Despite the push in recent years to move direct mail marketing out of the mailbox and into the in-box, traditional direct mail campaigns still remain surprisingly effective. A recent study by the Direct Marketing Association found that nearly 70 percent of consumers prefer to receive announcements and information on new products from companies they are familiar with via conventional mail, versus less than 20 percent who prefer email pitches. But with so many companies sending out direct mail promotions, even a carefully culled and targeted mailing list is often not enough. Here are some ways to ensure that your creative direct mail gets opened:

1. Get personal. Using the recipient’s name as often as you can in a direct mail marketing piece — provided it’s spelled correctly — can make all the difference. “The closer you get to something that resembles a personal letter, the higher your response rate is going to be,” notes Wilson Zehr, CEO of Portland, Ore.–based Cendix, a leading provider of Web-to-print applications for direct marketers.

2. Leverage all you know. One of the biggest mistakes direct mail marketers make is not using all the data they’ve been collecting on a potential customer, says Lois Willingham, vice president of sales and marketing at Huntington Beach, Calif.–based Think Ink Marketing. “You can include information such as recent transactions or amount of [charitable] donations or even the city and state where they live and what’s going on in their area,” she says.

3. Play the match game. Just as important as having the right direct mail list is making sure you match the right envelope and package to the right audience, says David Nelson, senior vice president at Walter Karl Inc. in White Plains, N.Y. “Every niche audience you mail to has a different level of sophistication and gets exposed to different levels of direct mail, so you have to adapt your envelopes to who you’re talking to,” he adds.

4. Pique their interest. The right teaser printed on a direct mail marketing envelope can intrigue potential customers and raise response rates, says Dennis Bass, deputy executive director for the Washington, D.C.–based Center for Science in the Public Interest. He has built the subscription levels of his organization’s Nutrition Action Healthletter largely through direct mail. “Our most successful teaser for the past 15 years has been ‘10 foods you should never eat,’” he notes.

5. Test and test again. If your piece doesn’t get opened, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling. “That’s why you need to do a lot of creative testing on the outer envelope,” Nelson points out. “Right now the big thing at the post office is ‘repositionables,’ [sticky] notes on the outside of the envelope.”

6. Get bulky. One way to increase response rates and create a sense of reciprocity is by including a small gift in a direct mail marketing package. “It will pique people’s curiosity and make them want to open the package,” Zehr says. “But you do have to look at the return on investment of those gifts because it is going to raise the costs.”

7. Lend a hand. It may be labor intensive, but Willingham says many of her clients take the time to handwrite the address of each recipient. “There isn’t a single business out there that shouldn’t at least test this method,” she notes.

8. Go first-class. Most direct mail marketers, unless they’re representing high-end products and services, can’t afford first-class mail. But Bass says a creative postage design can do a lot to make direct mail campaigns look more appealing. “We have preprinted indicia for third-class or standard A postage, but it looks like metered postage,” he says.

9. Make it inviting. Everyone likes to be invited to a party or events, so take that into account when designing your direct mail envelope. “Envelopes that look like an invitation tend to work really well,” Willingham says. “Especially if you use a live stamp and no return address, because that gives the piece the look of personal correspondence.”

10. Think blue. “As far as I know, the only [hard-and-fast] rule is that a signature should be in blue ink,” Nelson says. “If you look at a two-color or four-color letter signed in black, that’s a really stupid mistake.”

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