Direct Mail Marketing News

Like that old seventies hit, “Baby Come Back,” business owners (or their marketing managers) sing the sad refrain of “Customer, come back” when customers “churn.” (That’s marketing-speak for when they stop acting like customers—they disengage, unsubscribe, defect to the competition, stop buying, etc.)

It doesn’t really matter why a customer fades away. You can launch a re-engagement campaign regardless.

You might never find out exactly why a customer churned—but that shouldn’t stop you from making an effort to win them back with a re-engagement campaign. 

Re-Engagement Basics

A re-engagement campaign is a two-step process:

1. Identify when a customer has churned
2. Create and launch offers to win them back

Churn is more obvious in some kinds of businesses (the customer cancels their membership, for instance) so the first thing you’ve got to do is define what churn is for your business. Is it when they haven’t opened your last six emails? Last twelve? Haven’t made a purchase in six months? A year?

If you monitor your marketing with any sort of modern marketing automation system, once you’ve defined churn, you should easily be able to identify when it happens and set up an automated sequence to respond to it.

Your campaign can’t be anything as blunt as “Baby, come back!” (Then again, for some kinds of businesses—perhaps a music streaming service—it might work.) Like any effective marketing piece, your re-engagement campaign has to have an irresistible offer…something like these:

• “Enjoy 25% off your next order for the next seven days”
• “Get a free (product, add-on, etc.) with your next purchase”
• “Now! Pay as you go (or another kind of pricing option that might better suit their needs)”

While you will likely have some decent response to your first email, plan on multiple emails over a several-month period. Reason: One 2014 study of re-engagement campaigns showed that 25% of disengaged customers continued to open and read emails for 300 days after the first re-engagement message.

This Puts the Oomph in Your Re-Engagement Campaign

The problem with relying on email alone when conducting a re-engagement campaign is that not all churns will still be active email subscribers.

For some, you will have been marked as spam. Others will have unsubscribed. Maybe they closed out that particular email account. (A recent forecast noted that the majority of email users have multiple email accounts.)

So if you’re not totally certain you’re reaching their in-box, go for their mailbox. Send them direct mail; a postcard.

This is something that the majority of digital marketers never consider.

It doesn’t even make all that much difference if you create a new offer or just sent a direct mail version of whatever your email offer is; even injecting a single postcard into your win-back campaign increases the possibility of a returning customer.

And because direct mail still dominates results, adding additional postcards to the campaign will correspondingly increase your results.

Whether you’re trying to win back customers or just win some, period, you can’t do better than with direct mail. You can design and mail your first postcard campaign right now, from your computer, at www.prospectsplus.com/pei.

Or, if just the idea of graphic design makes you sweat, give us a ring at Opportunity Knocks at 1 (866) 319-7109, and tell us what you need. Our design and marketing pros will handle the design, list, and mailing for you—no sweat.

Do you know that old saying, “The only certainties in life are death and taxes”? While that may be true for all of us, businesses that market to consumers have a couple of additional certainties:

• Customers and prospects look for the easiest excuse to discard your direct mail postcard without engaging with it.

• You will always need to do all you can to ensure that your postcard promotions rise above the “static” created by the majority of other direct mail advertisers.

If you understand and fully apply the following four points to your future promotions, you will dramatically increase response, conversion, and customer goodwill (which leads to more response and conversion).

1.) Choose and use current, vibrant imagery.

When you use photos or graphic elements that are dull—the same or similar to things customers have seen a thousand times—your campaign becomes just another singer in the “static choir” created by all the other dull marketing efforts out there.

In the entertainment business, it’s understood that every story has already been. It’s never a matter of telling a new story but of how to tell the same kinds of stories in the most interesting way.

So yes, you’ve got to try a bit harder to find (or create) photographic images or graphics that feel fresh and new.

And so it is with your images.

Do this: Google “freshest direct marketing postcard designs” or similar wording to see what’s catching peoples’ eyes right now. You can also log on to www.prospectsplus.com/pei and sample our customizable design templates, which we keep very fresh indeed.

2.) Reach for the Heart, Not the Mind.

A successful promotional postcard is one that causes your customer/prospect to feel something—and emotional reaction. If you card demands of them to read, think, compare, etc., it’s headed for the recycle bin.

What is the real human benefit that your product or service delivers. Ask yourself how it does one or more of the following:

• Make life (or one of life’s aspects) easier
• Make the future more secure
• Put them in more control
• Make them better than average
• Make them healthier, smarter, or more attractive

Brainstorm on this and come up with all the different ways. Then brainstorm again on ways to express these benefits. Create headlines, taglines, subject lines that express this.

Do this: Ask some of your current customers why they choose you over your competition. They will tell you in terms of the real human benefit, the emotional reasons. Listen to their words and take notes. They just might give you a testimonial that you can use as the headline for your next campaign.

3.) Seek to Develop Interest, Not Close a Sale.

A postcard is not a sales letter or an email. While it’s true that “the more you tell, the more you sell,” a postcard simply does not have the necessary space for lists of benefits and features or numerous calls to action or the other elements of effective direct response copy.

So don’t approach your postcard design as it it’s just a smaller version of an email or letter.

Instead, say just enough with your to create intrigue and generate interest for the reader…and make sure to include your contact information.

4.) Keep Your Offer Simple and Don’t Push It Too Hard

While you must have an offer always remember these two things:

1. Keep your offer simple
2. You don’t have to make the offer the central focus of your postcard

Like we mentioned in #2 above, do your best to not make people have to read a lot or have to calculate or compare. Present one offer, such as giving them something for free. People understand “Two for one entrees” or “Seventh car wash free.”

And also as we began to say in #2 above, put most of your postcard design effort into pushing the core benefit of your product or service. Appeal to your customer’s self-interest. Make the offer seem offhand, an afterthought. Put it on the back of the card.

Try these four things on your next postcard campaign and remember to let us know how it went for you.

And you can put these four points to work right now by logging on to www.prospectsplus.com/pei, where you’ll find those fresh design templates we mentioned and a lot more, including targeted list-building and mailing services, all from your computer or tablet.

You can also get your postcard created by marketing and design experts who’ve produced thousands of successful campaigns for businesses just like yours. Just give Opportunity Knocks a ring at 1 (866) 319-7109.

We discussed marketing to millennials a couple times last year—mostly on the topic of how, against most marketer’s assumptions, millennials like and respond to direct mail.

As important as it is to know how to market to the younger generation, the plain fact is that, when it comes to having money to spend, the baby boomers are still the largest and most powerful age demographic.

So, let’s review a few things about marketing to them, shall we?

The Numbers

Over the next 10 years, nearly 70 million boomers will be retirement age. This is a largely affluent generation who will have plenty of free time to shop and discretionary income to spend. (Oh, and did we mention that, according to Forbes, they will inherit nearly $13 trillion between now and 2037?)

No matter what industry or profession you’re in, it’s likely that it’s needed or wanted or might appeal to this generation. So here’s five things to keep in mind when promoting your product/service to them:

1.) They Don’t Consider Themselves Old

This is the generation that experienced Beatlemania, youth culture, the hippies. They were raised on rock and roll but retirement to this crew doesn’t mean “rocking chair.”

Baby boomers will use their golden years to do all the stuff they couldn’t do while they were raising families: travel to exotic locales and have adventures. So don’t assume that such things won’t appeal to them. You just need to present it in a way that appeals to them—which may be different than how you would present it to a younger demographic.

2.) They Appreciate Quality Marketing Copy

Boomers like to read. But they largely don’t dig trendy slang, web abbreviations, acronyms, etc. (OMG! LOL!) So write proper copy. And don’t skimp. This generation is used to traditional direct mail, such as long-copy sales letters and the like. Though postcards provide limited space, you can still fill the back side of your card with sufficient copy.

Another thing is to play it safe with conventional sales copy—no hype, no foul language, nothing overly clever or cute. Address any possible objections they might raise—this goes not only for your direct mail but also for websites, brochures, and other marketing pieces.

3.) Don’t Rush ‘Em

Generally speaking, before a boomer makes a purchase, they will do their research. This includes familiarizing themselves with the product or service; talking to others who’ve used it or a competing brand; compare specs, check reviews, and the like. This generation has money but many are on a fix income, so purchases are viewed as investments. In short, they won’t be rushed into a purchase, so your best strategy (as detailed in point #2) is to give them plenty of information and content. Shoot for gaining their trust in your brand. When they get to that point, they are on the threshold of a close.

4.) Get Personal

They’re retired. They are not in any hurry. They have plenty of free time and tend to enjoy longer interactions with people—family, friends and, yes, even salespeople. So, if you’re marketing to this age demographic, don’t be in a hurry. Rather, be willing, ready, and able to invest time in them. It’s the flipside of #3 above. You will likely find a willing set of ears, interested in hearing what you have to say about how your product or service can benefit them.

5.) Baby Boomers Aren’t Afraid of Technology

The younger generations are often identified as the tech savvy ones but boomers are no less savvy. They may not have had smartphones in their cribs but they’ve lived through the progression of black and white TV to color, the advent of stereo sound, cordless telephones, VHS players, CDs…you get the idea. They are not fazed by more recent technology. More than 90% of boomers use email and search engines, and make purchases online. Because they are the fastest-growing age group on Facebook, you can successfully bolster your direct mail efforts with Facebook ads; they’ll see it.

Now that you know more about marketing to boomers, you can put that knowledge to work on your next postcard campaign, which you can design, print and mail, all from the comfort of your desktop, by logging on to www.prospectsplus.com/pei.

Or call Opportunity Knocks at 1 (866) 319-7109. Tell our design and marketing pros what you need and want and we’ll handle everything from design, to generating a targeted list, and even the mailing. You’ll say, “Boom. That was easy.”

Whether you’ve only marketed your business digitally or never marketed at all, you will eventually ask yourself the question (if you haven’t already), “Are paid online ads and email enough?”

You probably don’t click on every single ad you see when you’re online, to you? And you probably don’t open every email that every marketer sends you, right? (We certainly thank you for opening this one.)

Your prospects probably aren’t much different than you. They might even make liberal use of a spam folder and ad-blocking software.

It’s hard to be absolutely sure, unless they somehow contact you and move the sales cycle ahead.

But one thing’s for sure: postal mailboxes don’t have spam filters or pop-up blockers, so direct mail has a much higher degree of certainty of receipt; you can be sure that your prospect is seeing your promotion.

And it doesn’t stop there. It’s been scientifically proven that you get a much higher rate of response with direct mail. A U.S. Postal Service-sponsored study which found that postcards generate a more significant and lasting effect than digital marketing methods: 79% of recipients respond immediately, as opposed only 45% of email recipients.

We could toss out more pro-direct mail stats but let’s get on to the reason you began reading—seven great ideas for your first postcard campaign:

1.) The Introducer

This is for new businesses or a new location or office. It’s the “Hey, here we are!” card. An introduction postcard may be the first exposure a prospect has of you, so it should be straightforward about what you do, where you located and how your prospect benefits from choosing you. And even though it’s just supposed to be an introduction, you do want them to respond, right? So remember to present an offer.

2.) Dollars Off

Whether you’re trying to win back customers who’ve gone astray or just generate more business from existing customers, you can’t lose with a discount offer. But according to one study, you’ll win more if you express your discount in dollars, rather than in a percentage. Specifically, dollar amounts (“Get $1 off,” “Take $50 of your next order,” “Here’s $20!” etc.) were consistently found to perform twice as well as a percentage discount.

3.) Thank You!

According to a 2014 survey, 53% of U.S. consumers will take their business elsewhere when they feel unappreciated, taken for granted.

You’re a customer too, so you know how it feels. Don’t be that guy (or girl). Remember to send a direct mail thank you note when customers make a significant purchase or reach a new customer milestone.

4.) Rewards Program

Think of a rewards program postcard as being a Dollars Off-Thank You! combo. But it doesn’t have to be overly complicated. Decide what qualifies a customer for a reward (discount, something free, etc.) and, if you’re using marketing automation, you can set it up to recognize the signals and trigger a new card informing of their discount or freebie.

5.) The Happy Holiday Postcard 

During Christmas and New Years, people anticipate receiving cards in the mail from family and friends. All this attention on the mailbox set up the perfect conditions to send out your own warm holiday greeting. And definitely put the emphasis on the greeting. Wish them a wonderful holiday. Thank them for their business. And then, almost as an afterthought, present them with an irresistible offer or holiday discount.

Did this post give you some ideas for your first (or next) postcard campaign? Here’s another great idea: you can design your card right now, and handle the printing and mailing, all from the comfort of your computer, by logging on to www.prospectsplus.com/pei.

And if you want to hear some more great postcard marketing ideas, give Opportunity Knocks at call at 1 (866) 319-7109, and talk to one of our design and marketing pros about your business. They’ll handle the job from design to mailing and help you get powerful results.

A poorly designed door hanger is destined for the same fate as any poorly designed direct marketing piece: the wastebasket or recycling bin. So, it follows that, like any type of marketing piece, in order to be effective, a door hanger must be well designed. And when you put a well-designed door hanger onto local doorknobs, your phone rings, your shop is full, and you might have to start a waiting list.

Here are five tips you can use to create response-getting door hangers:

1.) Use a bold image.

Like with any marketing piece, nobody is going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out something that isn’t clear. This includes the graphic image you use. So make sure it’s something that can be identified at a glance. You want to the recipient to see the image and know what it is as they are walking towards their front door from 10 feet away. Before you send your door hanger design to print, do the ten-foot test: pull up the design on your computer screen, cover the screen with a magazine or book, have a friend of family member stand 10 feet away and then pull the magazine/book away for a few seconds. Can they tell what the image is? If not, choose another image and test again.

2.) Ensure the image makes sense.

Not only does it have to be recognizable at 10 paces, it’s also got to relate to your business. If you’re a travel agent, you might choose a shot of the Eiffel Tower or people in swimsuits on a beach. If you’re a pizzeria, naturally, it would be pizza. If you’re a plumber or mechanic, if could be a wrench. Anything that visually represents the product or service you provide goes a long way in delivering an effective marketing message.

3.) Remember the target.

While door hangers are a more general type of marketing method, you can still create a certain level of personalization by ensuring that they get hung on the right doors. For instance, if you ran a building and office cleaning service, you would not put your hangers on residential doorknobs. If you’re a pool cleaner or gardening service, you would not hang your hanger on apartment doorknobs.

4.) Do you have a call to action?

Just because it’s a door hanger doesn’t mean you’re “off the hook” about having a call to action. As with any kind of marketing (except the really lame kind), you must make it clear what you want the owner of the doorknob to do. If you want them to contact you, say so and include a phone number and/or URL. If you want them to visit your shop, say it and include the address and business hours. If you’re offering a discount or other deal, indicate for how long it’s in effect. This way, people know what you want them to do.

5.) Don’t cut corners.

One aspect of your door hangers that is very easy to control is the overall product quality. You can have a friend, family member, or employee proofread your copy to ensure there are no errors. You can choose glossy stock, which produces crisp text, brighter images, and no chance of smudging. It costs a little bit more but the higher quality also says that your business is high quality: sharp, detail-oriented, and trustworthy.

All you have to do now is choose a neighborhood to do a door hanger campaign and then log on to www.prospectsplus.com/pei where you can choose from many design templates to create a high-quality door hanger.

If you’re wondering how door hangers work with postcards-one helps the other. Give Opportunity Knocks a ring at 1 (866) 319-7109 and we can tell you all about it. We can also handle the design and mailing, if you’d rather just…hang out (buh DA boom).

For any business, there’s nothing like some good, strong market research to uncover valuable data about the market for your product or service—data that you can use to more accurately target that market. But even in the absence of robust (and expensive) market research, there’s something that most customers and prospects have in common. You can easily figure it out and then use it in your direct marketing.

Objections

There are no statistics out there about customer’s objections to ads but it’s a maxim of direct response marketing that people don’t like to be sold to. They resist sales pitches and tune out most marketing.

So you can know ahead of time that a large percentage of people who receive your marketing will raise objections.

Even if you succeed in raising their interest, they will still be looking for reasons why they can’t or shouldn’t buy your product or service.

If you can handle these objections in your sales letter, on your postcard, your door hanger, you build credibility and bring your customer or prospect closer to a sale. Here the biggest objections and how to handle them:

1.) Price

People will often object on the basis of price, particularly when they think it’s too expensive. The best way to handle this objection is not necessarily to say “Hey, we know you think this is too expensive…” but by showing them that it’s an exclusive, limited-time deal. This implies that if they don’t act, they will miss out. This can be very a powerful motivation.

2.) Need vs. Want

Prospects will object on the basis of need; if it’s not a need, they can’t justify the expense. However, you can handle this objection by emphasizing (1) quality—how your product/service is better than your competition’s or (2) as with price (above), make it scarce—limited time, limited quantity, etc.

3.) Hidden Surprises

Less-than-ethical marketers have made it harder for the ethical ones to present a “free trial” and similar offers because it raises the objection of “there must be a hidden fee or some other catch.” The way to handle this objection is to lay out in your copy the exact terms, assuring the person of no surprises, no hidden fees, etc.

4.) “Nothing Special…”

Seeking any reason to reject your marketing offer, prospects will object to your offer on the basis that it’s no different than that of your competition—and rightly so, unless you handle that objection right up-front by telling them how you’re different. Take an objective look at your business and discover your unique selling proposition—the thing that makes you different, and thus better than your competition.

5.) “Too Good To Be True…”

You understand why you’re presenting a free bonus or a great offer at such a low price (to get customers in the door) but such “too good to be true” deals often raise skepticism and suspicion. You can handle this kind of objection with something as simple as “No, that’s not a typo—you read it right” and then perhaps leveling with the prospect, along the lines of “We aren’t afraid to make such a crazy deal because we believe you’ll be delighted by our product and maybe tell a friend or visit us again in the future.”

Anything you can do to neutralize your prospects’ objections early on works to your advantage and promotes the kind of transparency that exists in the most harmonious business-customer relationships.

Getting tense waiting for the inevitable sales pitch? There isn’t one. But when you’re ready to do your first (or next) postcard campaign, log on to www.prospectsplus.com/pei and handle the design and mailing with a few mouse clicks.

Or, if you want help with it, give Opportunity Knocks a call at 1 (866) 319-7109. A design and marketing will listen to you and help you with a totally professional, high-response postcard campaign—no hidden surprises either.

We here at ProspectsPLUS! contend that any kind of direct mail marketing is better than none. Anything you can do to keep your company and your offers in front of people is bound to result in some degree of response, sales, and all that good stuff.

Some people call this method “spraying and praying” because it consists of mailing to a broad segment of the public—like a crop-duster airplane spraying an entire field—and then hoping that your marketing piece appeals results in some leads.

While that may be better than nothing, it is also true that the more that you can target your offers to the people most likely to respond to them, the better your ROI. Rather than using a shotgun to spray your offer across a wide area, you can apply one or all of these three tools to laser-focus your offer, reach more of the people who will welcome your direct mail offers, and raise your ROI.

So let’s take a look at them:

1.) Data Segmentation

We’re going to take for granted that you more or less know who the target audience for your product/service is.

Think of segmentation as a process of further qualifying your target audience—to reach the best of your best customers or prospects or to identify the best ones relative to your various offers.

The more you know about your target audience, the better you can target your offers, resulting in greater response and higher ROI.

Some businesses have put in quite a lot of work to get to know who their target audience is. If you haven’t, don’t worry: services such as Nielzen PRIZM have already done the sweat work of customer data collection. More data = more accurately targeted direct mail = greater direct mail success.

And once you’ve identified the most highly qualified segments, you can use PRIZM to expand the segment, to reach even more qualified prospects.

2.) Personalization

Personalization is anything that moves your direct mail piece away from a general, “Dear Resident” type mailing and towards a communication that is (or appears to be) more tailored to the recipient.

Segmentation narrows the target audience and personalization narrows the message to fit segments within that audience.

The more personalized, the more likely it is to “strike a chord” that results in response. Personalization can include the following:

• Using recipient’s name in the address and the salutation of any mail piece
• Including the address and operating hours of the location closest to them
• Presenting product/service offers that are most relevant to them

You can use “predictive modeling” to further segment your list. And while that might sound a bit high tech, the good news is that Nielsen has also taken care of all the sweat work. All you have to do is push a few buttons and you’re on your way to greater response.

3.) Calls to Action

The #1 rule on your call to action is: Make sure you have one. Some of the best direct marketing has been sabotage by the sender who forgets to include a call to action.

Make your call to action prominent. This can mean large-enough type font but can also mean placing your call to action in several places in your marketing piece—you don’t have to wait for the very end.

Lastly, give your recipient as many ways as possible to respond: include a phone number but also a web URL or QR code, or even a coupon, for those who prefer to respond in person.

Right now, you can do all three of the above actions when you log on to www.prospectsplus.com/pei and create your first postcard campaign. Not only that, but you can also handle the mailing with a few mouse clicks.

Or, give Opportunity Knocks a call at 1 (866) 319-7109 and talk to one of our segmentation experts about your campaign. They’ll help you target the ideal customer and reach more of them.

It doesn’t matter how good your company’s product or service is. It doesn’t matter if you charge less than your competition…or if you have a wicked-cool website.

None of that seemingly important stuff means anything if you don’t know and do what we’re about to reveal.

1.) Make Yourself Known

In his 2005 book, Endless Referrals, author-speaker Bob Burg wrote, “All things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust.”

The order in which he put the verbs—know, like, and trust—was not likely at random, but rather in the only workable order possible.

The marketing sequence starts with “know,” and it’s so easy to do that many businesses take it for granted and don’t actually do it.

The key to making yourself known to your market is repetition of message. You don’t necessarily have to wait until your company has a strong brand image before you engage in repetition of message. Sometimes the message you repeat is what becomes your brand, even if you didn’t plan it that way.

Something as simple as a postcard that says “Acme Lawn & Gardening, Have a Gorgeous Law This Summer, Call Now for 10% Off,” and a picture of a lush, green lawn will work.

It’s scientifically proven that persistent repetition of your message—mailing out your postcards repeatedly—eventually establishes you in your prospects and customers’ mind (“Oh, Acme…yeah, the ‘gorgeous lawn’ guys…”).

London businessman and author Thomas Smith noted this more than 130 years ago in his book, Successful Advertising. Smith estimated that it took 20 exposures to a message to make a customer but that’s advertising. With postcards, people only need to be exposed to your message 5-7 times before purchasing.

2.) How Ya Like Me Now?

Once you’ve overcome the hurdle of becoming known, you consolidate that gain by doing all you can to be liked. This basically comes down to how a company treats their prospects and customers. You don’t necessarily have to give away free stuff to be liked. Be courteous and respectful. Answer your phones. Return calls in a timely manner. Really listen. Care. Answer peoples’ questions. Be generally helpful. And sincere. That’s what gets you liked.

3.) Trust Us On This

You can ask around but we think you will find that most experts agree that trust between a business and its customers comes from doing what you say you will do (and maybe a little more), giving exceptional value, exceeding expectations, and that sort of thing. When you make people glad that they gave you their money, they will be willing to give it to you again. That’s trust.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

But if you give up after you get “no results” from your first postcard campaign, no one’s ever going to trust you. They are not going to like you either, because you never gave them a chance to know you.

That’s kind of sad, isn’t it?

So don’t let that happen! Send out your message consistently and they will come to know you. You will get them to like you and then trust you.

Time to repeat your message? It’s as easy as logging on to www.prospectsplus.com/pei to create your first postcard campaign. You can even handle the list and mailing, all from your computer.

Could it be even easier? Yes: give Opportunity Knocks a call at 1 (866) 319-7109 and tell them what you’re thinking. They will come back with a postcard campaign that you’ll be proud to send out again and again.