Thursday, October 4, 2007

Steps To Help You Make Effective Direct Mail Postcards (part 2)

We’ve previously talked about the first steps for a successful postcard printing direct mail campaign. Now here are the next steps to complete your postcard printing project:

Begin your postcard printing design. After you have planned what type of clients would be your main target, and what compelling message to include in your postcard printing copy, it’s now time to start developing your postcard printing design and layout for your direct mail piece.

Your main objective is to get the attention of your target readers, and make sure that they read what you have written in your postcard printing direct mail campaign. Nevertheless, your ultimate goal is to have a positive response from your postcard printing direct mail that would help you increase your return of investment.

Once you have chosen your format, you can now lay out your postcard printing elements. To start off, choose illustrations and images that will accompany your postcard printing content. We use the word ‘accompany’ to emphasize that your graphic images should only be used to highlight a point, and not to distract your target readers from what is really important – your postcard printing message.

Next is to create a postcard printing headline that grabs your target readers’ attention. It’s either you ask a hard-hitting question, or something clever and witty about your business offer. Just remember that whichever you choose, the bottom line is to get their attention, enough to read what you have to say in your postcard printing project.

After you’re satisfied with your postcard printing design and layout, print it and make revisions when necessary. This is where you compare your postcard printing design and layout with other direct mail pieces you find effective. You could also ask somebody else to look at your postcard printing project and get feedback from them. Revise if you think you need to add more elements, or even take out what is unnecessary.

The nest step is to get your postcard printing project reproduced. It’s either you print them yourself, or you get a professional postcard printing company to do it for you.

After getting your results from your postcard printer, you can now mail your postcard printing pieces to your target clients. Consider the quantity and the budget you’ve allotted for your postcard printing direct mail campaign. Consider doing it in-house, or you can hire a mail house to post your postcard printing pieces to your client database. They could even add to your list of target clients as they most probably have a direct mail database of their own.

Finally, the last step to your postcard printing direct mail campaign would be to follow-up with your prospective clients who have received as well as responded to your postcard printing project. A phone call to your prospective clients can give you the opportunity to answer queries and provide additional information on your products and services.

When you do your follow up, it would also help you measure and evaluate the effectiveness of your postcard printing direct mail campaign. You could create a table and include areas like the number of leads generated, qualified prospective clients obtained, scheduled appointments, presentations and demonstrations made, sales and add-on sales acquired. You can then compare the results to the goals you’ve set up in the beginning of your postcard printing direct mail campaign.

With the results from your feedback system, you’ll be able to measure and even calculate your return of investment from this particular postcard printing project, which you can use for direct mail campaigns later on.


http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Steps-To-Help-You-Make-Effective-Direct-Mail-Postcards--Part-2-/312508