Mail Merge and Direct Mail Marketing

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Understanding Mail Merge Fields and How They Work with Direct Mail Campaigns

• Word mail merge programs take certain fields from your customer database and merge them into a letter, which are formatted in the word mail merge language.

• It can take a person's name, address and salutation and insert them in a letter to give it a personal touch that makes a letter look original, instead of a form letter that is sent to everybody.

Direct mail marketing campaigns are still one of the most effective ways to reach many of your customers and potential

customers.

The Importance of Word Mail Merge In Direct Mail Marketing Campaigns

• When you are a business that needs to increase sales, understanding word mail merge and how it fits with your customer database in direct mail marketing campaigns is crucial.

• Many businesses have come to rely on the Internet for their marketing endeavors, but for those that believe in proven techniques, direct mail marketing can be valuable and word mail merge function and how it is connected to your database can make it easier to personalize your direct mail pieces.

• There are professional direct marketing companies and outsourcing companies that can put together a direct mailer quickly and more effectively.

Making use of your Customer Database for Effective Marketing

Utilize your customer database

Implement your direct mail marketing programs

Fit a word mail merge

Use it to market

effectively

Set up your customer database

Seeking Professional Help

• When you consider the value of a customer database, like sending direct mail pieces that look professional and are personalized with word mail merge or other marketing

strategies, you can see how crucial these things are to increasing your company's sales in the future and implementing them in your marketing plan.

It is possible to get the expert help you need, so there is no need to be concerned.

Problems Creating a Mail Merge List Effectively

The mail merge list is a way to create a new address list within the mail merge wizard.

• For those that have a database of customers and potential customers, there can be compatibility issues in building a mail merge list.

• For most businesses, there is no time to train on the mail merge list building process when professionals can perform the objective quickly, easily and affordably.

• Those that don't understand the mail merge list process, document merge process or the word mail merge program would be better to get it done professionally to save time, money and increase sales the most cost-effectively.

• It can get even more confusing, when you want to do a direct email campaign.

• You need to be proficient to put together an effective direct mail campaign with a mail merge list that is accurate and a document merge that has the proper information inserted in the proper areas.

• Even then, when you consider that your database needs to be merged correctly for your direct mail campaign to be effective, many people find the process very time-consuming and it can waste a lot of material, personnel and leave you unable to reach your customers with the touch of a few buttons, like you might think.

Problems that Arise When Creating a Mail Merge List and a Direct Mail Campaign

Steps to Putting Up a Mail Merge ListSt

ep 1You need to

create the mail merge list by choosing "select recipients" in the wizard.

Step

2Type a new address list option, this will give you an option to build your address list.

Step

3Put together a mail merge list from "a database-like format... that involves.... commas, tabs and records that are separated by paragraph marks“.

Creating a mail merge list is not something that amateurs should consider because it is possible to do, if you have a lot of time on your hands and have a high tolerance for frustration.

• Document Merge is a way to combine parts of different documents into a new document, in a direct mail merge program.

• It is officially defined as "extract and merge pages from multiple XPS documents to create a new XPS document that contains the selected pages“.

The Document Merge

Using Document Merge For Professional Looking Direct Mail Pieces

• Document merge is used to create direct mail pieces that are personalized and look like they are directed at the customer you are sending them to, which is the ultimate goal of a direct mail marketing campaign.

• To use document merge, you can use the compare and merge documents in Microsoft Office 2003 applications, because you want the changes to go into the master version and not the alternate versions.

Steps on Merging DocumentsSt

ep 1You will want

the master version closed and the alternate version open.

Step

2Go to the compare and merge documents.

Step

3Go to the latest master version and click on merge.

Step

4Go to the "tools" menu and find the compare and merge then go to the alternate version, click merge and finish.

Note: If you are trying to document merge with versions of Microsoft Office other than 2003, you will reverse the master and alternate versions, starting with the master version open and the alternate closed.