Quick to produce You can prepare and mail a small promotion within days or weeks. Direct mail is perfect for quickly test prices, offers, and potential audiences. You have complete control over the media, the audience, and your offer. In short, you can be flexible.

Quicker response. Not only is direct mail quicker to prepare, but response time to direct mail is usually quicker as well. You can project the final results of a mailing quickly and accurately.
Direct mail is one of the most measurable methods of marketing. It is attractive to many marketers. Response rates are generally around 1% on an average.
But highly to be considered: Direct mail are sometimes called junk mail, used by advertisers who send paper mail to all postal customers in an area or to all customers on a list. While many marketers like this form of marketing, some direct marketing efforts using particular media have been criticized for generating unwanted solicitations.

Highly Selective and targeted. By using carefully developed lists, you can target your mailing more selectively and accurately than you can with most other media. You can reach almost any market segment, buyer profile appropriate for your business.
There are several statistics on net to guide you on responses from specific Direct Mailers.
You can buy mailing lists that will tell you about the households you can mail your brochures to. You can find out who has kids, who has pets, people's average annual income, further broken down by demographics - you get to know these people and you can tailor your message so that they'll feel compelled to take action. You can't do that with just an email address.

More personalized. You can use more informal language in writing your letter and you can direct your letter to the specific interest of the reader. Direct mail pieces are more personal. Not only do you get to the target, you really want to reach. Touching your postcard or feeling your shiny brochure paper makes people feel more in tune with your company and your product. They are interacting with something you've created. On the other hand, they can't touch your emails.

Easy to respond to. The inclusion of an order card and return envelope makes it convenient for the consumer to respond to direct mail. Responses are thus easily measured.
For example, if a marketer sends out one million solicitations by mail, and ten thousand customers respond to the promotion, the marketer can be confident that the campaign led directly to the responses.
With direct mail marketing you can code your mail pieces to determine the exact number of responses you received from each campaign.

List of loyal customers. Direct mail allows you to build and maintain a list of premium prospects for your future direct mail campaigns.
According to the Direct Marketing Association, nearly 33% of people respond to direct mail online. Instead of telling people to call you for information, they can visit your Web site whenever they want to get more information

In short, it can drive traffic to your Web site.

Make compelling offers: When you know your target audience you are in a better position to make them an offer they can't refuse. A campaign that ignores the preferences of customers and makes an offer that suits the client far more than the recipient will not fetch you the results.

Always ensure the offer is prominent, don't bury it in the copy. You have only a few seconds to grab the recipient's attention and invite them to read further

The Creative Execution - Provided the list and offer are good, high quality creative will definitely improve the response rate. All of these are developed through a rigorous campaign planning process. Plan ahead.

Don’t focus on what you are spending but on what you will earn over time with a satisfied recipient. Always consider the value of the customer and calculate lifetime value.

Direct Mail and Other Marketing Channels
Every channel has its strengths and combining multiple channels in an integrated campaign will help you achieve even greater results.
Direct mail's strengths lie in it?s ability to reach individuals with targeted, relevant messages while broadcast media such as television and newspapers are about reach and frequency. By working out the right combination of broadcast media support, coupled with direct communications with your customers your campaign is bound to be a success!!

The most effective channel may not be the cheapest. Certain channels may be cheaper per individual contact than others, but they won't deliver the same results and you may be wasting a significant portion of your spend on consumers who will never respond. Channels like SMS and email may be less expensive upfront than mail, but if not managed very carefully may damage your brand and are unlikely to achieve the impact of mail.

Direct mail for small business

Direct mail can be ideal for a small business that doesn't have a large marketing budget because your costs can be controlled. If you don't have any exiting customer data you can rent a list, or to generate new customers.
You can then record their details to begin your own customer database.

In fact, the research shows that 70% of consumers do not care who mails them information as long as it is relevant. Very simply, success comes to those organizations that invest in analyzing, targeting and devising meaningful messages.