Plopped right on your desk is today’s mail.  Bills, magazines, direct mail.

The competition for your attention is in full swing…and it’s survival of the fittest.  Getting to the top of the pile has always been a challenge for direct marketers, no more so than now when time is at such a premium.

No, direct mail is not dead.  Far from it.  One client of our drops over 4 million pieces of mail each year and generates a very healthy ROI, thank you very much.

There are a number of tactics you can use to improve the response of your direct mail program.  Lead among them is the use of variable print data.  Enabled by technology, personalized messages can be created on each piece by pulling information from your database.

Research shows that mail with your name on it, along with a relevant message, generates a significantly higher response rate than those without it.  The additional costs of variable printing can be highly justified by the higher returns generated.

Does it makes sense for you?  Calculations depend on a number of factors including -

- What is the value of an individual sale?
- What has it cost you in the past to generate a qualified lead?
- What other elements are included in your communications mix?

Direct mail is a highly measurable form of lead generation.  Testing the effect of variable printing is a matter of organizing and tracking the effort properly.