Direct Mail Letter Campaign: 3 Steps

Financial companies are dependent on generating responses. They'll send letters and make phone calls until they get a response.  Their process is tested and proven to work, and it can work for you as a direct mail strategy to make your event triggered direct marketing campaign deliver superior results.

Get Breakthrough Results
Many financial companies, such as collection agencies, are famous for sending a 3-step letter sequence with a defined call to action. The first letter arrives from the junior collection agent, is professional, and requests payment with a deadline. If you don't respond to the first letter, the manager sends off a more aggressive letter along with and an expected penalty if you fail to respond. Finally, if you still don't respond you get the dreaded Final Notice letter, failure to respond generally results in a hit on your credit.  Ouch!

At Trigger Direct, we take this successful 3-step letter sequence and flip it 180 degrees.  Letter #1 is a personalized letter to your target audience using Direct Marketing 101 fundamentals and contains a compelling headline, the special being offered and a clear call to action.  Letter # 2 needs to create more urgency and contains a strong headline with amplified language, a reference to the first letter along with added incentives to respond quickly, and shorter, more to the point sentences and text.  Letter #3 usually is a colored, impossible to miss postcard that is low on text but high on visibility, and contains references to the previous 2 letters, and is signed by the head of the company.  All letters contain a date on which the offer expires, most of our clients prefer 2 weeks.

Finding & Marketing To Your Target Audience
1. Pick a narrow and manageable niche target audience of 1,000 – 2,000 names. If you are B2B, select a single vertical market (i.e. dentists). If you are B2C focus on a specific geographic/demographic segment (homeowners with income above $75,000).

2. Let the direct marketing experts here at Trigger Direct spearhead your 3-step letter sequence with military precision.

3. Pay attention to who responds and who does not. Keep your database up-to-date.

4. Reap the rewards of your direct mail campaign and then move on to your next target audience.

In the world of direct marketing, a 1% response rate is considered good. Clients that use Trigger Direct’s 3-step letter sequence have been able to generate response rates in the 10-17% range.  Your response rate actually increases the more letters there are in your direct mail campaign, and no one does it better than Trigger Direct.