Creating the perfect Christmas direct mail campaign

With Christmas being the busiest and most pivotal time of the year for many brands, drawing together the perfect Christmas direct mail campaign is no small feat. However, there has never been a better time to send direct mail than right now. The latest JICMAIL Q2 2020 findings show that addressed direct mail has driven incredible results recently, as you will see below.

• Reach – 1.14 (Up 2% year on year)
• Frequency – 4.58 (Up 11% year on year)
• Lifespan – 8.5 days (Up 9% year on year)

In a nutshell, now is the perfect time to plan your Christmas campaign and make sure you get your message into your customers hands and cut through the noise. The key essentials for your direct mail campaign will include:

• An incentive that’s too good to miss
• A call to action to drive customers online
• The right timing
• Identifying the right printed format

Incentive

Without a doubt, the incentive is the most important part of the campaign. Without an attention-grabbing offer, it could be over before it has even started. It’s essential to make your offer irresistible. Offering £10 off a £2,000 sofa isn’t really going to whet your customer’s appetite, so make sure that the incentive is relative to what you are selling and something that your customer simply cannot refuse. It is also vitally important that your incentive stands out. Make sure that your incentive is in a large font and strategically placed in key areas, like on your envelope or the front page of your brochure. Using special finishes like foil blocking and high gloss UV varnishes can also provide an additional luxury punch.

Drive customers online using a clear call to action (CTA)

Now you have your prospect’s attention, you need to drive that all-important response. This can be done in a few ways. One of our favourites is a QR code. Technology surrounding these 2D little wonders has progressed a lot since they first burst onto the scene in 1994. Simply using the camera on your smart phone, scanning a QR code can instantly direct your prospect customer to your website or a specific product and really increase the overall experience by taking things multi-channel. It’s also an incredibly speedy way of transporting customers to the target product almost instantly, making the end purchase so much easier to complete. QR codes are the easiest way of getting people to a webpage. QR codes are on the comeback right now and proving a very useful way of taking customers on a multi-channel journey and tracking their actions.

Timing it right

Timing is everything. Each component of your strategy needs to work in time with its complementary components. Make sure your mailing is going out at the right time, so it reaches people’s homes at the same time the rest of your campaign has gone live. This will help people recognise your brand, and you’ll stand out from the crowd. If you’re sending a follow up email, make sure you’ve given them an appropriate amount of time to engage with their mail first. Consumers are more likely to engage with an email if they have received a mail piece first – in fact the uplift is up to 44% more (Source Royal Mail). If you’ve included a call to action to go online to a specific URL, or to use a code, make sure those components are already functioning before you mail those pieces. Without accurate timing in place, your omni-channel strategy will fall flat.

Don’t forget, people start preparing for Christmas as early as now (yes, September!), so get ahead of the competition and in the fore front of your consumers minds early. Kick start the season of giving and goodwill with festive offers, vouchers, incentives and rewards.

Identifying the right format

Choosing the right format for your Christmas campaign is just as important as the incentive and CTA. Your story is a vital reason your customers engage with you so telling it in the right way can have an incredible result on your ROI. Tell it wrong however, and it could be lights out for your campaign. Ensure creative has the right flow to take your prospect on a journey to ultimately making a purchase. A nice simple Christmas leaflet can be used for a short, snappy message and alternatives like brochures can be used for a much more in-depth, rich story and generate different emotions.

Conclusion

These are our top tips for creating your next incredible Christmas campaign. If you need further advice or support, please get in touch with our fantastic Dragonfly team @ info@thedragonflyagency.co.uk or 0131 272 2747, we’d love to help you make this Christmas a real knockout.