative here consider anything is possible and how it can fix your problem. This step is for creativity and brainstorming.
- Converge – Now you are ready to move on to analyzing what you came up with to find the solution that will work best. You will need to use logic and practicality here. This is where you translate your ideas into reality. You should also be considering postal regulations here.
- Reevaluate – Here you will evaluate how your new direct mail campaign worked. What are the areas of improvement? What else can be tried? You can and should be doing A/B testing to see which designs, offers, lists and so on perform best. Constant vigilance and tracking is required to create and maintain powerful direct mail.
This process can lead to direct mail that is new and effective when you are able to get the right people in the room for effective communication and you allow enough time for each step to really dig deep. The more time you spend with each step the better your results are going to be, keeping in mind that this process never really ends. After each campaign you will evaluate what you did and then start the process to make it even better next time. Constantly refreshing ideas is a great way to continually increase response rates. Are you ready to get started?
