What to Look for in a Direct Mail Service

While digital marketing has armed advertisers with a whole host of new tools for reaching their audience, savvy marketers know that direct mail marketing campaigns remain the best and most effective way to build trust, stand out, and make sure your message is remembered.

At Troi Mailing Services, we know firsthand that the key to executing a successful direct mail campaign is finding an experienced and reputable mail service that can help you make your message stand out and deliver the best return on your investment.

Let’s look at a few of the most important characteristics that you should look for in a direct mail service.

Understanding Postal Carriers

Unfortunately for business owners and marketers, the regulations and guidelines of the various postal services can be challenging to navigate—and the cost of getting it wrong can be high. It doesn’t matter how much money you spend on photography, copywriting of graphic design; if your direct mail piece fails to meet the postal service’s standards, your target audience will never see it.

Because postal standards and requirements can be difficult to navigate, it’s important to partner with a direct mail provider who has a lot of experience. A good direct mail printer can work with you or your graphic design team to make sure you leave enough space for barcode insertions, secure the best rate on postage, advise you on how the weight of your piece will affect its price, and more.

While you’re focused on making sure you’ve got the right offer or message for your audience, a good direct mail partner will make sure you get it into their hands as cost-effectively as possible.

Accurate and Reliable Tracking

When you’re sending out hundreds or even thousands of direct mail pieces to your mailing list, you should be able to track your success accurately. You want to ensure that you’re getting what you pay for in terms of mailing service, and making sure your numbers are accurate when you start tracking conversions and calculating your campaign’s ROI.

Not all direct mail partners offer accurate and reliable success tracking, so make sure to identify the kinds of tracking data you need. Troi will make that information available to you.

Access to Data

One key aspect of data processing and tracking is ensuring address accuracy. Canada averages 400,000 postal code changes each year, meaning if you don’t work with a mailing partner who has access to corrections data, then a large number of your mailings will likely fail to arrive at their target address.

At Troi Mailing Services, we have access to this postal data, which allows us to sort mail all the way down to each individual address. This makes sure that your direct mail is addressed properly to your intended audience.

An experienced direct mail company will not only process data to ensure that your message reaches households, but can also help select the right households in the first place. One of the best ways to control costs and improve ROI is to target households that are most likely to be within your target demographic.

Direct mail companies with strong data processing and data acquisition capabilities can use geographic and demographic data to help you identify those high value households so that your piece is aimed at the right people.

Experienced and Easy to Work With

We all want to work with people who are experienced, capable and easy to work with. That’s true of any vendor, but it’s especially important with direct mail, where there are so many factors that can affect the success or failure of your campaign.

We are very proud that Troi Mailing Services is Canada Post’s most-awarded Smartmail Marketing Expert Partner. When you work with us, you get the peace of mind knowing that out of 35 Smartmail partners across Canada, no team has been awarded more often than ours.

We have exclusive access to postal reps who can help secure you the best possible rates, and provide frontline support to answer any questions and resolve any issues that may arise. Our live telephone reception ensures that your calls are answered immediately by a true direct mail expert.

When done well, a direct mail campaign can be an incredibly effective way to put your message in front of prospects and customers, generate leads, and build awareness of your brand.

But it’s important to make sure you select a partner you can trust to execute your campaign effectively and maximize your return on investment.

For more information about how Troi Mailing Services can help your business, call our printing and mailing house in Toronto at 1-866-486-9350 or contact us here.