how has your direct mail advertising worked for you?

[sam hunt]

Hi there

out of interest, how many of you have engaged in a direct mail advertising campaign and what result did you achieve from it.

I recognaise that 1% is a success, but has anyone ever done any better than that?

sam

[John Bogiatzis]

Hello Sam,

WOW! What a perfect question for this point in time.

I just sent out a Direct Mail campaign last week and here are the results:

152 Mail Outs were sent to a Niche Market within NSW
- 6 new clients have been brought in as a result

Success rate: 3.9% (massively higher than normal)

So you may ask how did I achieve that sort of result? Here my insider secret tips:

1. Get Niche and get focused: You need to identify a core target market and talk about the pain their experiencing and that you have the solution to fix it. If you shift your Direct Mail to be focused on the solution to your target markets problem your results will sky rocket!

2. Stop Talking about yourself: Biggest mistake I see in Direct Mailing is everyone is talking about themselves. They have a great logo, a list of all the services they provide and even a nice photo of them - FAIL! No one care;s about you or your company sorry but you need to orientate your marketing around the target market - WITFM (What's in it for me)

3. Hand written addressed envelopes It sounds simple but by merely hand writing the address at the front of the envelope means you have a much higher open rate than an automated printed slip.

Hope this helps - at the risk of shamelessly promote myself I have a FREE CD that reveals the secrets to DIRECT Marketing as well as small business marketing strategies. You can grab a copy here: http://www.attractclients2u.com

Good luck and wishing you great success.

John Bogiatzis.

[LeelaCosgrove]

Don't just focus on % - focus on sale volume.

If a campaign costs you $1,200 - and you get a single response for a lifetime value of $30,000 - do you CARE what the % is?

Smart direct response marketers look at ROI % As well as response % ...

[CathyHalliday]

You could of course lift that result to 30% or more by adding a quick telemarketing call a few days after your mail out. This works particularly well if you have targetted a specific or niche market.

There will of course be a cost in terms of time, but it will make such a huge difference to your results, that it's well worth the effort.

[Hugh Thyer]

Leela's right again. What counts is the $$$. You can make money with a 1% response but lose it with a 10% response, depending on how much each new client is worth.

Anyway, while it sounds a bit like self promotion I've been writing about this stuff for a year and a half now and if you want to make your direct mail campaigns way more profitable then follow the link in my signature and check out the articles.

I'd love to answer your question on getting higher than a 1% rate but there are SO many factors involved I'd be writing for hours on it and I wouldn't get my current article on reducing return rates written this evening.

Sufficient to say there isn't one way to get 50 new customers. There's 50 ways to get one new customer. The more weapons in your arsenal the more you'll make.

Hugh

[Barb]

This is a great topic as I am in the early stages of preparing my first direct mail campaign.

My first obstacle is to find out who I should target - how do you know this? Ideally I would like to target local small to medium sized businesses, but is this target market too big?

It is also advised that for higher impact, you should personalise your letter. So in order to do this, it means contacting these businesses to get the business owner's name. My experience with doing this is that you have to explain why you want the contact person's name in the first place, and then they tell you that they don't require your services at that point, before you have the chance to send them any information or your hard hitting marketing piece.

The follow up call after the letter is very important, as it shows how committed you are to your marketing campaign.

I would love to hear from anyone who can help me re-define my target market and also assist with obtaining the business owner's name without discounting them.

Regards,

[Hugh Thyer]

If you're using a listbroker then you get the name anyway Barb.

Otherwise you can google the business to get more info, or ring them up and give them another reason for calling them. You can call them and ask for the owners name without giving your details, or come up with an excuse for asking for it, like you just wanted to check you were talking to the right company.

In your line of business just one customer could be worth a lot of money to you so its worth doing the research to target your prospects well.

Hugh

[Barb]

Originally Posted by Hugh Thyer

If you're using a listbroker then you get the name anyway Barb.

Otherwise you can google the business to get more info, or ring them up and give them another reason for calling them. You can call them and ask for the owners name without giving your details, or come up with an excuse for asking for it, like you just wanted to check you were talking to the right company.

In your line of business just one customer could be worth a lot of money to you so its worth doing the research to target your prospects well.

Hugh

Thanks Hugh! I haven't looked at going down the path of a listbroker, I tend to make my own list using local business directories. Some directories do include the business owner's name, but most don't.

I find that when companies contact me, I want to know who I'm talking to and what they want my information for, so I like to be up front when I'm contacting businesses and tell them who I am and why I want their name. I don't want to waste their time, or mine, for that matter.

[mtpocket]

Originally Posted by LeelaCosgrove

Don't just focus on % - focus on sale volume.

If a campaign costs you $1,200 - and you get a single response for a lifetime value of $30,000 - do you CARE what the % is?

Smart direct response marketers look at ROI % As well as response % ...

Spot on ! Couldn't agree more.

[Hugh Thyer]

Originally Posted by Barb

I find that when companies contact me, I want to know who I'm talking to and what they want my information for, so I like to be up front when I'm contacting businesses and tell them who I am and why I want their name. I don't want to waste their time, or mine, for that matter.

With respect Barb, nobody likes to be sold to, but we all like buying. If you tell them you want to advertise to them they'll give you the cold shoulder. But when you send your sales package through, and you make them an offer that makes their life easier AND saves them money they'll be interested.

Telling them you want to advertise to them means they'll be off side with you as soon as they see your sales package. And that ain't a great way to start...