In today’s rapidly expanding technological age, social media and its influence is growing. From sharing Facebook updates to posting photos on Instagram to communicating with friends and followers on Twitter, social media is everywhere and isn’t going away anytime soon.

Despite the growing influence of social media, getting someone’s attention through a direct mail campaign is still effective. Up to 54 percent of customers say they prefer direct mail marketing and almost 80 percent of customers say they open direct mail immediately. What’s more, 48 percent of customers retain their direct mail for future reference.

Direct mail is all about getting someone to trust in a product or service and up to 56 percent of customers think direct mail marketing is the most trustworthy form of marketing. With that in mind, here are several things to do to improve a direct mail campaign.

• Personalize it: In a direct mail campaign you’re trying to get someone’s attention, but adding a personal touch can make it even more effective. Maintaining a customer database will allow you to keep track of what a person is buying so that any direct mail they get is relevant to them. Relevant messages will resonate and trigger a purchase. If you can establish brand loyalty, that will keep a customer coming back. As of now, customers say that only 31 percent of the direct mail they receive includes personalized content that they find useful.
  
  For further reading, check out these personalization tips and this post about why personalization matters.
• Maintain a database: Without a strong foundation, a direct mail campaign will flounder quickly. An accurate and up-to-date database can help you track previous purchases and will let you know what a person buys and how often they might buy a particular product. Knowing how a person shops allows for more opportunities to up-sell.
  
  To build a strong customer database, read this guide from Preferred Direct and these tips from Stamps.com.
• Always test: Since the consumer market is always changing, not evolving with it is a mistake. A previous direct mail campaign might not make the same impact as the current one you might be working on. Up to 40 percent of customers have made a purchase in the last three months that was motivated by direct mail marketing, so nailing a direct mail campaign and learning what makes it effective can pay big dividends.
  
  Mail Shark offers tips on how to do effecting direct mail testing and SuttleStraus explains why A/B testing is so important.
• Branch out: A direct mail campaign receives an average of 37 times more responses than email marketing. That being said, it’s important to use more than one medium in a marketing campaign. As of 2018, 51 percent of marketing and advertising budgets are being spent on mobile ads. The top three response-rate tracking methods are: online tracking such as personalized URLs (PURLs), telephone and codes or coupons. Since you’re ultimately trying to get a consumer to buy your product or service, using different mediums to get their attention can produce the results you’re looking for.

Print services can help a direct mail marketing campaign in all of the steps listed above. Print services can help you create eye-catching, personalized material. Print services can help you with the direct mail portion of a marketing campaign as you branch out on several mediums. Print services can also help you gauge the market to see how effective your campaign is and customer response to eye-catching, personalized mail can ultimately help you build a strong customer database.

Companies such as PrintingForLess.com can help out with print services to make a great, eye-catching direct marketing campaign.

If you’re looking for ways to improve a direct mail campaign, these tips can help and knowing what kind of direct mail works best can help improve your end results.