Direct Mail

What is Direct Mail Marketing?
Direct mail is one of the most common forms of direct marketing in use today. Marketers have used direct mail marketing for decades to get their message across. It's a proven, versatile and measurable marketing channel.

How Do I Use Direct Mail?
Direct mail can be a powerful addition to your overall marketing program. But it requires quite a bit of research and planning to do it right. This website offers plenty of direct mail marketing advice to get you started, including such topics as:
 

* Improving direct mail response

There's no doubt that direct mail is one of the most effective marketing tool available to small business. What are the advantages?

It's cost-effective, costing between .75 cents and $1 per mailing, including paper, ink, envelopes and postage. It's effective, averaging between 1 and 3% response rate. It allows controlled growth. You choose how many you send, and since you know the average response rate, you know how many will probably reply. And it gives you one-on-one attention.

But direct mail is only truly effective if you get at least that 1 to 3% response rate. I've heard about direct mail failures from many small business owners. In fact, I'd say most who've tried it don't believe it works well at all based on their response. Sometimes those responses have been zero.

It's frustrating to pour hours of your best copywriting into a direct mail letter that bombs. You may feel that not only have you wasted your time, but you've also wasted a bunch of cash that could have been put to better use somewhere else.

But, most of those business owners have committed cardinal sins in their direct mail copywriting. And their response rates could have been far higher had they known a few things about writing direct mail.

It all starts with the envelope. If it looks like "junk mail", it'll probably be tossed instead of opened. There's no chance of getting your message if it hits the trash can, and that means you have wasted your time and resources.

So, make sure your direct mail letter is opened by making them want to see what's inside. You could:

• use real stamps instead of a postage meter
   
• take your logo off the return address so they think it's from a real person rather than from a business
   
• address it in handwriting rather than print
   
• use a different font than what's normally used
   
• make the envelope a different color than white
   
• print a teaser on the envelope

And those are just a few tips. Use your imagination. What gets you to open an envelope?

Once you get them to open it, attention shifts to the letter itself. You have literally seconds to convince them to read on, or once again it hits the trash can. What makes the biggest difference? Your opening headline.

Get their attention with a compelling heading, and try to aim for some kind of emotional response. The stronger that emotional response, the better. Your headline could ask a question. Or it could provide an answer. And it should highlight your biggest benefit in some way. "How to..." is a good bet. "Why" also works. Asking a question stimulates our curiosity, and that usually means we'll read on.

Attract more interest with your first few paragraphs. They're your introduction. If it bores them, they'll stop reading.

Know your target market and write the body of your copy directly to them. If they're women, use words that appeal to women. And if they're men, use words men relate to. Copy written for younger consumers differs from copy for older ones.

Now, how does your product or service benefit your target? Will it make them richer? Will they look younger? Feel sexier? Attract more of the opposite sex? How will it make them feel? Benefits stimulate desire, and it's their wants that you want to provide an answer for.

For the most part, they're not interested in you, what your company does, or how long you've been in existence. What they do care about is WIIFM. "What's in it for me?" It's your benefits that will tell them what's in it for them.

Don't make the mistake of using technical jargon if your target market is consumer-based. And keep your writing simple, friendly and conversational no matter who your target market is.

Have a specific call to action. Tell them exactly what you want them to do. Do you want them to call you for more information? Sign up for your online newsletter? Order your product? And make sure you tell them when to contact you (today of course) and why (because of a discount or special offer), and create some sense of urgency (time- or quantity-limited).

Include a P.S. repeating your main benefits and your time- or quantity-limited special offer. It's the second most-read line in your letter.

A few tips on style. Readers usually scan. They won't often read the whole letter, so break up long copy with subheadings and include a photo or graph because their eye will stop there. They usually zig-zag while they're reading, starting in the top left corner and moving down the page, often moving their eye back up to the top right.

A tip on length. There's various opinions on length. My opinion is that you write until.... Keep writing until you've said everything you need to say regardless of length.

And a final tip on editing. Write the letter and put it aside for a day or two. Then read it aloud, noting where it's awkward or where the flow isn't right. Fix that and read it out loud again, or better yet, have someone else read it to you.

Now that you know how to write direct mail that will increase your response rate, I hope if you've already tried it and think it's not effective that you'll try it again. Or if you're new to direct mail, that you'll give it a try. It truly is one of the most effective ways overall to generate leads and increase sales.

* Direct mail lead generation

You will succeed at business-to-business direct mail sales lead generation if you master three calculations, and your response rate is not one of them. Your response rate tells you only a small part of what you are doing correctly.

I am assuming that you have a sales force, and that you use what is essentially a two-step sales process. First, you generate a sales lead. Then, your sales force closes that lead with a sale. But how do you figure out what level of response rate you want? By looking at three of the most vital numbers in B2B direct mail lead generation, namely, qualified lead rate, appointment rate and close rate.

Qualified lead rate
Your qualified lead rate is the percentage of all inquiries that are ready to meet a sales person. In other words, the percentage of all leads who are also qualified leads. If you have 100 leads but only 25 of them are qualified (can afford your offering, have the authority to buy, need what you are selling and are ready to act within your timeframe), then your qualified lead rate is 25%, the industry average. Good for you!

Appointment rate
Your appointment rate is the percentage of qualified leads that result in a sales appointment or demonstration. For many reasons, not all qualified leads will meet with your salespeople. The industry average is 30%. Thirty percent of all qualified leads should meet with your sales people.

Close rate
Your close rate is the percentage of sales appointments that translate into a sale. Sometimes this number is expressed as a ratio. If you close two out of every four potential customers that you meet, then your close rate is 50%, or two out of four. The average in most industries is 25%, or one out of four.

As you can see, the most important question in B2B direct mail lead generation is not "What is our response rate going to be?" If you have a small sales force and high close rates, you can be satisfied with low response rates. But if you have a large sales force and low close rates, you need higher response rates.

The secret is to remember that your direct mail response rates tell you how successful you are at generating leads, and no more. How good you are at turning those leads into paying customers is another story.

* Direct mail lists

The right direct mailing list targets people who want your product or service. The direct mail mailing list is a key factor in a successful direct mail marketing campaign and a major point to consider in small business marketing strategies where marketing ROI (Return On Investment) is a key concern.

What really makes your direct mail marketing and advertising campaign successful?

The biggest single factor in the success of your direct mail marketing strategy is who you send your mailings to.

A. You need a list.

This can be:

1) a list of existing customers or prospects who have inquired as a result of any of your marketing efforts or

2) a list which you purchase or rent..

B. The mailing list must contain the names of people who are likely to be interested in the benefits of your products or services.

Don’t try and sell beer to the Temperance Society or real estate to people who cannot afford it. You have to target your direct mail marketing efforts.

What kinds of lists are available?

C. The three basic kinds of lists that you can use are (you can use all three):

1. Your own list of prospects and customers. This is a list that you collected with your own personal marketing efforts. This is known as a house list. These people are most likely to respond to your offers, because they have responded in the past.

2. A response list is a list of people that have actually done something. They have either purchased something from the people who put together the list or inquired in response to some offer or asked to be on the list. They have some level of interest in the topic or purpose of the list.

These people have not previously responded to you, but they have responded to someone in a related area (if you have purchased a correctly targeted list) so you know they are at least warm.

This is a direct mail mailing list you can purchase from the owner of the list (such as a magazine or company) or a list broker.

3. A compiled list is a list of people who were selected to be on the list because they possess the characteristics that you asked the list broker to screen for.

Examples of characteristics used to target correctly may include age, sex, geographic location, income level, etc. These are more fixed characteristics than response list characteristics, which are behavioral characteristics.

Mailing lists, correctly targeted, can make the difference in a mediocre promotional campaign to a wildly successful promotional campaign. It really just depends on what you are willing to have, A success or mediocrity. So which is it?

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