Prices are rising across various industries, including postage costs, making finding ways to save money and make money more crucial than ever. As businesses strive to maintain their marketing efforts even on a tight budget, direct mail marketing is a cost-effective solution that promises high response and conversion rates. However, executing a generic mass mailing can result in wasted money on materials and postage, and low returns. That's why it's essential to utilize the power of targeting.

When you target the right audience, you enhance the effectiveness of your direct mail campaign while saving valuable dollars in the process.

Let's explore how targeted direct mail marketing is your secret solution to overcoming increasing prices and increasing your sales.

Why Targeting Is Essential to Saving Money on Direct Mail Campaigns

When it comes to direct mail campaigns, targeting is the key to maximizing your return on investment and saving money. By sending materials to a carefully selected audience, you can significantly reduce waste and increase your chances of success. Unlike random mailings sent to random people, targeted campaigns ensure that your marketing budget is spent wisely and efficiently. Avoid losing valuable resources and time by focusing on individuals most likely to respond positively to your message. Targeting minimizes the sunk costs associated with irrelevant mailings and enhances your campaign's overall effectiveness, leading to higher conversion rates and increased revenue. Read further to discover how precise targeting through techniques like Look Alike Analysis and Propensity mailing can help you maximize your direct mail campaigns while minimizing costs.

Unique Strategies for Saving Money on Direct Mail Marketing

Many direct mail solutions are designed to save money, including Every Door Direct Mail, where you can reach every address on a mailing route at an affordable price.

Solutions like these, where you send your mailers to a large audience, are effective ways to take advantage of direct mail, enhance brand recall, and drive sales. However, when you're looking to save money on a direct mail campaign while also generating the highest revenue, you need to get specific with your targeting. Rather than getting the word out to as many people as possible—some of whom aren't interested—you need to reach a smaller audience consisting of those most likely to take you up on your offer.

Now, if you know whom to target, you could create a custom mailing list based on location, demographics, net worth, and more, but what do you do if you're unsure who your target audience is or are looking to narrow your target audience even further to save the most money? Here are 3 unique strategies that help you target the right people and are guaranteed to generate outstanding results while saving you a tremendous amount of money:

Utilizing Look-Alike Analysis to Save Money

Look Alike Analysis is a marketing strategy that utilizes data from your current customers. By analyzing your existing customers, you can identify key characteristics of those already interested in your company. After analyzing these characteristics, including interest, buying activity, demographics, income, and more, a new mailing list of prospects who are just like your customers is created.

The customers you already have are interested in your company, have bought or continue to buy from you, and choose your brand over others. These types of individuals are the exact ones you want to target. Leveraging data to identify a similar audience as your current customers results in a targeted audience who is also more likely to be interested in and choose your brand when it comes to making a purchasing decision.

Rather than sending direct mail to a broad, random audience, you reach a defined, likely-to-buy audience who, because they share similar characteristics as your current customers, are likely in need, interested in, and have the same values that make up the audience you already have and that is perfect for your company. Thus, you save money by reaching a narrower or smaller audience, eliminate wasted money spent or sending direct mail to uninterested people, and you increase your return on investment by reaching people who are just like the customers you already have.

Propensity Mailing for Reaching High-Value Prospects

Propensity Mailing, or Intent-Driven Direct Mail, utilizes data selection to predict a person's behavior. There are thousands of details about each person collected daily, including information about if a person buys coffee from a specific brand, recently searched for mattress stores nearby, finds low-interest rates as a deal breaker, or just got married and is searching for a first home. All these details collected about a single person create a prediction of what that person will do next and what they are interested in. Propensity Mailing gathers these details to create a mailing list of those likely to become your customer.

For example, a new seafood restaurant could target people who like seafood and frequently dine at seafood restaurants. Rather than reaching a large unknown audience that consists of individuals who hate seafood, are allergic to shellfish, and have no interest in dining at a seafood restaurant, this new seafood restaurant could reach a smaller, targeted audience where every individual is likely to dine with them.

Propensity Mailing saves money by decreasing the chances you waste money on sending your direct mail to uninterested people. It also increases revenue by enabling you to reach interested, likely-to-buy, and in-market people.

Saving Money by Targeting Your Customer’s Neighbors

People who live around each other typically have the same age home, have similar incomes, and geographical challenges, share similar values and interests, and communicate with one another. If you sell visible goods or services, like a lawn care company or car dealership, then targeting those who surround your current customers is a great way to save money and generate revenue. Proximity Mailing makes this possible for cents per mail piece and with the ability to limit just how many people you want to reach while always taking advantage of bulk mail discounts.

How it works is you insert your customer's address in the Proximity Mailing tool, limit the radius surrounding their address by miles, select how many people you want to reach, and then filter your list to accommodate a variety of details like whether they own a boat, what their age is, if they have children present and more. Your mailers are then sent to these addresses.

Proximity Mailing is a great way to save money for companies that provide something visible because your customer's neighbors will receive your mailer, see what your customer purchased from you when they drive by, and keep your brand top of mind. For example, a solar panel company could send their customer's neighbors a postcard letting them know they just installed solar panels nearby, and they can help them as well.

Reducing Costs with Smaller Mailings & Precision Targeting

Saving & Making Money by Targeting the Right Audience

When you target the right audience, you minimize wasted resources and reduce spending. This is because you avoid sending direct mail to people who aren't interested and will likely toss your catalog or postcard in the trash. While targeting typically involves small added costs to analyze the data needed to create your mailing list compared to using a random list, you also typically cut the number of people you would have reached in half, maximize your marketing budget, and enhance your results by reaching only the people likely to buy.

In a nutshell, you save and make more money by targeting the right audience because:

• You avoid irrelevant mailings and wasted resources
• You increase your response and conversion rates by reaching likely-to-buy people
• You maximize the efficiency of your marketing budget
• You save on postage by reaching a smaller, more targeted audience

Discounts Associated with Smaller, More Targeted Mailings

You most likely have heard of bulk mailing before, where if you mail a certain quantity—200 for Standard Mail and 500 for First Class Presort—you can qualify for bulk mail discounts. This is great if your audience consists of at least 200 people, but what if your targeted audience only consists of 100, 50, or even 5 people?

You may think you must now pay expensive, full postage, but this isn't true. Instead, you can take advantage of Direct Mail Commingling, where you can send as few as 1 direct mail piece while taking advantage of bulk mail discounts. This service works by combining your small mailing with other companies' mailings. So, say you have 50 people you want to target, company B has 50 people, and company C has 100 people they want to reach. Each small mailing is combined to mail out together to qualify for bulk mail discounts.

Partnering with A Print & Direct Mail Provider to Save Money

In addition to targeting the right audience, you can further save money on direct mail campaigns by finding a print and direct mail provider. By choosing a single provider for both, they will help you create your targeted mailing list, print your direct mailers, and mail them directly from their facility. By eliminating the need to pay a mailing list provider, order your print and pay for shipping, and then prepare your mailers for delivery while also having to lug them to the post office, you are able to pay one provider, save on shipping costs, and save time and money by letting them do the heavy lifting of mailing your mailers.

Conclusion: Reduce Direct Mail Costs by Targeting the Right Audience

As we navigate a world where prices continue to rise, finding effective ways to save money on direct mail campaigns is essential for businesses looking to make the most of their marketing budgets. By harnessing the power of targeting, you can optimize your campaigns, minimize waste, and increase your return on investment. Whether utilizing techniques like Look-Alike Analysis, Propensity Mailing, or Proximity Mailing while also taking advantage of cost-saving strategies such as Direct Mail Commingling, there are numerous opportunities to enhance your direct mail campaigns and save money.

If you're ready to reduce marketing costs with a targeted direct mail campaign, we invite you to explore our targeted direct mail services. At Kingston Printing, we specialize in helping companies identify their ideal audience, create professional and high-quality mailers, and execute highly targeted direct mail campaigns that deliver results.

Don't let rising costs or a tight budget deter you from reaching your marketing goals. Embrace the power of targeting and unlock the potential of your direct mail campaigns. Visit our targeted direct mail services page to learn more today.