01869 321 321enquiries@webmartuk.com
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Webmart’s

‘Everything you ever wanted to know about Direct Mail’

insight page

In marketing and looking to start with direct mail or optimise your existing campaigns?

– Read on for Direct Mail advice –

You might well know Webmart as one of the UK’s foremost marketing services agencies, but we’ve also spent over 25 years connecting with, evaluating, assessing and collaborating with all the UK’s top data, printing and distribution partners. So, we know a thing or two about running direct mail campaigns!

And we ‘digitally transformed’ our operation back in the early noughties – so we’ve an enormous amount of data and insight to draw on.

We spend our days helping time and budget hungry marketers (that’s all of us, right?) to get more from their direct mail campaigns. You might be looking to drive up response rates, or you might be looking to re-engineer your formats to take advantage of better postage rates. Or you might even be looking to dip your toe into the world of direct mail for the first time.

Whatever your challenge, you’ll find heaps of insight, know-how and advice on these pages, helping to make you a better marketer and blast up the response rates from your direct mail campaigns. Happy reading!

Letterbox Marketing Illustration@1kpx

What is direct mail marketing?

Direct Mail is a catch-all term for any printed materials that are sent to customers and prospective customers through the post. It’s a marketing channel that’s been around almost as long as printing itself, with Benjamin Franklin and Josiah Wedgwood being notable early adopters, selling their wares using catalogues way back in the 1700s.

 

Nowadays, catalogues and brochures can be fully personalised using data-driven print and can be tailored to each customers’ tastes and drivers. And the great thing about direct mail is that, unlike digital with a zillion messages an hour competing for eyeballs, it’s a more relaxed and uncluttered channel, with direct mail pieces hanging around in the home (73%) and being perused at a customer’s leisure (65% give DM their full attention versus 35% for email).

Types of direct mail:

 

 

Here’s a very quick overview of direct mail – what it is, how it can be leveraged to achieve business’ objectives and its key components.

Download our PDF guide to Direct Mail including key stats

and how to get started.

download webmart's guide to direct mail

Direct Mail Insight

Whether it’s your pride-and-joy premium annual catalogue or a simple postcard, you’re going to want to get your direct mail piece into the hands of your customers (or prospective customers). And that means you need distribution.

Of course, the Royal Mail postal service is the main way to deliver addressed direct mail in the UK. But there’s a variety of different services and discounts available – some permanent, some seasonal and some drop to promote new services.

Each direct mailing piece is probably inherently best suited to one discount or another, but each can be engineered to optimise available mailing costs. As long as you know what you’re doing and your ear’s to the ground so you’re aware of the latest discounts.

So, if you’re running a direct mail campaign, here’s some of the key things you should consider:

And within each, there can be a dizzying array of variation, all designed to reduce cost, increase impact, promote branding, attract customers and deliver the right response mechanism.

One thing that catches many non-specialist buyers out is the fluctuation in the price of print – even from the same plant and the same presses for the same specification of work. Prices roller-coaster on an annual, monthly – even weekly – basis. So, whereas taking a pricing snapshot to base future prices on might work for many procurement categories, it’s often not appropriate for print.

All of which makes it a particularly difficult category to balance our goals of reducing cost and streamlining production while working in partnership with suppliers to realise the value they can create for us.

Postage options for Direct Mail and other Letterbox Marketing Campaigns.

Whether it’s your pride-and-joy premium annual catalogue or a simple postcard, you’re going to want to get your direct mail piece into the hands of your customers (or prospective customers). And that means you need distribution.

 

Of course, the Royal Mail postal service is the main way to deliver addressed direct mail in the UK. But there’s a variety of different services and discounts available – some permanent, some seasonal and some drop to promote new services.

 

Each direct mailing piece is probably inherently best suited to one discount or another, but each can be engineered to optimise available mailing costs. Just just need to know what your options are and keep your ears to the ground so you’re aware of the latest discounts.

 

So, if you’re running a direct mail campaign, here’s some of the key things you should consider:

As always, if you need help or advice on buying or running your direct mail  in the UK or would like to take advantage of Webmart’s print procurement expertise, please get in touch.

Webmart’s marketing campaign management and print procurement platform

Dashboard

Dashboard

Your dashboard pulls together heaps of useful information onto one page including:

  • Campaigns in production
  • Total spend
  • Projects per month
  • Mailmark campaign reporting
  • Spend projections
  • Estimating, RFQs & dynamic pricing

Campaign Management

Project Management

Campaign management, digital asset management along with instant estimates, dynamic pricing and RFQ management. Plus all your orders and artwork in one place – with details of project status, production management team and latest communications, all in one place.

Direct Mail Campaign procurement and optimisation

Webmart are specialists in procuring every offline marketing channel including direct mail. Our print and distribution category management teams work with over 400 suppliers to find the best value and highest quality. Our direct mail consultants work to help you engineer the best creative and help you optimise the entire channel, reducing costs, improving creativity impact and campaign effectiveness all the way to your bottom line.

Enhancing quality and brand affinity

Direct mail is unique in its ability to allow customers in the home to get hands on with your brand. The tactility of direct mail help brands build relationships with customers and allows them to establish and develop that brand affinity when customers are at their most relaxed and receptive. The team at Webmart can help your brand maximise your direct mail campaign quality and ensure brand affinity is maximised.

Direct Mail Expertise Area

Like any marketing channel, there’s a learning curve to get the most out of direct mail. So we’ve brought together a few resources, designed to be as quick, insightful and easy to read as possible, that’ll help you up your direct mail game.

 

As always, if you’re short of time to do it yourself, Webmart’s here to help. Whether it’s a small part of your direct campaign, like procuring your direct mail print or sourcing the best distribution, or whether it’s procuring and managing the whole thing – please get in touch.

print-procurement-checklist-graphic

Direct Mail Marketing Guides, Checklists and Forms

Here’s some useful forms, guides and checklists to download that’ll help inform you more about the potential of direct mail as well as helping you with your direct mail campaign management.

Direct Mail Case Studies

(Ideas of how Direct Mail could work for you)

Get in touch

Whether you have a question about our solutions, an enquiry, need some more information on anything – or just like yellow – the Webmart team are ready, locked and loaded to help.

01869 321 321
enquiries@webmartuk.com
Media Innovation Centre

13-15 Wedgwood Road
Bicester
Oxfordshire
OX26 4UL

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