Direct Mail Frequency: How Often to Send Direct Mail for Best Results

Direct mail is a great way to build brand awareness and connect and engage with your customers. However, compared to other marketing strategies like email marketing, it's a more cost-intensive and time-consuming method to reach your target audience.

As such, it's important that you know how often to send direct mail for the best results. There are many factors that contribute to the frequency of your direct mail campaigns, but we'll get to that in a bit. 

First, let's take a look at what is direct mail frequency is and how often you should send out direct mail.

What is Direct Mail Frequency?

Direct mail frequency is the number of times you send out a direct mail campaign in a given time period. For example, if you send out one direct mail campaign per month, then your direct mail frequency would be one. If you send out two direct mail campaigns per month, your frequency would be two.

How Often Should You Send Direct Mail?

The general rule of thumb is to send out direct mail once every month. However, there are some scenarios where you may want to send out more or less frequently.

For example, if you’ve just launched a new product and want to generate sales quickly, then you should consider sending your mailers every couple of weeks. On the other hand, if your business has been around for a while and is looking for customer retention rather than acquisition, then once every month should suffice.

Besides frequency, the other thing you'll want to keep in mind is consistency. You can't expect to get results by simply sending out a single campaign. 

Instead, you'll need to be consistent with your mailers. This means sending out new campaigns regularly and not taking long breaks in between. If you take too long off, then your target audience will forget about you and may not be as interested in your offers when they do see them again.

Factors that Determine Direct Mail Frequency

There are a number of factors that will affect the frequency of your direct mail campaigns, and they include: 

Your Budget

How often you should send out your direct mail will depend largely on how much money you have to spend. If you only have a small budget, then you won't be able to send out mailers as frequently. However, if you have a larger budget, then you can send out more mailers in a given period of time.

Your budget will also determine how long you can send out your direct mail. If you have a large budget, then you can send out the mailers for longer periods of time.

If you don't have much money to spend on your mailers or campaigns, then you'll have to be careful about how long you decide to run them. It's easy to overshoot your budget and find yourself with no money left for the next campaign.

Timing

Timing is everything when it comes to sending out your direct mail pieces. It's not really about what time you send it out, but rather when you send it out that matters.

You want to focus on sending out your campaigns at a time when your customers might need the product or service that you're offering. 

For example, if your business sells HVAC services, then you want to focus on sending out mailers during the coldest months of the year. This is when people will be most likely to need the services that you offer.

If you sell food like ice cream, then you want to send out your mailers around the hot months when people are most likely to be craving something cold.

Direct mail timing can be tricky, but it’s important to find a balance between sending out mailers when your customers are most likely to respond and sending them out too soon. If you send out your mailers at a time when your target audience does not need what you are offering, you'll end up wasting money, and you won't get the result you want.

Type of Direct Mail

Some types of direct mail get higher response rates than others. For example, mailers that include a coupon tend to get the best responses. This is because people like saving money, and coupons are a great way to entice customers into making a purchase.

In addition, mailers that include a product sample tend to get higher response rates than those that don’t. This is because people like trying things before they buy them.

It's not always that a business is able to send out free samples or give away coupons. However, if you find out that your customers are interested in what you have to offer, then you should increase the frequency of your mailers and consider offering an incentive.

Your Target Audience

If you're sending out mailers to customers who are already familiar with your brand and have purchased from you in the past, then there's no need for them to see your direct mail often.

 In fact, you can take a break from sending out mailers and then bring them back when you have something new to offer or when you have a special promotion or sale coming up. 

However, if this isn't the case and you're trying to attract new customers or people who aren't yet aware of what you do, then you'll want to send out more frequent mailers. 

Campaign Performance

The performance of your direct mail campaigns will have a big impact on how often you send them out. If you're getting good results from your mailers, then it makes sense to send them out more frequently.

However, if your campaigns are not performing as well as expected, then you may want to consider taking a break from using direct mail for a while until you can figure out why they aren't working.

If you're not getting the results that you want from your mailers, then it's important to figure out why. It may be possible to make some adjustments and improve their performance. If not, then you may need to consider changing up your marketing strategy altogether.

Industry

The industry you're in will have a huge impact on how often you send out your mailers. This is because certain industries are more competitive than others and require a more aggressive marketing strategy. For example, if you're in the travel business, then it's likely that you'll need to send out more frequent campaigns than someone who sells insurance or real estate.

Final Remarks

Your direct mail efforts should not be viewed as a one-time event. Rather, they should be seen as an ongoing campaign that can help you build your business over time.

Your direct mail efforts should also be consistent with your overall marketing plan. You don’t want to send out a mailing one month and then forget about it for the next three months. If you do this, your customers will most likely forget about you.

Instead, you should consider using direct mail as an important part of a consistent and ongoing marketing strategy. You should also make sure that the messages in your direct mail pieces are consistent with one another so that customers can easily identify with you.