How to Conduct a Successful Fax Marketing Campaign

1. Focus your fax marketing on one objective

Fax is a flexible medium, and is being used by Adestra clients to sell off-the-page, to conduct research, for broadcasting newsletters, for generating prospects and for database cleaning. Avoid diluting your message by keeping it simple and being clear about what you are trying to achieve.

2. Collect clean fax contact data

When collecting fax numbers, split out the international and regional code from the main number to encourage accuracy of collection. The strongest offer will not get a response if it never reaches your target due to bad data!3. Keep compliant within the fax preference service

Within the UK, all fax recipient databases must be run against the fax preference service to suppress those who have opted out. Many fax broadcast agencies provide this as part of the service, but failure to do this can result in a significant fines. See www.fpsonline.org.uk for more information.

4. Broadcast fax communications effectively

Use specialist fax providers to broadcasting simultaneously to both the UK and internationally in bulk, quickly and easily.

5. From the fax machine to the contact

Address your communication to your contact using mail merge fields or if they are not known, use 'title-slugs' (e.g. FAO Marketing Director) to get your message to the most appropriate person within an organisation.

6. Design your fax messages for delivery

Your message will be delivered in black and white and your images will be reproduced with varying quality. You should design your message like an effective DM cover letter- make USPs stand out and ensure the key messages are communicated at a glance. Keep images large and simple enough to be legible on delivery.

7. Spend wisely on fax promotions

Fax marketing is priced per sheet with different costs based upon where the recipient lives. Faxing a contact within the UK is much cheaper than using direct mail or telemarketing. These budget savings can now be invested in increasing the number of faxes you send or by repeating the campaign based upon ROI.

8. Resource call to actions

Fax marketing is delivered minutes after being sent meaning your responses begin almost immediately. Ensuring the back office is resourced and ready to deal with these replies are essential in meeting customer expectations

9. Make your fax marketing pay

Measure the performance of the campaign to improve and refine. Personalise each fax with a unique number, use a unique web address (e.g. www.adestra.com/mediaweek) or ensure that reply vehicles are easily identifiable to track performance

10. Mix it in

Many Adestra clients integrate fax within their media plans. When integrated amongst a variety of media, fax works most effectively and in one recent client test led to an up lift in sales of over 5%.

Adestra's fax marketing tools

Many marketing professionals are using Adestra's fax broadcast capabilities to reach conference attendees, report buyers, theatre attendees and more. Working with our in house fax marketing specialist, your campaign receives the benefit of an expert eye optimising your creative. For more information, please contact us on http://www.adestra.co.uk/fax or browse our fax marketing best practice centre at http://www.adestra.co.uk/best_practice_fax_marketing

Paul Crabtree is presently Marketing Director of Adestra (http://www.adestra.com), a UK based digital marketing agency that specialise in inbound and outbound email, fax and SMS broadcast solutions. Adestra's client portfolio includes many UK based publishers including Janes Information Group, Informa, Lexis Nexis, OUP, Blackwells and others.