Your list is most important part of your direct mail campaign. Who you mail to is more important than what you mail. So if you are persuaded that your offer is attractive, your creative is compelling and your timing is spot on, mail to a different group of people and see what happens

2. Change your offer

The offer is most important part of your direct mail package after your list. So if your response rates are lacklustre, change your offer (my thanks to fellow direct mail copywriter Bob Hacker for this counsel).

3. Improve your creative

Maybe your response rates are depressed because your package is depressing. Why not mail something else, something radically different? Instead of a letter, mail a postcard. Instead of a self-mailer, mail a dimensional mailer. Even hire a brand new direct mail copywriter, someone who will add a fresh set of eyes to your challenge. Just make sure that your new creative is different enough from your existing package that you’ll know that it made difference when your response rates change.

4. Mail at a different time

Timing is vital in direct mail. So check yours. Are you mailing to right people at right time of year and right time of week? Check and make sure. test your hunches by mailing during a different time slot and see what happens.

5. Offer better payment options

Offering payment by credit card boosts response. Offering a credit or “bill-me” plan will improve results by 50% or more (says Richard Benson).

6. Offer a premium

Direct mail results only tell you part of what you need to know. They tell you percentage of people on your list who responded. That’s it. They don’t tell you if you broke even. If you made a profit. Or if sales people who followed up on leads closed any sales.

Response rates are misleading if you read them incorrectly. For example, I recently wrote a fundraising package for a North American nonprofit. The letter, mailed to a list of 6,850 donors, generated 35 gifts (responses). Run numbers and that’s a response rate of half of one percent, a dismal result. But this number is misleading because my client (against my recommendation), mailed letter to everyone donor in his database, including lapsed donors who had not made a donation for years.

So I asked my client how many active donors he had in his database. Two hundred, he replied. That’s 200 active donors out of a list of 6,850 total donors. Run numbers again, and you’ll see that my letter generated a 17.5% response rate when mailed to active donors, or, to put it another way, when mailed to a good list.