Historically, saturation delivery of direct mail can have a 1-2% response rate.  In the “old days”, this might have been acceptable, but with the increased cost in paper and postage, marketers that still rely on saturation delivery need to seriously think about creating greater efficiency in their campaigns.

In a recent article on Investor.com, author Ernan Roman suggested that the easiest way to boost direct mail response rates is to simply ask the customer what they want, and that through a few simple strategies, businesses can increase their response rates to double digit percentages.  Of course this sounds intuitive, but many marketers simply don’t take this path, and they end up wasting precious marketing budget dollars.

Paper or Email? Start by asking your customers how they want to be contacted.  Some prefer to receive mailings, others prefer email.  Update your customer list to include these preferences.

Provide Value. Anything that you send to your customer list, no matter what media you send it in, should provide value to your customer.  Whether it’s helpful tips and resources in an email or coupons in a direct mail piece, your contact with them should contain something that your customer will want to act on immediately.

Track and Analyze. These days, your customer database has to keep track of the purchasing habits of each customer.  This data can help you segment your database, and allow you to send targeted messages that each segment will want to read.  You can alert specific customers when a new product or service is available, if that product or service would be attractive based on previous purchases.  Customers are far more likely to respond to a mailing if it has something chosen especially for them.

Of course, these activities take time and resources to plan and execute, but the end result of cost savings and an increase in direct mail response rates will more than make up for it.