Online direct marketing is a highly targeted and measurable process. With direct marketing, you can immediately identify correlations between separate marketing efforts and your bottom line.

Because direct marketing is highly targeted communications, you can save money by testing different online direct marketing ideas to different groups of your target market. This tells you which idea works best and that’s the one you roll out on a bigger scale.

Although online direct marketing is similar to its offline counterpart, having technology as your medium allows infinite creative possibilities for your execution and offers better organization of your data.

Below are 5 essential steps towards making your online direct marketing campaign generate ROI and increase your bottom line.

1.    Acquire
The key principle behind direct marketing is only talking to the people you want to talk to. This assumes that you already know your niche and you already know what you want to tell them.

Most marketers see their target market as just that—a group of people within their desired market. As a discipline, direct marketing challenges marketers to see their niche as individuals. As opposed to billboards or TVCs whose success relies on traditional marketing (the more pairs of eyes the better), direct marketing seeks to reel in high-value individuals (the few who actually make an impact on your sales because of their loyalty and voluntary advocacy).

Marketing research is essential to find these high-value individuals. In which States are they? Which dealers do they frequent? Would they prefer to receive emails or text messages? Besides their names, all of these form part of your data acquisition. Give them a reason to share with you their online contact information.

2.    Communicate
Now that you know whom to talk to and how you can get to them, it’s time to figure out what to say and how to say it.

Similar to coming up with relevant web page content, direct marketing calls for the same attention when crafting your message. The recipient of your online direct marketing effort should feel that you’re talking to him as an individual.

Personalize each message as much as you can, depending on the data you’ve gathered. Use his first name. Find out which of your products he likes. Talk about that product instead of immediately cross selling.

3.    Close the feedback loop
Allowing your niche to respond to your online direct marketing efforts can seal you the deal. Encourage them to talk back. Let your niche know that you genuinely care about what they feel and what they have to say.

Use this opportunity to give individual replies to the feedback you’ve received, based on individual preferences, needs, and issues. Store these details in your database for reference and tracking.

4.    Update
Make sure that your database is always updated. Your list of names has no use if the email addresses or their SMS numbers have already changed. With every material that you send, you can include a link that directs them to a page where they can update their profiles if they wish to continue receiving material from you. You can also do the updates yourself when you reply to their feedback.