Direct Mail Marketing News

Not to be mean or anything like that but…your customers and prospects don’t really care how good your product or service is.

Yes, they want quality. Sure, they want expert service. But these are not the things that get them to lay their money on the counter, to sign on the dotted line, to—you get the idea.

So if you’re sending out postcards or other direct mail that tells people how good your stuff is, how expertly you create or deliver it, etc., stop—you’re wasting money.

Instead, learn and apply two words to your headlines.

These two words will make your prospects and customers care. And these two words will have a positive impact on your ROI.

The Sale Starts with the Headline

What do the headlines on your postcards say?

Do a quick review and see if they sound anything like these:

• A-1 Pool Cleaners—Your Pool Cleaning Experts in Littleville.
• Arrowhead Dental, 25 Years Caring for Smiles.
• Our Certified Used Cars Are the Best!

These headlines are company-focused. If yours look like this, you might be in trouble. If they look like this and your sales are down, you’re in real trouble and now you know why.

But it’s easy to fix—just two words (which we’re going to reveal in just a second).

Y’see, you know your product/service is awesome. You know all the ways it’s better than what your competition delivers. You know the details, facts, and features. You’re an insider and between you and people in your industry, these things really matter.

But they don’t matter to your customers. What matters to them is what benefits them. It’s never a question of how “expert” or “better” it is but rather how it makes them:

• healthier
• happier
• wealthier
• more secure
• etc.

So when your customers and prospects get postcards or other direct mail with headlines like the ones above, they yawn: “So what?”

And therein lies the solution to weak, low ROI headlines and slumping sales.

Use Two Words

“So what?” are the two words that will make your “meh” headlines into lead and sales magnets. You take the customer/prospect viewpoint and keep asking your headline “So what?” until you arrive at a headline idea that presents a desirable benefit.

Let’s try it with one of those ones from above:

A-1 Pool Cleaners—Your Pool Cleaning Experts in Littleville.

“So what?”

We keep pools really clean.

“So what?”

So you don’t have to clean it yourself.

Better, but…“so what?”

You don’t have to clean the pool before you can jump in and cool off this summer.

Bingo: the benefit is “saving time” and “instant gratification.”

The Wrap

Take weak company- or product/service-focused headlines and “so-what” them until you arrive at a benefit that’s desirable to your customer or prospect. Then write a new headline around that benefit. In this case, it might be “Don’t Wait! Jump Into a Clean Pool All Summer Long. Call A-1 Pool Cleaners.”

Whether you clean pools or not, at www.prospectsplus.com/pei you can design great-looking postcards using your own design or our customizable postcard templates. Then mail them to your own list or create a new targeted list—all from your computer.

Or, make it even faster and easier by giving Opportunity Knocks a call at 1 (866) 319-7109 and have a marketing pro handle the design and mailing for you. “So what” are you waiting for?

The concept of “big data” can be a fuzzy one for some people, especially small business owners who are not yet taking advantage of data to power up their direct mail marketing.

In this article, we’re going to clarify the concept of data. Then, by showing examples of three kinds of companies and how they would employ data to their benefit, you should get the idea of how you can do the same to increase the number of ideal prospects you reach.

Putting Data into Focus

In any area of life—from a kitchen drawer to an international airport—there is data to be had. But some kinds of data are more important than others. For instance, data that has a bearing on topics like health, safety, and business are in the greatest demand.

People are a huge source of data. Some of it is demographic:

• age
• income
• who they live with
• how long they’ve lived there

Some is psychographic

• lifestyles & interests
• financial behavior
• purchasing preferences
• online behavior

Companies such as Nielsen collect this kind of data and create a huge range of customer profiles with it (which reflects the huge range of different kinds of people in the world).

Businesses can easily access this information and use it to target their direct mail offerings. Really smart companies can use it to further narrow down their target audience to the most ideal prospects.

Three Companies, Three Approaches to Data

If you’ve been in business for some time, you should already know a thing or two about your typical customer and your best customers. The more you already know, the more effectively you can utilize data to your benefit.

A little bit of data can go a long way. Here’s how three different types of businesses might do it:

1. Local auto supply shop

A wide range of people might visit a neighborhood auto supply but the ideal customers—the ones who spend the most money the most often—are going to be (a) people who work on their own cars and (b) auto repair shops. It’s pretty easy to identify and reach (b) but what about (a)?

This is an indication of lifestyle, which services such as Neilsen PRIZM identify. So you can reach households that own tools and that are interested in DIY home and auto projects—the likely best prospects for auto parts.

2. Financial planner/manager

Who uses financial planners or managers? People with money, of course, who can afford to pay a financial manager to look out for their wealth.

Data-wise, the financial planner is not interested in prospect lifestyle so much as income and financial behavior. They can focus on this area of data to target households above a certain income level, which also have significant investments, savings, etc.

3. E-commerce business

Let’s take a business like Dollar Shave Club, which you can only purchase from via their website. Though some women buy their product, it’s marketed largely to men, mostly online.

Aside from gender, this business would take a big interest in prospects’ online behavior and purchasing habits more than anything else and would target households that are active internet users, connected with mobile devices, and who regularly make purchases online. (Yes, Nielsen even has that data.)

Eager to start getting more business with data? Log on to www.prospectsplus.com/pei, where you can design a colorful, glossy postcard (with our pro templates or your own design) and choose a data set that will help you reach more of your ideal prospects.

Or, you could call Opportunity Knocks at 1 (866) 319-7109 and tell us about your business. We’ll handle the design and create a custom data approach that will save you time and bring a higher ROI.

We know that some people who arrive at this article are going to roll their eyes. They already know why it’s necessary to have an offer. They don’t need to find out.

But enough businesses overlook (to their detriment) the need for offers that it’s worth taking up.

To Offer or Not to Offer…

In today’s direct marketing landscape there are a few schools of thought about what your postcard or other marketing pieces should contain:

• The first school says, “Don’t present offers; provide valuable content…give away your know-how for free and eventually, people will buy from you out of a sense of gratitude or obligation.”

• The second school says, “Always, always, always present an offer, in every marketing communication.”

• The third one says, “Offer? Umm…we have a listing in the Yellow Pages.”

(We’re not going to include the third one in this discussion.)

Depending on what industry you’re in, there should be a balance between the two schools.

For instance, it’s pretty much expected that a local restaurant that markets with direct mail is going to make offers (perhaps several on one card) any time they mail out.

This works because people tend to eat on a continual basis…

But they don’t tend to have their houses painted continually, so a housepainter can’t continually promote offers to his customers, though he can stay in touch with them so as to get hired the next time the house needs a new coat. (The housepainter would, of course, continue to promote offers to prospects.)

But to keep a long story short, you’ve got to present offers on a regular basis. Being “offer-free,” as you will see, is pointless and wasteful.

Reason #1

If you walk up to someone and put out your hand, they will likely shake it.

If you don’t, they won’t reach over, grab your hand, and put it into theirs.

See? By putting out your hand, you’ve “told” them what you want them to do and they usually will do it.

So the first reason for having an offer is:

It tells people what you want them to do.

We don’t mean to imply that just because you present an offer in your direct mailer that everyone will immediately buy. But over time, more will than if you did not present offers.

Reason #2

Consider these two scenarios:

1. You receive a postcard that shows “Bud’s Plumbing, Established 1972, Call 555-1212”
2. You receive a postcard that shows “Acme Plumbers. Clogged drain/toilet $50. Call 24 Hrs. a Day.”

Example “A” tells you nothing of value, whereas Example “B” gives you price, availability, and tells you to call. (There’s the “handshake.”)

Without veering off too far into the psychology of marketing, here’s the second reason:

People expect offers.

Upon receiving a marketing piece, the human mind expects a call to action (“Order today,” “Call now,” etc.). And in order to have a call to action, you’ve got to first offer something. Hence, people expect that marketing pieces will contain offers.

You don’t want to let them down, do you?

Reason #3

Taking into account the first and second reasons, it’s clear that a steady campaign of direct mail without offers is a method for wasting your money. When you make an offer, more people respond. So, the third reason is simply return on investment.

If you’re not making enough sales, check and see if you’re making enough offers in your direct marketing.

Making your offers with postcards? Log on to www.prospectsplus.com/pei, where you can design professional-looking cards and mail them too, right from your computer.

Or, you could give Opportunity Knocks a call at 1 (866) 319-7109 and take us up on our offer to handle your postcard design and everything else—saves time!

Direct mail marketing, such as postcard marketing, provides the marketer (you) with direct insights into what works to create better response.

But it can be a lot of trial and error before you see your response increase. So, to save you loads of time, we’re going to show you a special short cut that’s guaranteed to increase response with your very next campaign.

And it’s only going to cost you two minutes of your time.

But there’s more… We’re also going to give you the sure-fire secret that makes fence-sitting prospects jump down onto your side of the fence with a smile!

All that—for just two minutes.

And right now, if you agree to spend those two minutes, you’ll receive a free bonus: the easy-but-oh-so-powerful tweak you can use to supercharge any and all of your direct marketing pieces from now on.

Ready to find out? Let’s go!

Did You “Buy?”

You’re still reading this. Excellent.

How did you feel by the time you read “Ready to find out?”

Were you more interested in “spending” your two minutes than you were when you started reading this article?

We’re going to guess you said “yes.”

Cool. Cooler. Really Cool.

When we said we’d give you short-cut to eliminate trial and error and increase response right away, you probably thought “Cool.” Spend two minutes to save untold amounts of time? Who wouldn’t?

But when we added in the “sure-fire secret,” it was even cooler. And then the bonus “powerful tweak,” all for the same two minutes? That’s really cool.

You were even more willing to spend your two minutes, weren’t you?

Structuring an offer this way has come to be referred to in direct marketing circles as “stacking the cool.” You take a good offer and stack another good offer on top, and then another. You make it so good, so valuable, that it’s irresistible—people know they’d be crazy to not buy it.

The Five Rules of Cool

Irresistible offers are the shortcut to greater response that was mentioned above.

To create them, follow these five rules:

1. Be obvious. Show the prospect what the outcome of using your product or service is. Don’t try to be clever; just make it clear what it does. The late Billy Mays, pitching OxiClean, demonstrated over and over how it cleans and brightens without the hazards of bleach. (This is the “oh-so-powerful tweak” we mentioned earlier.)

2. Use emotion. People don’t always buy for rational reasons so present an offer that fulfills a deep desire or eliminates a real pain for the prospect. Billy Mays didn’t focus on the chemistry of OxiClean but rather on how it was safe and easy to get results with.

3. Increase credibility. There are three main ways to increase your credibility in your marketing, including customer testimonials and evidence of market dominance. If you’ve got it, highlight it to strengthen your offer.

4. Start stacking. Increase the perceived value of your offer by adding extras or bonuses to make the offer irresistible. For people who “call now,” Billy Mays would cut the price in half and throw in a squirt bottle, a “super shammy,” and a spray bottle of “World Famous Orange Clean.” Then he’d increase “super-size” the OxiClean from two pounds to six.

Rather than being concerned about losing money by giving away free products or services, consider how much you’d give up to gain a new customer against that customer’s lifetime value to your company.

5. Guarantee forever. Okay, maybe not forever but better than “30-day money-back guarantee.” Everyone’s heard it. It’s typical (and boring). Create a guarantee that’s another layer of cool on your already way cool offer. (This is that “sure-fire secret” we mentioned earlier.)

ProspectsPLUS! can put the icing on your coolness with richly-colored, customizable postcard templates for every industry. Log on to www.prospectsplus.com/pei where you can design, print, and mail it, all from your laptop.

Or, you can contact Opportunity Knocks at 1 (866) 319-7109 and we can handle the design and mailing for you. (Hey, that’s pretty cool…)

You’ve probably heard this saying,  “If you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business; you have a hobby.” (It came from author-customer experience expert Don Peppers and his co-author Martha Rogers.)

Though pretty obvious, the reverse is also true: If you’ve got customers, you’ve got a business. But let’s face it, as a business owner, you’ve got customers and then, you’ve got Customers—the latter being your ideal type, the loyal ones who buy often or a lot (or both) and with whom you share a mutually beneficial relationship.

Isolate Customer Factors

So, to be in business and stay in business—profitably and for as long as you choose—you must create a steady flow of the kinds of prospects who become ideal customers.

You do it by a sort of “reverse engineering” of your existing ideal customers.

That may sound a bit scientific but it’s easy to do—just three steps:

• Analyze
• Isolate
• Target

We’re going to look at each one of these individually.

Analyze

You’ve heard of “the 80-20 Rule?” It’s something you can observe in life. Example: You wear 20% of your shoes 80% of the time. Or, 80% of the pollution comes from only 20% of the cars. (It’s not always a hard and fast 80-to-20, but you get the idea.)

It’s likely that 20% of your customers give you 80% of your income. So, have a close look at that 20%, in terms of:

• Age
• Gender
• Education
• Marital status
• Geography
• Annual income

If you don’t have this demographic and geographic information, survey those customers to get it.

Ideally, you want to also know your ideal customers’ psychographic data—what they value, and what motivates or interests them. Interests and values are expressed across a person’s life, from their hobbies to their attitudes to their spending habits—their lifestyle in general. If the information you have about your customers provides you some psychographic insights, you’re ahead of the game. If not, survey to get it.

Isolate

In analyzing a dozen or a hundred of your best customers, you will begin to isolate the common factors…and you may be surprised at what you find.

We recall one very successful small business owner who had assumed that his customers were pretty much just like him: Millennial, entrepreneurial college drop-outs. When he finally analyzed the 20%, he isolated a game-changing factor: they were all baby boomers and retirees.

Target

Once you’ve isolated the factors that your best customers all have in common, you can use these factors to target more prospects who share these demographic, geographic and/or psychographic traits. It’s a bit like extracting the “best customer DNA” and using it to clone more ideal customers.

If you’ve analyzed and isolated and you’re ready to target with postcard marketing, go to www.prospectsplus.com, where you can design your postcard and use Nielsen PRIZM to reach more customers with those “best customer” traits.

If want to learn more about your best customers, their spending/buying habits and more, call Opportunity Knocks at 1 (866) 319-7109 and we’ll help you with the analyzing, isolating, and targeting.

In the world of successful direct marketing—which includes marketing with postcards—there are a few fundamentals that remain constant. Regardless of what kind of business you run, your marketing pieces, to be effective, must contain the following:

• Attention-grabbing headline
• Promise of benefit
• Irresistible offer
• Call to action

These factors are mostly copy-related but consider also that the photo or image can convey a promise of benefit or support an irresistible offer.

Another factor which is necessary for successful direct marketing for any kind of business is repetition and persistence. On average, it takes seven postcard mailings for your brand to lodge in prospects’ minds. Repeated contact is what turns prospects into customers.

Those are the main things that all businesses have to do to create response.

Adjusting the Factors

If you own a pizzeria and notice that the florist next door markets with postcards and gets a lot of business, you wouldn’t necessarily want to copy what the florist is doing for your postcard; it probably wouldn’t work. Rather, you want to create the kind of postcard campaign that will work for a pizzeria.

Luckily, many industries have more or less already discovered what works.

So, similar to how there are these direct marketing factors that are common to all industries, there are specific adjustments of these factors that work better for some industries and other adjustments that work best for others.

Below are three examples to give you an idea of how these factors are used in a few different industries.

Dentists

You’ve got to present a great offer but dental practices seem to fare best when they present multiple offers on a postcard—as many as five, such as:

• Free x-ray and consultation
• Hundred-dollar gift card on work over a certain dollar amount
• Limited-time special on dentures
• Limited-time special on implants
• Major discount on braces, etc.

This approach speaks to a range of prospects: the ones who need dental work now, the ones with a bit of money, the ones with less money, etc. You give prospects all kinds of reasons to visit you.

Landscapers

It’s recommended that you use a larger postcard, especially if:

1. you have a lot of competition in your market, and
2. they are using postcard marketing

The landscaper could look at the successful dental office and say, “Hey, they have five offers and they’re so booked up, I can barely get an appointment. I’m going to have five offers on my postcard too.”

He’s on the right track but three good offers is plenty for a landscaping business. It could be three out of four of these:

• Free landscape evaluation and estimate
• A low monthly lawn care package price
• Percentage discount on project
• First two grass cuts free

As we’ve said many times before, a key factor in direct marketing success is the quality of your list. This is specialized for the landscaping industry in that you should routinely be mailing your postcards to a list of new homebuyers in your market—anyone who has purchased a home in the last six months.  

HVAC

As far as offers go, as an HVAC company, you can do very well with one strong offer—the more compelling and the bigger value, the better.

And, if you’re in the HVAC industry, then you know that your offers should correspond to the season: A/C-related offers as you head into summer, heater/boiler-related offers as you head into winter, system inspection and maintenance during the rest of the year.

(And notice that seasonally-geared offers might work somewhat for landscapers but wouldn’t work so much for dentists.)

Over at www.prospectsplus.com/pei you can find customizable postcard templates for every industry—looks and designs that have been shown to be effective in creating response.

Or, give Opportunity Knocks a call at 1 (866) 319-7109 and have one of our design and marketing pros put together a postcard campaign that makes your phone ring with incoming orders.

Have you heard of “the buying spectrum?” At one end of it, a prospect has a faint understanding that they will need to make a purchase. At the other end, they are ready to lay down their money.

Not all prospects enter the spectrum at the very beginning. Sometimes they’ll become aware of a product and have a strong desire for it. They might buy now or shop around a bit first, but they’ve entered spectrum much closer to the end.

Major life changes put consumers into the buying spectrum. These can include the following:

• becoming a new parent
• becoming a newlywed
• buying or selling a home
• becoming single
• reaching a particular age

(Businesses also undergo major changes [of interest to B2B companies] but this article is going to focus on consumers.)

Marketers refer to these changes as “triggers” or “life event triggers,” which necessitate certain new purchases or changes in purchasing habits.

Right Offer, Right Time

Marketing and advertising work because the world is already full of people with needs and desires. It’s a fact of life. Trigger events are just specialized instances of need and want.

By using the trigger events that apply to your business, you can deliver the right offer at the right time and produce a whole new level of response and new customers.

(You’re probably wondering where to find this trigger data, right? That info is coming, shortly.)

How Businesses Can Use Trigger Data

For marketing purposes, trigger events are those major life occurrences which end up recorded in public records.

These major life changes bring about new needs:

• A new homeowner may need a gardener, a pool cleaner, a cable provider, an exterminator, a new doctor and/or dentist.

• New parents are going to need diapers, baby clothes, nursery items, and day care services.

• A newly-single person may be in need of a dating service, a make-over, or professional counseling.

• People who’ve come through a bankruptcy may need ways to re-establish their credit (such as a secured credit card).

• People nearing retirement may be in need of financial planning services, various types of insurance, or maybe a travel agent.

With a bit of thought and research, you can figure out which triggers to market to. Then work out your offer to correspond to the trigger. Then prepare to start counting the money.

ProspectsPLUS! gives you access to a whole new pool of prospects, according to trigger event, through the Nielsen PRIZM database. Log on to www.prospectsplus.com/pei where you can design a beautiful postcard, print it, and mail it, all from your computer.

Or, you can contact Opportunity Knocks at 1 (866) 319-7109 and we’ll save you the time and take care of it for you. (We do this stuff all day long.)

You probably already know that it’s more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one, right? To be more specific, the White House Office on Consumer Affairs reported that it’s six to seven times more expensive.

If you’ve got an endless marketing budget, or a quasi-monopoly in your market (as some cable companies do within a region), then you don’t have to worry too much about retaining customers.

But most businesses don’t have bottomless budgets and the bad reviews will eventually catch up with you.

The long-term business survival strategy is to keep your customers.

Customer Service Statistics

While it’s necessary to prospect for new customers, the fact is, your existing customers are your business: you have a 60-70% probability of selling to them vs only a 5-20% chance of selling to a new prospect.

So, it pays to treat your customers like gold—that’s what they are.

Seven out of 10 people will spend more with a company that they feel provides excellent customer service, according to an American Express Survey. And more than half of them (59%) would try a new company for a better customer service experience.

So, to summarize:

1. Your customers are your business.
2. People value great service.
3. They are willing to pay more for it.
4. They will go to where they can get it.  

One last stat: 80% of companies surveyed (by Lee Resources) said that they provided outstanding customer service. But only 8% of people surveyed agreed.)

So, even if you’re sure you provide superior customer service, there’s probably a thing or two you could do to ensure it.

Customer Service Marketing

The successful customer-business relationship is not unlike any successful personal relationship.  

Customers want to be properly acknowledged. They want to be treated with respect, courtesy, and maybe even admiration. They appreciate help and information, and genuine communication.

You can’t always be selling to them. That’s like a “friend” who you only call when you need a favor. It won’t last.

So in between sales, use your marketing as a form of customer service:  

• Provide valuable content. Send your customers entertaining or informative direct mail pieces. They will look forward to getting them and it will maintain the relationship, effectively selling to your customers without selling to them.

• Birthday & holiday greetings. It used to be fairly common to receive a birthday greeting in the mail from your dentist or other business. Not so much anymore. So, it really stands out as a kind gesture when you do it. (It also requires that you be collecting customer data, including their birthday.)

• Surveys. People love to be asked for their opinion or viewpoint. So, send them a survey. It doesn’t even have to be about the customer experience. It could be about something related to your industry or product/service in general.  

• Thank you’s. What if you sent your customer a postcard just to thank them for being your customer. You could even boost it with 10% “thank-you” discount.

Any one of these strategies (or others) can be put onto a postcard, for highly effective, low-cost “customer service marketing.”

In fact, you could design one right now at www.prospectsplus.com/pei and get it into the mail in a matter of minutes, right from your computer.

Or, for a superior customer service experience, give Opportunity Knocks a call at 1 (866) 319-7109. We’ll save you time by handling the design and everything else.

Do you date much? Would you like to?

(No, ProspectsPLUS! is not moving into the dating advice niche. This is just a set up to for an analogy.)

Which is the easier way to get a date?

• On your own, at the supermarket, laundromat, bar, etc.
• By having a friend introduce you to someone they know.

You probably said number 2, right?

Not a Total Stranger

This may be a huge oversimplification, but it’s still true: it’s easier to get the date by your friend setting you up because you’re a friend of their friend. So you’re safe (more or less). You’re more familiar than a total stranger. It establishes some small degree of trust.

So, what does all this singles-scene stuff have to do with your marketing?

It’s this: by showing prospective customers that people just like them have used your service or purchased your product and got a good result, are happy and satisfied, you become less of a total stranger to your prospect.

They are thus more likely to trust you.

There are three main ways to promote your results and produce this effect:

• Photos
• Testimonials/reviews
• Evidence of market dominance

 Let’s take a look at each in more detail and how to use it in your marketing.

 Photos

 Photos are ideal for before-and-after scenarios where a picture really is worth a thousand words (and, marketing-wise, perhaps many thousands of dollars):

• Weight loss
• Cosmetic dentistry
• Anti-aging products
• Beauty products/services
• Interior decorating/remodeling
• Landscaping

But photos of happy customers and their purchases—house, car, pet, etc.—can also be effective in producing trust.

Testimonials/reviews

There is no bigger credibility builder than a great testimonial or review (or a few of them).

A testimonial can say things to overcome skepticism and build trust that you, as the voice of your business, could never get away with. That’s because a good testimonial or review isn’t sales copy; it’s word-of-mouth advertising.

When choosing a testimonial, shy away from the non-specific “I love this! It’s a great product!” raves. Instead, look for one that fulfills the following requirements:

• It’s from someone like your prospect. “Like” can mean same geography, age group, line of business, etc.
• It speaks of concrete benefits and results: “In just two week, I lost three inches in my waist!” or “We did the course and applied what we learned and have doubled our income in just the first six months.”
• The benefits should support the claims you’ve made for your product or service. In other words, losing inches in the waist is great, if you’re selling a diet or exercise product or service.
• It’s credible, meaning that it has identifying information, such as name (or initials), job title and company (as applicable), and city and state.

 Photos have been shown to increase the credibility of testimonials and video testimonials are even a step better.

Evidence of Market Dominance

If you’re the city’s #1 plumbing company… that speaks for itself…and it says to prospect “Everyone is calling these guys. You should call them, too.”

But don’t use this one unless you really are the market leader and can back it up with evidence and/or statistics: number of customers, number of sales, quotes from published reports, awards that indicate your “number-one-ness,” etc.

A great photo, testimonial, or evidence of market dominance is the most powerful “bait” for attracting new customers.

With one of these in hand, all you’ve got to do is log on to www.prospectsplus.com/pei and put it into your postcard. Then print, and mail and get ready for your phone to ring.

Or, if you’re tied up with all it takes to continue dominating your market, turn the postcard work over to Opportunity Knocks at 1 (866) 319-7109 and we’ll get it done for you.