Highlight the main benefit of your solution in ten words or less (keep it to 5-7 words if you can), make it catchy and add a sense of urgency. This will help catch your audience’s attention and keep them interested.
Find a way to make your visuals pop with bright colors, lots of contrast and an image that makes prospects stop in their tracks. Be sure the images you choose relate to your audience and are high quality with great resolution.
To familiarize your audience with your brand, be sure to stick to brand guidelines and a familiar appearance. Continuously use the same logo, colors, fonts, style and other familiar elements to ensure your audience comes to know your brand.
Simplifying your direct mail, staying concise and using white space benefits your brand by making the material more scannable for skimmers. Most people don’t want to spend a ton of time with ads, so if you can make material quickly stand out and get the point across, it’ll do better.
Without a call to action, your audience won’t know what action to take after reading your ad. Make it easy for prospects by clearly telling them what to do and where to go next, utilizing a sense of urgency to ensure they take action.
When able to, add personalization to make your ad stand out. Whether it’s personalized QR codes or URLs or your direct mail is being sent to particular demographics, this helps your audience feel that the mail is directed to them.
Ensure you choose colors that relate to your brand and evoke the proper emotions. Do you want your audience to feel comfortable, happy, excited or curious? Look into color theory to decide what colors go best with your branding to evoke the emotions you want from your prospects.
Selecting the appropriate font comes down to font type and sizing. Be careful not to choose a typeface that’s hard to read, too small or too big. You want your ad to fit the space and draw attention without being overbearing or underwhelming.
Be sure to add the appropriate legal disclaimers and other information as needed to avoid trouble later on. When you make claims, make sure they are substantiated and true so you don’t lose credibility.
It can be especially helpful to perform A/B testing between two different ad designs to see which one yields the best results. Tracking how well each ad does can help you make adjustments that further improve your direct mail response.
