Direct Mail Mistakes

Most startups ignore direct mail, thinking it’s an archaic customer acquisition channel. It can work; companies do it for a reason. Start by avoiding these common mistakes:

• Buying a low-quality list: We’ve heard decent places to buy lists.
• Not being ready for direct mail: You’ll need to know your audience and demographics in order to personalize your outreach in a way that maximizes conversions. If your mailers come across as mass marketing, they’ll go into the garbage. You can segment your mailings into distinct groups of recipients: Use relevant images (e.g. show a picture of what they already bought from you) and/or print out their business details (e.g. job title, company, logo). You can programmatically pull in these firmographic details using Clearbit.
• Not sending enough mail: Many folks give up after one unsuccessful mailer. When doing cold outreach, you need a list of at least 10,000 recipients and you should send 3 pieces per address. 
• Not having a clear call-to-action with an expiration date on the card: There should be a single call-to-action urging recipients to move onto the next steps. 
• Not having a tracking strategy: Don’t just rely on geographic lift. You can use a unique domain on each mailer that forwards to your sales page with expanded UTM tags.