Boost business by pairing direct mail with incentives

In the wintery, post-holiday shopping months of January and February, companies can find business lagging. To breathe new life into revenues, businesses may want to try adding incentives to their direct mail marketing initiatives.

When choosing an incentive, companies need to be careful to keep a few considerations in mind. Direct Marketing News suggests that businesses assess how incentives fit with the company’s products and services as well as with the marketing piece itself.

“If you do offer an incentive, aligning that incentive with strategy and creative is vital,” the source writes. “Often it can be a breakthrough or help round out the main message you are trying to deliver. It may be the last thing that pushes for the desired action.”

However, marketing budgets don’t always lend themselves to incentives such as discounts or freebies. In this case, companies will need to assess whether certain demographics would be better targeted with the incentive than others or if there is print strategy that would better reach consumers, such as magazine or newspaper ads, flyers or door hangers.