3 Simple Ways to Make Sure Your Direct Mail Campaign Is Opened

/in , , /by

Learn the three things you can do to increase the chances that your sale pieces do their important job of selling your product or service.

Sometimes dropping your mail off at the post office can feel like you’re throwing it into a vast abyss. Once it’s out of your hands, you have no more control over it. Will it get to real people or will it end up in the dead letter office? Will the people who receive it read it or will it end up in the trash unopened?

Fortunately, there are some simple things you can do to increase the chances that your sale pieces arrive at the right place and get opened.

1. Get Your Mail Delivered

It doesn’t matter how great your copy is, how perfectly designed the sales piece is, or how sweet of an offer you have. If you use the wrong mailing list, your mail will not even show-up at the door. The key element to getting your mail delivered is to make sure you start with an accurate, updated mailing list that you get from a reliable source.

25 to 30 percent of your mail can end up undeliverable if you use a mailing list made up of bad names (wrong addresses, old names that have moved, etc.). One of my clients sent a direct mail campaign using first class mail, so the undelivered mail was returned to them. They knew they had picked the wrong list when they received about 20 percent of their campaign back. Consider the money lost due to a bad mailing list.

Making sure your list is right not only ensures that your mail will be delivered, but it is also instrumental in making sure that you get your mail opened by your target audience. If your list doesn’t target the people most likely to respond to your offer, it can be useless.

2. Get Your Mail Opened

Once your mail makes it in the hands of your target audience, your next step is to get them to open it and look through it. You want to make sure you are using the right format that will most appeal to your prospects. Every market niche has its own qualities and you need to find out and employ the format that works best for yours.

For example, suppose you are selling joint pain supplements. It turns out that the most successful type of format to get your mail opened in the joint pain niche is a magalog style. On the other hand, if you are marketing an information-based product and the purpose of your piece is to drive customers online, you will have the best results if you use a postcard or a four-page self-mailer.

So, how do you know what format you should be using? Find out who the most successful marketers are in your niche and follow what they’re doing. Here’s how:

1. Identify the biggest direct mail company in your niche and then see what they’re mailing. If you don’t know who the biggest mailer is, contact a list broker and ask them who mails to the biggest lists in your market. Then you can get a sample of what they are mailing.

2. Get samples of their pieces. This is the best way to find out how often they mail and what kind of offers they advertise is to get on their mailing list. When you request to be put on their lists, you can use a less recognizable name and a home address or a PO Box, if that makes you feel more comfortable about it contacting your competition.

3. Research your niche in SRDS. If you can’t find this reference book at your public library, request it and they may be able to get it for you on interlibrary loan.

3. Keep Your Mailing List Clean

Don’t rely completely on your list provider to give you a clean list. If you are getting lists from several sources, there could easily be duplicates, so always have your mail house run its own list hygiene procedure.

If you don’t clean your list you could run the change of mailing to bad addresses, wrong ZIP codes, and duplicate names. About 10% to 15% of every list has these. That means you could easily end up mailing 1,500 names that won’t respond out of a list of 10,000. Let’s do the math: If you are paying $0.65 for printing and postage, that will cost you $975 of lost money that did you no good at all.

If you don’t clean your list, you can be sure that you will have a bunch of pieces that did not get delivered. That kind of thing wastes your money, ruins your delivery rate, and reduces the number of orders you will receive.

Don’t throw your money away and threaten the results of your direct mail campaigns. Follow the three simple suggestions given here, and your mailings will be much more successful.

How Direct Marketing Can Improve Your Business

/in , , , , , /by

With the growth of the Internet, businesses have additional opportunities to market their products on a smaller marketing budget. Those that have achieved the greatest success are the ones that have successfully integrated online marketing with other Direct Marketing channels. Why? Because Direct Marketing channels are where buyers and sellers transact business and communicate on smaller budgets without ever meeting face-to-face or touching and feeling the merchandise. To make more effective use of online opportunities, marketers should do a “deeper dive” into Direct Marketing. The most commonly recognized Direct Marketing channels in historical order are:

  1. Direct Mail,
  2. Telemarketing,
  3. Direct Response Advertising,
  4. Internet, or online, marketing.

Direct Mail

In the United States, the roots of Direct Mail can be traced to Benjamin Franklin who used it to market Poor Richard’s Almanac throughout the American colonies starting in 1732. Direct Mail continued to flourish with the creation of the Montgomery Ward catalog in 1872 and the Sears catalog in 1888. These catalogs were popular since a large segment of the American population lived outside of cities and towns that had stores with sufficient product choices. As more people migrated to cities and suburbs, direct mail became popular for those that wanted to shop anonymously or could not easily travel to available stores. In its best form, Direct Mail provides a convenient way for prospects to receive information about products they want and order them without leaving the comfort of their home or office. In its worst form, organizations send unwanted mailings to people that are not interested in the products being promoted. Of course, unwanted mailings are known as “junk” mail. Their electronic equivalent is called “spam.”

Telemarketing

Some might argue that telemarketing began with the invention of the telephone, but marketers began to use it on a significant scale in the late 1970s with the introduction of WATS lines for economically calling out to prospective customers and toll-free numbers for prospects to call in without paying for the call. This created the two main components of telemarketing — (1) Inbound (toll-free numbers are provided for customers to call in) and (2) Outbound (telemarketers call prospects). In its best form, companies use outbound telemarketing to answer questions, provide customer service, facilitate the ordering of desired products, and cross-selling (which some mistakenly confuse with up-selling). In its most hated form, strangers and robots “cold call” prospects, interrupt what they are doing, and try to sell them something they do not want. Some uses of outbound telemarketing became so annoying that a law was passed called the Telephone Consumer Protect Act (TCPA) that created a Do Not Call Registry.

Even so, outbound telemarketing can be very effective under the following conditions:

  1. Prospect has given prior permission or wants the company to call,
  2. Product is highly desirable or greatly needed,
  3. Telemarketer is skillful and properly trained,
  4. Telemarketer listens to the desires of the people that answer the phone (rather than try to keep them on the line when they want to end the call).

Direct Response Advertising

Direct Response Advertising is advertising with a goal of getting the prospect to order the product directly from the advertisement. Some examples of direct response advertising are a direct mail piece with a postage-paid business reply card that is used to order the product, a TV ad that provides a toll-free phone number to order, and an email that provides a link to order the product from a Web site.

Internet and Mobile

Perhaps the method that has caused the most explosive growth of Direct Marketing is Internet marketing. There are two main reasons for this – (1) convenience and (2) economics. Even though the Internet is only a “young adult” (in reference to the beginning of its commercial use in 1995), nothing is more convenient or economical than the Internet for researching and ordering products. Even so, those that are using the Internet and related mobile technologies for marketing would be far more effective if they better understood the other Direct Marketing methods described above. Knowing how to use the Internet and its mobile “offspring” in conjunction with direct mail, telemarketing, and direct response advertising can create a synergistic force for marketing products most efficiently and effectively. Some people live online and some people don’t. Those that live on the Internet may not be online when a company needs to get their attention. Additionally, repetition of the information off-line helps them remember any exposure online. Similarly, those that spend most of their time off-line, can learn more about products when off-line marketing drives them online. A poster in a shopping mall, a direct mail post card with a coupon, or a display in a retail store may get their attention. If these offline devices have a link or QR code, prospects can be transported to a Web site that gives them the opportunity to find out more about the product, provides them with reviews from product users, helps them find where they can buy it, and enables them to order it directly. Taking this integration of direct marketing methods further by combining them with other off-line marketing methods can give marketers the greatest power at the lowest cost.

Direct Marketing can lower sales costs.

One powerful example of integrated Direct Marketing used in conjunction other forms of marketing is in the area of personal selling. In a previous post, I talked about the importance of personal selling to success in business. When it comes to promoting products, however, personal selling is also one of the most expensive methods in a marketer’s toolkit. According to the latest studies by McGraw-Hill, it costs $137.02 for an industrial sales call and takes an average of 4.3 calls, or a total cost of $589.18, to close a sale. Since it is not possible to make a fraction of a call, the real-world cost (using 5 calls to close a deal) is $685.10. That might work for selling airplanes and satellite systems to billion-dollar clients. It would be too expensive for selling many other products. That’s the bad news. The good news is that sales people can use the Internet and other Direct Marketing techniques for some (or even all) of the calls — thereby lowering overall sales costs.

Social media

As discussed above, just about everyone is talking about using social media in marketing products. The problem is too many don’t know how to effectively do it. While “earned media” techniques such as hauling videos represent very exciting new ways for promoting products, most of them are experimental and outside the control of your business. In an effort to take advantage of social media without ceding too much control, marketers need to have some understanding of popular social media channels and how to integrate them with other Direct Marketing methods.

  • Facebook has a large number of active users (over 1.86 billion at last count) and a lot of data on users so that advertisers can better target them. Since people go to Facebook to interact with friends and family, they do not like intrusions from companies. However, a lot of friends and family recommend products on Facebook, and company pages are very popular places for prospects to learn about products, discover new uses, find discounts, and share all this with their friends. At the very least, Facebook can make more brand impressions than other media. Companies pay $5.5 million for only 30 seconds of commercial time to reach roughly 110 million Super Bowl viewers one day a year. On Facebook, they have potential to reach a much larger audience at a much lower cost every day of the week. While Facebook limits ad sizes to very small spaces so as not to ruin user experiences, good marketers can make effective use of the space allotted with concise headlines.
  • Twitter is great for those that know how to write good headlines since it limits users to 140 characters. While it accounts for much less Web traffic than Facebook and other social media, Twitter users tend to be more influential. Also, Twitter can easily be linked to other SM sites, such as Facebook, so that if you post on Twitter, your Tweet can automatically appear on Facebook simultaneously. Twitter has proven to be very effective in responding to complaints, rumors, and factual mistakes for damage control and to provide better customer service. Companies that have learned to use Twitter in this way have been able to “turn negatives into positives” and build closer relationships with their constituents.
  • YouTube provides a place for companies large and small to reach their target audience without paying the high “real estate” costs of commercial TV channels. Furthermore, YouTube videos can be shared, and if they go viral, the numbers of viewers that actually watch the commercial can rival and even surpass TV audiences. YouTube viewers can also play the videos over and over again as well as share them with even larger networks of viewers enabling advertisers to make more brand impressions and greater sales.
  • Linked In is good for business markets. The HR departments of businesses use it to find candidates, and businesses can put profiles of their products and white papers on the site, and use it to promote their business. According to Linked In, 43% of marketers have found a customer on Linked In during 2014.

Integrating Social Media

To increase the marketing power of social media, marketers should be sure to integrate it with all other direct and non-direct channels. Direct mail, telemarketing, and direct response advertising should have links to social media, and vice versa. A lot of companies ask market targets to visit their Web site and “like” or “follow” them on social media, but too often they do not provide the benefit for doing so. Similarly, social media rarely ties campaigns to off-line and other direct marketing efforts — missing opportunities for marketing synergy, making additional brand impressions, and increasing sales. Companies with effective campaigns have linked product packaging and off-line media to social and online media. In addition to asking people to “like” or “follow” or visit social media and Web sites, they have given people codes in traditional media and on product packaging that give those that make the effort a chance to win something or save money. The feedback and contact information provided is more than worth the costs of the prize, rebate, or discount, and gives the company a chance to improve the product or add contact information to their database.

Advergaming

Some companies have successfully used Advergaming as a way to tie their media efforts together. When it works best, users have to go online and off for clues that teach them about the benefits of the products and company. They have fun while they are learning, are engaged, and remember the benefits. As a result, brand impressions and reasons to buy the products are better planted in the brains of market targets.

The power of Direct Marketing

Direct marketing has grown in power for a variety of factors that include the following.

  1. Less time. Market targets are busier than ever before since they have to work harder to earn a living.
  2. Less hassles and dangers. Increasing traffic, parking costs, and other hassles have reduced the desire for buyers to go to retail stores to do their shopping.
  3. Less expensive. The costs of buying and marketing products in “non-direct” ways has skyrocketed at the same time that financial disruptions, natural disasters, and government dysfunction has forced buyers to become more frugal.
  4. More convenient. The Internet is perhaps the most convenient way for buyers to research products, comparison shop, and order from their home, office, or mobile device.
  5. Anonymous. Some buyers prefer shopping for certain products anonymously.

Is Your Business Sellable?

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

78428367

One of the goals of every business owner should be to build a company that is worth selling. Whether it is actually put on the market or not is another matter.

A business that is worth selling is growing, vibrant, and healthy. That’s why it’s in the best interest of everyone involved in the company to continually work toward building a sellable business.

Many metrics are used to measure the worth of a sellable business. One of the key metrics is the ability of the business to generate recurring revenue.

There are several ways to achieve a consistent, recurring revenue stream. Not all will work for every type of business, product, or service. Here are a few ideas to consider, depending on the types of services and products you provide.

Long-Term Sales Contracts

One method of building recurring revenue is to offer contracts that tie a client to a long-term engagement. A customer could be enticed to sign a contract if they are offered preferred pricing and services. An example of this can be seen with most cell phone contracts. The multi-year contracts are offered as a way to get a free or discounted cell phone in exchange for signing a two or three year contract. The buyer gets the cell phone quicker, and the cell phone provider locks in a guaranteed, predictable revenue stream.

Service and Maintenance Contracts

Some businesses can offer service contracts for after-sale support. For example, an IT company will charge for installing and setting up a network in a business but could also charge a yearly support fee to keep the network up and running free of viruses. Maintenance contracts can be a great source of additional revenue throughout the year. In many automotive dealerships, the service bays bring in much higher profits than the car sales departments.

Product and Service Training Fees

If your product or service involves a learning curve, customers would get more value from their purchase if you also offer training and certification after the sale. Product training becomes a true win-win, as the customer gets better use of their purchase, while you get additional revenue from an existing client. Many software companies offer training for their products to help their buyers understand and use the software to its potential.

When your business can generate sales from multiple revenue streams that support each other, the risk to a potential buyer is reduced dramatically. The business becomes a much more attractive candidate.

Predictable, recurring, multiple income streams make a business seem less risky to a potential buyer. So the sooner you start building recurring revenue streams in your business, the better your position will be if and when the time comes to sell.

Introducing: Your Next Sales Super Achiever

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

business woman

We all want to increase sales and grow our businesses. We also know that hiring and grooming a sales superstar is one surefire way of achieving those goals. Unfortunately, finding and retaining a sales superstar is a difficult task. Until you find the secret to make that a reality, here’s an alternate path to consider for reaching your sales goals.

Self-publish a book!

You read that correctly. One of the best ways to increase your sales and grow your business is to author and publish your own book. Self-publishing your book allows you to present your points to your target audience in an authoritative way — just like a sales superstar would.

Now, to be clear, we aren’t talking about writing a novel the size of War and Peace. Nor are we talking about writing a prize-winning book. This type of book is written specifically to bring you leads and the types of customers who are looking to buy what you sell.

They say everyone has at least one book in them, but no one tells you how to go about writing it. Being an author is on many people’s dream lists, but few go about actually accomplishing the tasks needed to bring a book to life. Perhaps that’s because writing a book seems so overwhelming. “It will take many years.” “I don’t know how to write a book.” “I don’t know what to write about.” These are some of the many excuses that stand in the way of making authorship a reality.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Here are five simple steps to get you going:

  1. Pick your topic title.
  2. Make an outline of your main topic and sub-topics.
  3. Choose three main subjects to write about.
  4. Think about ways you or your products/services go about solving your customers’ problems. Come up with 10-20 solutions.
  5. Write about and expand on one of those points one hour every day.

It really can be as simple as that. Within a few weeks, you’ll have the main part of the book finished and ready for editing. Finding nice cover graphics and having it printed is not difficult.

Imagine being able to hand a prospect your own beautifully printed book. Do you think that would establish credibility and open some doors?

Your own self-published book is the ultimate business card — and the sales superstar you can use to grow your business in ways not otherwise possible. What’s more, this kind of sales superstar has no ego and doesn’t call in sick either. There’s at least one book in you. Start writing it today.

Please Don’t Ignore Me

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

78631099

The bulk of marketing budgets is often reserved for acquiring new customers. Much energy, time, and money is spent pursuing prospects that have a marginally small chance of ever becoming a customer. There’s a flaw with this strategy.

The simplest and most effective way to boost your bottom line profits is to remember who brought you where you are today: your existing customers. If you aren’t consistently advertising and staying in touch with current and past clients, you’re missing out on the best way to continually grow your business.

For every month that goes by without making contact with your past and existing customer base, you’ll lose up to ten percent of the clients you’ve worked so hard to acquire. Retaining clients is therefore an extremely important business growth strategy.

Selling your services to new customers means earning their trust. It takes hard work to build this trust. When a prospect becomes a customer, you have only begun to earn their trust. You cannot expect to maintain that trust without consistent, frequent contact that adds some value for the customer.

One of the best ways to maintain and build that trust is to communicate regularly via a newsletter. An effective newsletter has a mix of about 80% infotainment (fun and informative content that may not have anything to do with your particular industry) and 20% information about your business or industry.

The recent trend of companies switching to all digital email newsletters is now reversing with the realization that actually getting the emails opened and read is far more difficult than many were led to believe. Also many survey respondents favor a printed newsletter that they can hold versus one more email that clutters their already overfilled inbox.

Sure, email newsletters are inexpensive and require no postage, but there is a cost involved when the recipients never see or open the messages. By contrast, a printed newsletter is still one of the most powerful and cost-effective ways to stay in front of your customers without overtly selling them.

The Lifetime Value of a Client

Perhaps one of the reasons past clients are ignored is because some business owners don’t really know the lifetime value of a client. An existing client who is treated right, is not ignored, and is communicated with on a regular basis will not only return to do more business themselves but will also refer your company to those around them. Therefore the actual lifetime value is often five, ten, twenty (or even more) times the value of an initial sale.

That’s the power of relationship marketing and the reason why your existing customers should get the bulk of your marketing budget. If you treat your existing customers well and communicate with them on a regular basis, you may not need to chase as many prospects as you have in the past.

To learn more about defining and understanding your lifetime customer value, please visit: http://hbsp.harvard.edu/multimedia/flashtools/cltv/ (requires Flash).

Give Prospective Customers a Plan of Action

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

114265558

One of the greatest mistakes marketers make is to assume that interested prospects will automatically know which steps to take next when they receive a marketing piece in the mail, via email, or from a salesperson. Without a clear plan of action, many of your prospects will simply discard your marketing piece and move on to a different company…most likely your competitor.

Too many people assume that once a prospect shows interest, the next step is to close the sale. But rather than rushing to that conclusion, perhaps the best thing to do is to field any questions the prospect might have. Once your prospects are more informed, they will be able to make an educated decision about pursuing your products and services.

With that in mind, here are some phrases (and related information) you should include in your marketing materials to let prospects know you are there to help, not just make a buck:

  • Stop in and see our products! Include an address, business hours, and directions for reaching your building. Make sure you include a Google map on your website or landing page, as well.
  • Call and ask for more information! Include a phone number, contact name, extension number (where applicable), and hours. If you have an after-hours phone number, include that, too.
  • Call to set up an appointment! Again, provide all of the pertinent details, including the best time to reach you.
  • Send us an email to request more information! For email and web-based communications, provide a link to a simple contact form where prospects can enter their details and receive confirmation that their request went through. On print pieces, include an email address, and consider adding a QR code that links directly to a contact form on your website.
  • Visit our website for more information! Make sure you provide your full website address. Again, consider a QR code that links to your homepage or (better yet) to a landing page designed specifically for the promotion you’re running, with additional details about your products, services, and any current specials you have available. An FAQ page is also helpful here, and don’t forget to include full contact details so the prospect can easily reach you with questions.

Making yourself available to answer questions and provide your prospects with more information will make a positive impression and help boost sales.

Sell with Sincerity

/in , , /by

In a sea filled with competitive businesses, sincerity is a must if you want to get (and keep) customers. Here are a few tips to help you sell with sincerity:

  • Sincerity is more than just a smile or a firm handshake. It can be heard in your voice, your words, and your actions.
  • Don’t read from a script. No one wants to listen to a sales pitch that sounds like a recording. Mix in your personality, passion, and even personal experiences with the product.
  • Ask questions and listen with interest. Show that you really care about what the person is saying (in contrast to simply listening because it is the polite thing to do).
  • Be yourself. Remember that people buy from other people. If they like working with you, they are more likely to remember you and return again.
  • Back off the business mode when using social media sites. Rather, use them for their intended purpose: to be social and build relationships.
  • Remember that sincerity has to last. It doesn’t end after the sale. If customers have a problem with a product or service, sincerity is a must to resolve their issue.

George Henry Lewes once said, “Insincerity is always weakness; sincerity even in error is strength.” Sincerity in sales can not only help you build a stronger relationship with your customers, but will also help your business receive honest feedback and suggestions for improvement.

No Apologies, Please

/in , , , , , , , , /by

In order to be successful in business, you must portray confidence. If you aren’t confident in your abilities or the quality of your products and services, why should a prospect or customer have confidence in you?

The words you choose in sales and marketing are very important and should portray a positive, confident image of your business. That’s why you should never start a marketing or sales pitch with an apology. If what you have to say is important, you should always say it confidently, with no apologies.

Starting a conversation with an apology (“I’m sorry to both you…”) suggests that what you have to say isn’t really important and may influence prospects or customers to think the same.

Rather than apologizing or downgrading your approach, try showing confidence by saying, “I have an exciting new product I’d like to share with you, and I need a few minutes of your time. Do you have a moment to discuss this now, or can I make an appointment with you at a later date?”

If you’re promoting a product or service of value, you should never apologize for getting in contact with prospects or customers to promote it. So, if your sales pitch isn’t important, don’t use it. If it is important, don’t apologize for using it.

What Declining Sales Really Mean

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

Many businesses are currently experiencing a decline in sales. Some owners and executives believe this is due to outside economic conditions. Although the economy may have some bearing, perhaps the real reasons for the decline are more fundamental issues that no one in the company wants to face. The economy has only masked the issues and helped sweep them under the rug.

Many in this predicament think, “If only we could increase sales, everything else would take care of itself.” Oftentimes, the declining sales pattern is not the real problem; it’s just a symptom of other underlying issues. Perhaps the issues are in management, staffing, or a lack of effective marketing and sales.

If your company is experiencing a sales slump, it may be time to do a little soul searching to find the real issues. If you decide to take this head on, here’s a four-step plan to help you lick the problems.

Step 1 — Assess your current situation. What strengths do you see? What weaknesses? Are there opportunities you might be missing? And what are your threats? The more honest you can be at this step, the better the foundation for the rest of the process.

Step 2 — Now that you have an outline of the problems, it’s time to make a diagnosis. What are the causes behind the problems and issues you’re facing? Look beyond the surface issues, and try to get to the root causes.

Step 3 — Now that you have the assessment and a diagnosis of the situation, it’s time to make a plan that addresses your diagnosis by taking advantage of the strengths you identified and establishing ways to correct the weaknesses.

Step 4 — This is where the rubber meets the road. All that analysis will lead to no good unless you follow up with action. It’s time to follow through and act on the plan by implementing the changes outlined in the previous step.

By following through on these four simple but powerful steps, you can not only turn around sagging sales but also position your company for long-term growth.

Plant a Seed with Catalogs, and Watch Your Business Grow

/in , , , , , , , /by

While online ordering is a must-have for many businesses, a printed catalog can provide a great supplemental marketing tool for your website. Many people still prefer perusing catalogs at their leisure without being connected to a computer. For these customers, a printed catalog provides increased exposure to a wider variety of products. In addition, catalogs can be easily shared with others and offer staying power…with a message that can be seen again and again.

Here are a few tips for creating a printed catalog that will do the selling for you:

  • Include a mix of customer testimonials that give readers a more consumer-centric look at your products.
  • “Tell your story” by including background information about your business and the history of your products.
  • Cross-sell complementary products through suggestions in the product copy, call-outs, or the placement of companion products together.
  • Feature best-selling products in the upper right-hand corner, where the eye is naturally drawn when flipping through a catalog.
  • Think small. If you have a frequently changing product line, consider a mini catalog booklet that offers a brief overview of your product line with colorful product photos to pique interest. Refer readers to your website for an extended product line or more in-depth information.
  • Include an order form. While few customers mail in their order, many will use it to organize their orders before ordering online or calling.
  • Include seasonal inserts that can be easily updated for relevant sales and offers.

Remember, the more information customers have about your products, the more confident and satisfied they’ll feel with their purchasing decisions.