It doesn't matter if you like your mail piece

When setting up your mail campaign, many things are taken into account: mail list, mail piece format, mail date and most importantly, target audience. Direct mail is all about response. And response is all about your target audience. Many campaign managers get hung up on their opinions toward their mail piece however, for the sake of these goals, it really doesn’t matter if you like your own mail piece. So how exactly do you set your opinions aside and create a mail piece that matters to your customer?

Determine a target profile
To build the most effective mailing, it pays to take the time to determine precisely who you are marketing to, what you want to motivate them to do and how you plan to motivate them. Use any data available to you to establish criteria for details like gender, age group, income group, demographic location, occupation, spending habits or any other discerning qualities that might be important in relation to your prospect and your product or service.

Think like your customer
Once you determine your target profile, you can put yourself in that customer’s shoes and start to think like your customer. Consider the criteria outlined in your target profile and write, design and plan accordingly. A mail campaigned for a woman will probably be completely different than one designed for a man. Different features will matter to different income groups or demographics. Based on spending habits, you could draw conclusions on whether your target group would be expecting a high-end piece or something more standard. Use the criteria outlined in your target profile to jump-start your creative thinking and draw natural conclusions about your prospect and fashion your campaign accordingly.

Don’t be swayed by personal preferences
All-to-often campaign managers let their personal preferences become deciding factors. Since establishing your target profile and thinking like your customer should be the core drivers of your campaign, your personal preferences should not play a part in the creation of the campaign. Just because you don’t like the color pink doesn’t mean it isn’t the right choice to draw in your target audience.

Always remember that direct mail is a statistic-driven medium. Keeping your preferences at the sideline and customer-centric criteria in mind when planning your next campaign can help provide a firm structure to base your mail campaign upon.