The key point on direct mail is that it should not be your only marketing tool – use it alongside mainstream advertising. Where direct mail is good at targeting individuals, advertising can target groups, whether businesses or consumers. Used inappropriately, however, it ends up being very wasteful.

The waste starts with complacency and is supported by the perceived cheapness of direct mail as a medium. The classic picture goes like this: we'll send out 1000 mailers at a cost of £1 each. A 2% response gives us 20 new customers at an average of £100 profit on the first job and, bingo, we've doubled our money! Beguiling isn't it? Fine if these simple sums are right – lots of profit. So why isn't everybody stinking rich?

Let's look at the commonest mistakes people make. First they mail a title not a person. They do this because it's easy and cheap – there's no need to create or buy an up to date list. They can go straight from Yellow Pages and a postcode list. This has two main weaknesses. Not only is it cheap, but it looks cheap, too – recipients often bin such mail unread. Secondly, the company may not have someone with the title you've used. Again it goes in the bin.

The second mistake people make is to mail the wrong person. This happens because they don't check the list first, which, admittedly, is timeconsuming, but necessary. If you buy a list the seller will swear blind it's up to date. But is it? Before you part with hard cash, insist on a random sample to check.

Next they mail the wrong content. Here I will be at odds with many of the big names in printwear, because I believe that (in some cases) mailing a brochure/catalogue is very wasteful and can actually be detrimental to sales opportunities. This is because the recipient of a catalogue now thinks he knows all he needs to about the company and its products and services. He won't see a salesman – you're on file.

Certainly, catalogues are an inherent part of printwear marketing. They are a natural leavebehind for the saleman, indeed a central part of a sales meeting. And they are entirely appropriate to send to respondents to your advertising. But they make a very, very expensive mailer.

Then they don't follow up the mailer. Most business-to-business mailings will generate very little response unless your offering is genuinely new or includes a pistol-hot offer. For "very little", read 0.5% or less. Follow them up, however, and you can achieve 10% or better turned into sales appointments.

Finally, they follow up too late. You've got three days, that's all. After that, the recipient's memory of what you mailed him has disappeared under the mountain of mail that business managers get. By the way, this does not look pushy or desperate.

So there are lots of ways to do it wrong; to repeat, this is not the easy option. Okay, so how do you get it right?

Getting it right

Develop a database and be religious about updating it. Any quiet half hour for any staff member can be filled with a series of simple but important phone calls checking those details. You also need a culture of putting all new contacts onto the database, not spread hither and yon around everyone's desktop, laptop, diary or card-index file.

Now let's consider what you send out and why. The why bit is paramount. You should be aiming for a mailer that enables your sales team to follow up with the expectation of a good hearing, such that they will be able to fix a meeting. The mailer should sell enough of the company to enable the salesman to fix the meeting. Nothing more.

Straight away it should be apparent that a lot of the content of business-to-business mailed messages is redundant. Most of it should be part of the sales meeting, or perhaps issues which will be covered in the sales call, prior to a meeting. Getting the salesman in front of the customer should be absolute priority throughout the whole process.

So, what you send is to the point, interesting, memorable, relevant and makes a proposition. Above all, it sells benefits not product features: ‘see me and you'll make more money, save money, save time, achieve your targets, get promoted, improve your life’ etc. Let's consider the actual mailpiece itself. To begin with, is it a mailer or a letter? There's no hard and fast rule here, but a properly designed and printed mailer with a powerful proposition that demands little of the customer's time to get the basic message, followed by a series of benefits is more memorable and is easy for you to use.

It's impossible to generalise about actual content, size, number of colours or pictures. But there are certain elements to include. A strong headline is essential. Flattery, fear and fun work best. Include your address and phone number. The number should be big. Even if you don't expect many calls, you should encourage them. A contact name is desirable: it makes the mailer more personal. A cheap free gift is a memorable add-on. Finally, include a call to action: call now, visit our website, ask for a quote – something specific.

For printwear I don't think a standard letter works. It's such a visual proposition, you would have to include photos in some form. There is, however, an option which I've seen work perfectly. Print a letter onto a t-shirt. Yes, it's more expensive to create and send but the power of the message is multiplied tenfold. You can sell both the benefits and features of printwear and you have the blockbuster punchline: “You are proving it works right now by reading this."

The personal touch

They say the devil is in the detail and that's certainly true of direct mail. You can improve your results with some minor inexpensive touches. Use stamps rather than a franking machine; hand write the address. Now, I freely grant that these are impractical if you are mailing hundreds at a time, but if you mail 20 a day they are reasonable.

Both add a personal touch and make your mailer stand out in a pile of post so you get read first. In all cases I'd recommend a coloured envelope. It's like a beacon in the post pile, it's intriguing, it's different and it's definitely not a bill. You will be read and you will be first (ok, some people save their "nice" mail for last, but the principle's the same).

A final detail point relates to use of titles in addresses. I recommend that you avoid it. This might seem strange because it looks like you're missing a chance to personalise the mailer. The problem is that it's so easy to get them wrong. The difference between, say, marketing manager and marketing controller may be minimal, but it probably matters to the recipient. You may flatter him by including it, but you could easily offend him by getting it wrong.

Finally we come to follow up. As I said before, following up a mailer can generate at least 10% more appointments and that's about 20 times more than without follow-up. You have to establish that your staff will actually do this (rather than just promise to) or you're wasting your money.

Assuming that it is the sales team who will be tasked with follow-up, they should control the outbound flow of mailers. Even the hottest telephone sales specialist will not actually talk to more than ten prospects in an hour. Six is more likely. This means that a whole day spent on the phone will complete follow-up on just 50 prospects.

Given that you need to follow up inside three days for full effect, it will be instantly obvious that mass mailing from business to business is a waste of time and money.

So let's come back to those classic figures and rework them. For every 100 mailers you send, you need to allow two days of follow-up time. Done properly, that should generate 10 sales appointments. You'll know how many new customers that's likely to generate. Let's say it's two.We're back to 2%, but it's 2% customers, instead of responses and that, I suggest, is worth having.

Paul Clapham is a marketing consultant with over 25 years’ experience covering a broad range of business sectors and a full spread of marketing disciplines.

He has run his own business since 1996, working with small, medium and large companies alike to increase their profitability through marketing.

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