Direct mail marketing is worth billions of dollars to companies which may come as a surprise to you seeing as how most of us throw out the marketing letters we receive by mail. Still, believe it or not, tons of people that receive marketing messages in their mailbox read them and take action.
As a business owner, you must pay mind to that and start considering seriously a direct mail component to your outreach ecosystem.
But how does one start an offline mailing list? Is building a business mailing list more trouble than it’s worth?
As you’ll discover in this post, building a mailing list is simple. By undertaking the task, you’ll inject more revenue into your organization. Keep reading to learn how to get started!
Start With Great Content
Don’t lift a finger on the business mailing list front before you start thinking seriously about the kind of content you’re going to be firing off. Why is content so important when you’re running direct mail campaigns?
First off, direct mail is going to cost you more than email. That’s to be expected given the physical nature of it so you don’t want to waste money on bad mailers.
Second, sending things to people’s homes is a very personal means of contact. Because of that, you stand a much higher chance of frustrating consumers if the messages you send through are of little interest to them.
Think About What Would Make Consumers Excited
The best way you can send a note to someone’s home without them thinking poorly of your brand or worse, calling and complaining about you harassing them, is to put yourself in their shoes. You need to ask yourself, what would make this consumer glad to have received this letter from my business?
We can’t answer that question for you because we don’t know your business or your customer. We can say though that the more empathy you feel for your recipient, the better received your mail will be.
Pick a Database/Direct Mail Provider
Companies that want to scale their business mailing list success need to work with a database/mail provider.
There are partners out there that have online platforms where you can enter and collect customer addresses. Then, with those addresses in place, you can upload mailer designs and at the click of a button, have your platform send mail to all (or some) of your leads.
Yes, working with a provider costs more money than hand printing and mailing envelopes yourself. But do you really want to be spending hours each week writing addresses on envelopes and walking them to the post office?
Your time is more valuable than that.
Add Your Existing Addresses
With your content in mind and your platform in place, it’s time to start adding homes to your mailing list. The best place to start is by using any existing addresses your company already has in your database.
Existing addresses might come from online orders you’ve filled in the past, people that have signed up for digital mailing lists and have shared their addresses, etc.
You’ll find that by adding the addresses you already know, you’ll feel a sense of gaining momentum and may even be surprised by how big a head start you have in the mailing list game.
Create a Digital Sign-Up Form
To keep collecting addresses for your business mailing list, you need to have a simple place where people can sign up. For us, that means using your mailing list platform to generate a digital sign-up form and sharing it in as many places as you can.
Low-handing places to share include social media, your website, and on the receipts, you may send to any eCommerce customers you have.
Collect Additional Addresses Offline
One of the biggest mistakes we see people make when they’re trying to collect addresses for their mailing list is focusing solely on digital. If you have any engagement with customers offline whatsoever, know that’s an equally (if not better) place to ask people to hop into your mail ecosystem.
Those of you that have storefronts can have a sign-up sheet at the counter. If you visit trade shows, offer people discounts in exchange for their mailing information.
The more creative you can get in your asks, the better your conversions will be.
Buy Leads
Trying everything you can but still short on leads for your list? While not always the perfect solution, an effective route for several business owners is using a professionals mailing list (ie: buying pre-compiled leads).
Buying leads consists of going to one of many data brokers that collect and organize user information. These organizations then sell that data in packages to businesses like yours that are looking for quick access to targeted market segments.
Your Business Mailing List Is a Pathway to More Revenue
Some entrepreneurs balk at having a business mailing list because they don’t feel the effort is worth the results. These people haven’t been paying enough attention to the virtues of direct mail, clearly, given that direct mail offers outstanding ROI and if done correctly, is certainly worth the effort.
At the end of the day though, we can tell you how great direct mail is until we’re blue in the face. The only way you can know first-hand what benefits it provides is by trying it for yourself.
With that in mind, we invite you to explore the importance of a mailing list by instituting one in your company, at least on a trial basis. If you’d like additional guidance as you do, feel free to explore more content on our blog.