How to plan your Christmas direct mail campaign 2022.
Updated: May 5, 2022
It might feel a little early to start planning your Christmas direct mail campaign but there is Noel time to wait. There are many elements to consider and arrange to deliver a successful Christmas campaign that accomplishes your goals and delivers a great ROI. Our guide has everything covered from securing optimised delivery dates to taking advantage of incentives which we wouldn’t want you to miss.
Planning
Planning is the start of every marketing campaign. Choosing your campaign goals and objectives will determine everything that follows from design to targeting. Campaign goals and objectives are essentially what you want your campaign to do and deliver. From increased sales to informing customers about new products.
Typical campaign goals to consider:
Increase Sales
Grow market share
Drive website traffic
Product and brand consideration
Build Brand awareness and reach
Target new customers
Enter new markets internationally or locally
Enhance customer relationships
Improve international communications
Launch new products or services
Re-connect with lapsed customers
It is worth having a calendar to help plan when your campaign will be delivered, what if any additional marketing support will accompany your campaign and when. As well as further touch points.
Timing
It is no big secret that early to mid-November is the most optimised time for direct mail campaigns during the festive period. Depending on your campaign you will want to book ahead of time to ensure we can print and post to your deadline.
Ideally you should look to start conversations with EDWPS for your direct mail or leaflet distribution campaigns in August - September time. This will allow for production to be in October and delivery in November.
Additionally, you can start delving into your data highlighting your business typical shopping trends over the Christmas holiday. Analysing this data could allow you to drive footfall and traffic over your typically quieter times with incentives or offers.
Audience
Depending on your campaign goals will determine how you want to target and segment your data. To promote a new product or service, consider who it will appeal to. Is it gender based, location based, business type based, spending habit related, brand interaction based?
There are 4 bases of market segmentation: Demographic, psychographic, behavioural and Geographic. It is worthwhile considering what aspects of your data will help deliver your campaign goal. It might feel a little risky not mailing everyone in your database. However, putting the right message in front of the right people will deliver better results. It might mean you have multiple campaigns with different content that targets smaller specific audiences.
The quality of your data will determine how successful your campaign is. Ensuring you have clean data and even spending some money on improving your data will go a long way not just for your Christmas campaign but for future ones as well. We offer a free data health check to identify the quality of your data and what can be done to improve it further.
If you are looking to target new customers, you could use our data service Partially Addressed Mail to identify look-a-like customers who match your ideal customer profile.
Doormat appeal
Your campaign deserves to be opened so having an eye-catching envelope or paper wrap which is engaging, and intriguing will deliver a high open rate. Experiment with colour and copy, ensuring you communicate the benefits of looking inside to help achieve this.
Direct mail typically delivers a high response rate with “more than 92% of direct mail is opened and 48% of UK adults took action after receiving direct mail last year.” [1]
Your campaign has this potential.
Example of what can be achieved with paper wrap.
Personalise
Personalisation is almost the normal with marketing today. We can use variable data to deliver a highly personalised campaign with variable images and content. It will make your customer feel valued on a personal level.