You decide it’s time to buy some leads, but which do you try first? The cheapest right? You decide to call that kid that has been blowing up your phones for the last month and ask him about those aged internet leads. The kid tells you he can get you 30 day old “aged internet leads” for pennies. He says they have only been sold 3 times and you will close a good percentage from them. You buy some leads and realize that you should have just burned the money because the leads suck!

Now you decide to ask a friend for some wisdom and find out that this friend has been doing direct mail for lead generation the last 5 years. He tells you how he loves mailer marketing and feels that nothing else even compares to a high quality debt direct mailer. Now you’re thinking, “Maybe I should do some direct mail.”

Some questions you need to answer before starting direct marketing

1. What is the next step when starting a debt settlement direct mail campaign?
2. Does it make sense to do a mail campaign?
3. Can you afford it?

The biggest downfall to a direct mail test is you can’t really test a direct mail campaign. Far too many times clients have come to me saying they have never done mailer marketing but want to try it out. They have a limited budget and expect to measure the complete success of direct mail off 1 drop.

Important components of a high response mail piece

High quality data – Too many times companies will try to reuse old data or try to sell you what they think is true credit data. It’s not. Don’t skimp on the data.

Mail piece design – Is your marketing company designing their own pieces with a tailored message targeting the debt settlement prospect or are they plagiarizing a custom designed mail piece from another company? Often times when companies decide to cut the corner and plagiarize another mailer it lowers your response rate and you are not happy. The copy they mail should grab the prospects attention, giving them a call to action. Make sure your direct mail company is designing their own pieces!

Tracking – What happens if you send a mailer out, expect a response, and get no response? How do you know? Did you track your mail? Did your marketing company offer to track your mail for you? Standard components to a high quality debt mail piece are 800 call tracking and real time mail tracking. Track your mailers from the post office to the mail box and track when and where your calls are coming from.

It is important that when you test mailers you don’t measure the results of that test off 1 mail drop. A true test should be spread over the course of a month to 3 months. Average cost per calls tend to be a little higher in the beginning of a mail campaign. You will never truly realize your actual cpc until you have had some consistency on drops. Make sure your direct mail company has the experience and expertise to make your custom mail campaign perform to the best of its ability and the capability to track your response to the exact cpc, cpa and conversion percentage.

In closing, direct mail is a tough advertising campaign to test, though a call tracking system can make it easier.

Robert Madden is the Direct Mail Guru at Dynamic Interactive Corp. which offers mailer marketing coupled with call tracking.