5 Ways to Segment Your Direct Mail Audience
Direct Mail Postcard / Letter Marketing - 5 Ways to Segment Your Mailing List
Effective direct mail advertising companies will tell you the importance of knowing your target audience before planning a direct mail marketing campaign for them. You can't assume that the same message and offer is going to be enticing to everyone.
Making a generic mailing list to send your direct mailings to is sure to result in lesser ROI. You need to know what makes your audience tick and have a solid plan in mind for who to send your direct mailings to.
Segmentation of your audience based on some criteria will result in effective direct mailing services whether you are sending postcards, letters, brochures, or any other type of piece. Here are 5 ways to effectively segment your direct mail audience.
Geographic segmentation
This segmentation is done on the basis of location of prospects. The criteria could be to target people from a particular:
- Country
- State
- Region
- City
- Neighborhood
- Street
- Zip code
No business can send out their direct mailings whether in the form of letter mailings or postcard marketing without knowing the location of prospects. Convincing your local audience to shop from you and making offers/promotions that coincide with local events will make your direct mail marketing campaign more relevant.
Demographic segmentation
This segments people based on criteria like:
- Age
- Gender
- Median income
- Marital status
- Net worth
- Home equity
- Children
- Language
- Race and other demographics
Beauty companies, luxury brands, childcare companies selling products that not everyone can use would benefit from such segmentation. Making special offers or giving coupons to those entering a new stage in their lives is a good way to get them excited about your products or services. You can even market the same product to different age groups by tweaking the message to suit the age group.
Firmographic segmentation
This segmentation is done for B2B direct mail marketing. It includes different types of businesses such as corporations, government agencies, LLCs, and non-profits. These business types have different needs that can be catered to better through such segmentation. The criteria for this will depend on factors such as:
- Revenue
- Industry
- Employee count
- Number of locations and more
Consider how your business would want to be marketed to when planning direct mail marketing based on firmographic segmentation.
Psychographic segmentation
Such segmentation gives importance to the psychology of demographics for direct mail marketing. This could be based on factors such as:
- Attitudes
- Values
- Interests
- Hobbies
- Personality traits
- Likes and dislikes
Companies that offer specialized products can make use of this. For example, a company offering vegan products can cater to the vegan market through more personalized messaging.
Collecting opinions of your customers through surveys is also a good way to personalize the message for them.
Sales stage segmentation
This segmentation is done based on the position of prospects in the sales pipeline. The stages are:
- Awareness of a pain area or problem
- Consideration of solutions to the problem
- Evaluation of proposed problem solutions
- Purchase of a product or service that claims to solve the problem
- Post-purchase or brand advocacy by the customer
Such segmentation will make you aware of what prospects need at various stages of the buyer journey to advance to the next stage. It can even help you turn inactive customers of the past into active ones. Giving special offers to your loyal customers or making them aware of upcoming products and services is a good way to get higher returns.
Companies with time, money, and sufficient data on prospects can benefit from sales stage segmentation.
At Mail King USA, we can help you do this in the right way. Reach out to our experts and see the results for yourself.
