Epic Fails of Direct Mail That You Can Easily Avoid

Direct mail can be a highly profitable activity if it’s done right. When it’s done wrong, it can be a tragic waste of money. We’ve seen smart companies spend tens of thousands of dollars on a direct mail campaign without ever applying the most basic principles of getting a response.

There are certain things you can do which guarantee results from direct mail and other things you can do which totally destroy your results and ensure failure—epic fails of direct marketing. Because we want people to avoid these pitfalls, we’ll cover some of the basic principles everyone has to remember.

Here are the top five epic fails we’ve seen over years of doing direct mail:

EPIC FAIL #1: Not enough quantity to get results.

The top reason direct mail doesn’t work is simply not enough quantity. You have to send out enough to actually make a difference. You have to send it over and over enough times for people to notice you. All marketing—but particularly direct mail—is a numbers game. Don’t get picky and worried that you don’t have exactly the right type of patients responding. You can tweak your message and the list you’re using. However, the first step is just to send out a large enough number.

EPIC FAIL #2: A message that doesn’t fit the people you’re mailing to.

In direct mail, your message has to be completely appropriate to the list you’re mailing to. The obvious examples of this are easy to see: You wouldn’t send a mailer about pediatric dentistry to retirees or promote dentures to a young demographic. However, this also applies more subtly. If you’re mailing to a list of new movers, welcome them to town. If you’re mailing to an older demographic, market dentures or implants and use older-looking models in photographs.

Another example of this is that you wouldn’t broadly market perio treatment to a list of every household around your practice—they don’t all have gum disease and you’re going to lower your returns. Instead, market something everyone might need, like a free consult or a cleaning.

EPIC FAIL #3: No website (or a bad website).

In this day and age, people don’t just respond to postcards—they check you out online first. They’ll look at your website and check out your reviews. Thus, if you don’t have a decent web presence, you’re going to lose response. Your website should be sharp and up to date. Also, your branding (practice identity) should be the same on your website as any mailers you are sending out so people can instantly recognize it’s the same place.

EPIC FAIL #4: Untargeted mailing lists.

If you’ve done direct mail, you probably realize that you can specify the type of person you want to mail to. You can choose by age, income, profession, interests and much, much more. You need to zero in on a demographic that is likely to want your services.

One of the biggest reasons for marketing failure is not targeting a specific demographic with a specific service that’s appropriate to them. If you spend your money sending mail to every single household in town, you’re going to get a whole lot of misses.

A better approach is to select the best type of service you would like to market, figure out the ideal audience for that service and then send them valuable offers they would be interested in and respond to.

EPIC FAIL #5: Not tracking and analyzing results.

It’s impossible to improve your marketing if you don’t know what works and what doesn’t. Once the mailing goes out and the calls come in, you need to track every response that comes from that mailing. You need to record exactly what that mailing cost and how much treatment was accepted as a result. If you don’t know the exact return you got from your marketing, then you’re just throwing good money after bad and hoping that, by some miracle, your results will improve.

Getting a good return from direct mail is easy. We do it all the time and get great results. However, it has to be done intelligently and it has to follow best practices. With the right expectations and the right plan, direct mail is a phenomenal method of driving business in to your practice.