If you’ve ever written a long letter to a friend or relative, you may already know how to write a direct mail campaign. To be successful in direct mail, you need to be able to communicate to your prospect as you would a friend, but only with a sales message.

The various types are:

#1 Prospect lead generation.

Zero in on those most likely to respond to your offer. Identify target markets, preferences, and maybe their buying habits. These are demographics, psychographics and what we like to call “spendographics.”

#2 Direct response.

There are two with direct response. This refers to a marketing we’ve talked about already that generates an immediate reply so we can measure the effectiveness of our marketing strategy.

Direct response can be put into a multiple-phase strategy. The first phase is to get the prospect to buy your product or service directly as a result of your marketing efforts. It’s called “One-Step Marketing.”

In a two-phase or two-step, first would be a letter or call or introductory type of marketing effort followed by the prospect then making a purchase.

A three-phase strategy means there are three marketing efforts or three steps.

#3 Endorsement mailing.

Endorsed mailings are a very powerful marketing strategy that you can use to increase the response of your direct mail. You borrow someone’s prestige or credibility and use them as a cover person or cover letter for your marketing campaign.

#4 Customer prospecting.

Customer prospecting is simply the process of marketing to your own database. Since most businesses don’t capture their prospects or customer’s names, this is impossible to do. You need to capture all names and addresses and market to your current customers.

#5 Inbound telemarketing.

Inbound telemarketing is another way. This is one of the single, most powerful telemarketing strategies that can be used. Usually, telemarketing is thought of as being conducted as calling people at dinner time completely unsolicited.

“Inbound” refers to the fact that these prospects are calling you, not the other way around. They have been motivated through a mailing piece or a newspaper ad that you send or you run with a very compelling message or story targeted right at them. Then they call you.