The Top Grammatical Errors to Avoid When Creating a Direct Mail Marketing Campaign

 

When it comes to postcards and other marketing collateral for direct mail, you do not want to gain notoriety for making grammatical errors. You will not only get noticed, but this can have an adverse effect in your brand.

Those with the fewest grammatical errors gain more clients in business than individuals with plenty of careless grammar mistakes. That’s a fact!

Many studies only confirm the obvious—grammar is of the utmost importance. The correct usage of words can depict you as someone that is not only professional, but intelligent as well. The opposite becomes true when you make mistakes constantly.

If you have spelling and grammatical errors in your direct mail marketing campaign, clientele will certainly pass you over and move on to someone else. If you own a business, and you make grace grammatical errors, you will depict an image of someone with an unreliable work ethic, and who does not pay attention to details.

Your goal should be to create work that is free of error. It may take considerable time to proofread, but it is worth it in the long run.

Here are the top grammatical errors to avoid:

• You may want to avoid gender bias in your postcard marketing campaign. Most people use “we or they” as an inclusive plural to avoid the use of “him or her” constantly. Nevertheless, you should avoid switching within the same sentence possessive pronouns from singular to plural to prevent this from becoming a grammatical error in itself.


• The English language can be quite a challenge with “it’s” as a contraction of “it is.” When something belongs to “it,” you can use “its.”


• Used as an adjective, “good” describes the noun. Used as an adverb, “well” describes a verb, if not another adverb in the sentence.



Mistake: The annual report and charts reveal that our marketing campaign went good this fiscal period.




Correction: The annual report and charts reveal that our marketing campaign went well this fiscal period.



• For a possessive pronoun, you should use “their.” The adverb to use an interjection, to introduce sentence subject, or as an adverb is “there.” The contraction for “they are” is “they’re.”


• Avoid making careless errors with the use of dangling participles. Word placement is key, because if you change the order of your words, it can alter the meaning. It is best to place subject and verb near each other in a sentence to avoid making errors.



Mistake: Walking through the courtroom, the judge’s gavel slammed.




Correction: Walking through the courtroom, I heard the judge slam down her gavel.



• You should not use double negatives in a sentence together, i.e. “It wasn’t unlikely”, which really means “It was likely” and is less confusing. Not only will you seem unprofessional and careless, but the reader will certainly be confused.

The more you practice a skill, the better you become at that skill. You want to be sure to practice effective writing habits with your communication in your postcards for direct mail and other direct mail pieces.

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