Using Direct Mailing for Financial Services Marketing
The financial services industry is using direct mail more than ever before, and for good reason—response rates are high. The United States Post Office conducted a study in 2013 that showed consumers do read (and respond to) financial services marketing.
| STANDARD MAIL REACTION BY INDUSTRY As Percentage of Mail Received by Households | |||
| Financial Industry | % of pieces people read immediately | % of pieces people found useful | % of pieces people will respond to |
| Credit card | 27.3 | 17.1 | 3.4 |
| Bank | 41.9 | 28.1 | 7.3 |
| Investments | 38.2 | 47.2 | 9.6 |
| Insurance company | 32.6 | 23.2 | 5.5 |
| Real estate/ mortgage | 30.5 | 20.8 | 1.7 |
| Total Financial | 32.2 | 23.4 | 5.0 |
source: USPS Household Diary Study, 2013
According to a report by Mintel Comperemedia analyzing direct marketing activity from Q1 2013 to Q1 2014 in the banking industry, financial services companies are ramping up their postal direct mail to drive acquisition. At the same time, they’re sending fewer customer communications via email. The reason is easy to see when looking at the USPS survey results—people are responding to direct mail campaigns.
Keys to Your Successful Direct Mail Piece
The numbers clearly show that a direct mail piece is a good investment for your financial services company. So what do you need to do to ensure success?
1. Determine your objective. Do you want to generate sales, inquiries, traffic to your store front, or awareness of your facility? Each of these objectives requires a different kind of offer. Limit it to only one objective, otherwise you will confuse your market.
2. Determine a specific offer to meet the objective. What motivates your customers? What kind of incentive can you offer to get them more likely to respond?
3. Write compelling copy. The copy in your piece needs to describe the product or service, the customer benefits, and the price. And, of course, makes the offer than they can’t refuse.
4. Send your piece to the right list. The cleaner and more targeted your list, the better the response—whether you are using your house list or renting/buying one from an experience financial services list broker.
5. Track your response. Make sure you set up a process for tracking the response (landing pages and offer codes are two easy ways to measure success). For any direct mail campaign, you have to know whether it worked so you can decide if and when to do it again.
Given the high response rates for financial services direct marketing, chances are your acquisition efforts will be a success!