Business is lousy. The economy is tanked. You’re looking around your store and saying, “Where is everybody?”

Here’s How To Use Successful Direct Mail Marketing Campaigns To Bring More Traffic in your Front Door.

Good News: If you’re a retailer, here are direct marketing tips to show you how to get people to show up at your door. If you’re in a service business, here are direct mail tips that show you how to get your phone to ring. If you’re a restaurateur, here’s my phone number: 610-642-1000 – I usually get hungry around 7PM. If the campaign works really well, I’ll be bringing a few friends.

1. Track Response of All Your Direct Mail.

Learn what’s working in your direct mail program, and just as important, what isn’t. Leave a memo pad by each phone and when you receive a call – in the very beginning of the conversation – say, “And how did you hear of our us?” Write down the response on the memo pad, and throw that slip of paper in a drawer and forget about it for now. At the end of the month tally slips up and you’ll have a pretty darn good idea which direct mail campaign brought in the most customers.

2. The Best Direct Mail Campaign Ever: Mail to your house list.

No matter what industry you’re in, what you’re selling, or what type of business you own, your direct mail strategies and your direct response email campaign should be to mail to your house mailing list. This is the lowest cost and most effective direct marketing strategy you can have. Hmmmm… Mailing to your house mailing list… Lowest cost? Most effective? Any questions?

Start by collecting current customer’s names and addresses. If you don’t have a customer house file – a mailing list of the names and addresses of all your customers – start one now. This will turn out to be your most valuable asset.

3. Sign people up! Sign as many people up as you can!

Keep a card by the cash register, or by the front door, or both to sign people up for your “FREE Preferred Customer Mailing List!”. Don’t be afraid to recommend they fill out the card so you can place them on your direct mail list — so they can receive special offers and awesome preferred customer pricing during private sales. just for your special preferred mailing list customers.

4. Tighly focus your Prospect Mailing List = Get a customer for $.44 through direct mail.

Depending on your type of business, prospecting through direct mail can be very precise with almost no wasted expense. Carefully aim your direct mail towards geographic targets (close to your store), demographic targets (people who like to/can afford to shop in stores like yours), and industry related personnel – in the specific markets you serve (such as lawncare, hearing aids, pet supplies, etc.).

Retail direct mail campaigns usually have a target geographic epicenter. Everybody likes to shop in their own backyard, and direct mail can take advantage of that. Limit your direct mail marketing to people who live or work within a comfortable drive.

That “geographic market segment” qualification of your prospects was just for starters. In addition you can select mailing lists by consumer age, household income, house cost, assets, number of children, number and type of pets; or by buying data: recent purchases, amout spent, and merchandise category.

If you don’t have a great direct mail prospect list, start one of those mailing lists now too.

5. Mail a Gift Certificate, get a direct response customer for under $5

A gift certificate is inexpensive to print and low cost to mail. The nice direct response letter you send with it? Same. The goodwill it generates, invaluable. It’s a double function direct marketing piece. Good for the customer and great for you, too. To make sure people open it, print the teaser copy of “Gift Certificate Enclosed!” on the envelope.

Best of all, the direct marketing strategy of sending a gift certificate through the mail has a cost only if the customer actually shows up and redeems it. No new customer, no cost.

6. Referral Marketing: Use the Jeff Dobkin “Gift Certificate Referral Method.” Clone your best customers with the most on-target direct mail campaign you can send.

Feel free to ask your better customers if they have friends they would like to send a gift certificate to with their compliments. Almost every customer will say yes. What a great direct marketing strategy that can turn into the most focused and effective direct mail campaign. Then mail the referral prospect a letter – and the gift certificate – compliments of your original customer (and from you, personally.)

As an added incentive to keep referring friends, mail an additional gift certificate to the customer making the referral. include a letter saying, “Thanks for the referral.”

The Jeff Dobkin “Gift Certificate Referral Method” is one of the most effective direct response campaigns on the planet — because there is absolutely no wasted direct mail expense. It’s the lowest cost, and the best way to acquire new customers who are similar to your current clients – they like your store, shop, restaurant or services, and immediately have trust in you, your firm, your service.

Customer acquisition cost: just $.44 in postage. Then that five bucks discount (gift certificate)? Well, that’s taken off the merchandise or food bill: so it didn’t really cost you five bucks, did it? It was the discounted cost of your goods. One of the best resources for low cost customer acquisition is direct marketing, and this one of the best direct marketing strategies ever.

And that’s the way you make your direct mail marketing campaign effective. Reaching people with your direct mail message can get expensive in a hurry, especially if you reach the wrong people or make an offer no one will respond to. Tighly specify your mailing list and mail a great offer and you’ll get busy.

Read more of Jeffrey Dobkin’s practical direct marketing articles to learn more useful and easy direct mail marketing tips to increase your response and get – and keep – more customers.

About the Author:

Need More Business? Why struggle: If you’d like to easily get more customers and kick up the response you get from any direct mail program, visit [Jeffrey Dobkin’s website] and learn other fast and easy ways to make your direct marketing more effective – and yet lower your cost. Read more FREE [direct marketing articles] at www.danielleadams.com. Author Jeffrey Dobkin has written 5 books on direct marketing, including the cult classic, How To Market a Product for Under $500.