Direct Mail Marketing News

In 1975, the Wall Street Journal initiated a direct mail campaign to generate new subscriptions. The piece they created came to be known as “The Tale of Two Young Men.”

Twenty-eight years and $2 billion dollars worth of subscriptions later, they stopped mailing it. Not bad, eh?

Nothing stays the same forever. It’s as true in marketing as it is anywhere. Even “The Greatest Sales Letter of All Time” eventually stopped being effective.

Most marketing pieces don’t have that kind of long-run effectiveness. That’s why it pays to conduct continual testing of your own marketing.

Go Big (Enough)

From your customer base, select out a control group (who will receive your current promotion) and a test group (who will received the new version) that are large enough to produce a statistically valid result.

Too many companies test on too-small groups, which wastes money and produces no useful results.

And remember, with this kind of testing (often referred to as “A/B testing” or “split testing”), you test only one thing at a time. Variables can include:

• new headline
• different photo
• different offer (bonuses, discount, etc.)
• re-worded call to action

There are other aspects of the copy or design which can also be tested, including color schemes, body copy, and more.

ROI, Not Just Response

Counting on response alone as a measure of test success is a bit like trying to get the most “likes” on a Facebook post. It makes you feel good but it does nothing for your bottom line.

With any marketing test campaign, you should only be concerned with the return on investment (ROI) for both the test and the control. This is easy enough to track with date-limited offers.

When your offer doesn’t have an ending date, results may come in for months, but there is a point at which you will have received 50% of all orders for that campaign. This is referred to as the campaign’s “half-life.” By running a few tests with a large enough representative segment of your customer base, you will discover within a few months what the half-life is. (It will be consistent, campaign to campaign). When you know, you’ll only have to monitor campaigns until the half-life date to know the ROI.

Frequency

How often you mail is commonly a concern for email marketers but can also be an issue for direct mail marketing.

Campaign frequency can apply to either the total number of mailings or the number of repetitions of a particular campaign.

If you mail once a month, you could see what happens (in terms of ROI) if you mailed the twice a month to your control group.

In these testing scenarios, short-run postcard printing (as few as 100) is your ally because you can get it done fast and it’s very cost effective, which can do wonders for your ROI.

If you’ve got your control and test lists (and you’re sitting at your computer), you could go to www.prospectsplus.com/pei and do a test campaign right now, in a matter of minutes.

And at Opportunity Knocks, we specialize in small order printing which allows you to easily and affordably run test campaigns. Give us a call at 1 (866) 319-7109 to find out more.

If you’re the top company in your market right now, you can stop reading.

If you’re not, then it might be time to do a competitive analysis to get a thorough understanding of your competition.

This understanding will provide a few important things:

• Your current and potential customers’ opinion of the competition
• Your competitions’ weaknesses and strengths
• A path toward strengthening and improving your competitive advantage

“Knowledge is power,” said 16th century philosopher Francis Bacon. And with a competitive review, you will achieve marketing power.

Identifying Your Competitors

If there are only a few companies doing business in your niche, then you should do an analysis of each of them.

If your market is crowded with competitors, relax: you don’t have to do an analysis of each one. Narrow it down to the top three.

Getting Competitive Information

Though you could hire a market research firm at great expense, you can do the job yourself quicker and cheaper. Much of the information you need is easily available:

• Marketing. Get on your competitors’ mailing list. Read their ads and sales collateral to find out price, offers, and benefits. See how they advertise, how often, where, and how their ads look. Visit their website regularly to keep up with news and developments.

• Articles. Google the owner or other principle of each company to see if they are talking about how their company operates, if they’re expanding or downsizing, etc.

• Reviews. Find product/service reviews on Yelp!, Amazon, and elsewhere. These will tell you the strengths and weakness of their wares.

• SEC reports. If your competition is a publicly traded company, you can access their reports on the Securities and Exchange Commissions’ EDGAR site to get earnings and growth information and more.

• Databases. Sources such as Dun & Bradstreet, Wards Business Directory, and others provide information on assets, earnings, and other key information for small, medium, and big businesses.

• Pay a visit. If you have a store, you can go out and visit the other stores in your area and observe how they do business. Play “customer” and ask questions to find out about service, price, and selection.

If your business is online, place an order with your competition to find out how good their service, delivery, and packaging is.

You can adapt this information-gathering step for whatever kind of business you have.

Your Own Company Information

Find out from your sales staff and customer service reps which product/service benefits and features your customers consider most important. Discover, if you can, how they rate your product against your competitors’.  

Figure out your market share or at least know what your total annual sales are, to compare.

Analyze Strengths and Weaknesses

By analyzing all the data you’ve collected, you can make an honest assessment of what you and your three competitors do well, in which areas you’re weak, and where your most likely competitive advantage lies.

By seeing where you’re strong, you’ll discover what to fortify. By seeing where your competition is weak you will discover an advantage for yourself. Turn their weakness into your strength.

Use the results of your competitive review to inform your marketing, towards the goal of more customers, sales, and greater market share.

A really fast way to get out your post-review postcard campaign is to pop over to www.prospectsplus.com/pei and design, print, and mail a postcard that will help you get the edge on your competition.

Or, call Opportunity Knocks at 1 (866) 319-7109. Postcard marketing is our strength. We’ll conduct a competitive analysis for free to your campaigns see that added boost.

Clint Eastwood said it. Sean “Puffy” Combs did too. So did Former Prime Minister of New Zealand John Key (among many others):

“You get out of life what you put into it.”

But “life” is such a broad topic, right?

How do you apply this idea to successful business marketing?

You could modify it to: “You get out of your customers what you give up to them.”

Your marketing should showcase what you will give up.

The Offer

For your business to succeed well into the future, you have to put out an offer. This, of course, is so obvious that it hurts, but we have to say it because there are businesses out there that spend good money on marketing that contains no offer.

Think about that: You come home after work and you find a door hanger on your front doorknob: “Jack’s Burger Shack.” It has their address and phone number and their menu. That’s it.

Every other fast-food place in town has an offer: “two-for-one” or “10% off” or “Free Delivery.” Jack’s makes no offer. So why should you become their customer?

No offer = no new customer.

In your industry, some or all of your competitors are putting out offers. Some of them may be good (and it pays to analyze what they’re doing), but frankly, yours has to smoke (not like the charbroiler at Jack’s)—it’s got to be better than what your competition is offering.

Offers That Create Customers

To create the best possible offer, take a long-range viewpoint. Consider that you want to acquire a customer and keep them for as long as possible.

Figure out the lifetime value (LTV) of your average customer. Here is a simple way to get an estimate:

• Work out the dollar amount of the average sale.
• Multiply it by the number of sales the average customer makes in a year (or week, or month, depending on your business)
• Multiply it by the average customer lifespan (the years, weeks, or months they remain a customer)

When you know how much you can maximally expect to earn from a customer, you get a better grip on what you can give up in order to acquire that customer.

This isn’t just a matter of how much you should spend on marketing but of what you can give away, in terms of:

• Complimentary Service
• Free Consultation
• Discounts
• Extras
• Freebies
• Etc.

This kind of talk makes some small business owners nervous. They end up making “meh” offers (or, like Jack’s, no offer).

Skip the nervousness. Take the long view (sales, more sales, ROI out the gazoo, and referrals too). Give up as much as you can. Make a great offer. Get the customer.

When you’ve worked out your offer, head over to www.prospectsplus.com/pei and design, print, and mail a postcard that people won’t be able to refuse.

And if time is something you can’t “give up” much of right now, call Opportunity Knocks at 1 (866) 319-7109; we can handle the design and everything else for you.

The postcard is still one of the best ways to bring new customers to your business. It’s targeted, cost-effective and prospects appreciate direct mail more than email, according to a U.S. Post Office study.

The following four points are too often overlooked. But if you want to have success after success with your postcard campaigns, you’ll learn them well and employ them always.

1. Use a targeted list

It doesn’t matter how awesome your ice cubes are or how fast you deliver if you’re promoting to a list of prospects in Siberia.

The quality of your list is the most important aspect in the success of the mailing.

The ideal scene in the promotion of any product or service is that every single person on your list is the perfect prospect for your offer—they need it, want it, and are able to pay for it.

It’s anyone’s guess if that ideal is attainable but one thing is certain: with a little work, you can reach plenty of high-quality prospects.

(And for the sake of your ROI and results, you can’t skip this).

To accomplish that, do an analysis of your best customers—the ones who make repeat purchases, send you referral business, and are always happy to give feedback:

• Who are they?
• Where are they located?
• What’s their age?
• Etc.

Work up a profile of your best customer. With the easy access we have to data today, you can use that profile to find more of the same and thus come away with a targeted list.

2. Write a killer headline

If your headline is weak, your mailing fails—simple as that. Your prospect won’t be interested in your offer. They’ll use your postcard to sweep dust into a dustpan.

It’s not necessary to be clever but it is necessary to appeal to what is most important to your targeted list. (See #1, above.) The two biggest requirements for a strong headline are curiosity and benefit—you want to pique the prospect’s curiosity and also promise them a benefit.

Sometimes you can get away with one or the other.

For instance, if your target list is asthma sufferers, a headline as simple as “Attention: Asthma Suffers” (curiosity) could work just fine. You could use a sub-headline to transmit the benefit (e.g. “Find out about a preventative treatment you can get without a prescription.”)

3. Make an irresistible offer.

You whet the prospect’s appetite with the benefit you’ve promised in your headline. Now your offer has to fulfill that promise in such a way that the prospects almost feels they’d have to be crazy to not buy (or call, or schedule an appointment, etc.).

In addition to having a product or service your prospects want, there are plenty of ways to make your offer irresistible:

• “Limited time offer”
• “While supplies last”
• Discounts
• “Buy-now” bonus
• Etc.

(Tip: Everybody loves a great deal but which of your deals is the best one? Like anything in your promotion, your offer is among the things you can A/B test to see what gets the best response.)

4. Track your results.

You probably don’t need to be told that the whole point of postcard marketing (or any kind of direct mail marketing) is to be able to track the results. So, don’t do a mailing unless you’ve put in place a tracking method, such as:

• QR codes
• Unique phone numbers
• Coupon codes
• Landing pages
• etc.

Tracking is not sexy. It’s administrative. It can be tedious. But it’s one of the most overlooked aspects of successful direct mail marketing. Successful marketers track.

You can design your first postcard, build a targeted list, and schedule the mailing right here online.

Questions? We’d love to hear from you or visit us online at www.prospectsplus.com/pei

Need a little coaching? We can design it all for you – just call 1 (866) 319-7109 or visit Opportunity Knocks marketing!

You know what happens when you assume, right?

A wrong assumption between two people can be embarrassing enough. But when you make a wrong assumption about your customers, embarrassment is the least of your worries. It can end up being expensive and wasteful…for you.

Chances are good that you have some idea of the kinds of offers your customer persona is likely to respond to but when you want to deliver an even more highly targeted offer, what’s the shortest line from A to B?  

You do it with by stealth survey.

What Is It?

Put simply, a survey presents two similar things (we’ll call them A and B) to an audience to see which one the majority of that audience prefers.

With a stealth survey, the audience doesn’t realize they’re being surveyed. They think they’re just looking at an ad. (They are.) But the way they respond to it provides the marketer or business with a survey result.

(Don’t worry; it’s totally legal.)

When Would I Use It?

There are three scenarios in which you would do a stealth survey. Each is a different way which a business could use to create growth:

• Expanding into a new market
• Introducing new products
• Changing the pricing structure

Whereas a routine postcard mailing would present a single offer, a “stealth survey” postcard presents three. It not only will give you back valuable data on how to target your offers in the future, but with three offers, you’re casting a wider net and thus have a better chance of coming away with a customer.

Some Ways To Do It

A dentist wants to start offering cosmetic dentistry services. So rather than shock his existing customers with a sudden shift in focus, he could instead prepare a postcard with three offers:

“Call and set an appoint to get one of the following discounts:

• 10% off cleaning
• 15% off of braces
• 20% off of cosmetic dentistry”

Perhaps you’re a janitorial service and you want to begin offering more extensive, higher-priced services. Don’t just change your postcard to reflect the new service and price, but place three offers:

• Office cleaning – starting at $150/mo
• Day porter services – starting at $75/day
• Full building maintenance services – starting at $750/mo

Or, let’s say you run a mobile auto mechanic service and you want to expand your business into the next city or county but you’re not sure what the demand is or if your current messaging will hit home. So make three offers:

• Factory-scheduled maintenance
• Engine, transmission & electrical repairs
• High-performance upgrades

 Then design and send your postcard. Monitor your responses as they come in. You’ll get your “survey result” (which of the three is most interesting to your prospects) and you’ll probably get some customers in the process as well.

Most importantly, you will know how to target and design your future postcard mailings, and thus produce increasingly higher ROI.

Need a little help? Call Opportunity Knocks at 1 (866) 319-7109; they can design your “stealth survey” offers for you!

Or if you got the gist and you’re ready to mail, you can start at www.prospectsplus.com or just give us a call at 877-222-6010.  We’re ready to help.

Rosie was standing on the curb with her cellphone to her ear. Ten feet away, her Toyota sat in the right traffic lane, steam rising out of its crumpled hood.

She’d been rear-ended by that guy in the work truck behind her, and pushed into the rear end of that blue SUV in front of her.

The lawyer’s office answered and she told the guy who picked up that she’d been in an accident.

After he collected some information, he asked how she’d heard about them. She chuckled. “Those radio ads I’ve been hearing! ‘If you’ve been in an accident, call 1-800-I-BE-HURT!’” she told him.

The Real Reason

Some slick radio advertising exec will show you the law firm’s new clients stat, correlate it to their radio campaign, and say, “See? That’s the power of radio.”  

And…it’s persuasive. Kind of compelling, right?

But before you start shelling out six figures for airtime and production costs for a lot of corny radio commercials, absorb this simple rule:

The effectiveness of any advertising comes from the repetition, not the medium.

This was first recognized by English businessman Thomas Smith, in his book, Successful Advertising, which was published in 1885—decades before people radios were readily available to the public.

Y’see, your prospects recognize your name when they’ve been exposed to it (via any medium) three times. When they’ve been exposed to it seven times, they begin to associate it with your business. By the time they’ve been exposed to your name 27 times, you’ve risen in their mind to the level of a brand in your particular market. “Oh, that’s Bob Jones,” they say. “He’s that web designer.”

So who are they likely to call when they need the kind of service you provide?

Prospects Will Go with Who They Know

You probably hear similar commercials on your local radio station, right? For lawyers, plumbers, mattress showrooms—whatever. The same kinds of messages over and over, day after day.

And you rarely give them a second thought until, like Rosie, you absolutely need a lawyer (or a plumber, or a mattress, etc.).

The Direct Mail Advantage

Advertising effectiveness comes from repetition but with direct mail, you can get even more power. That’s because it’s targeted—so it only goes to the kinds of people who are likely to need and can pay for your products or services.

Unlike radio’s “shotgun” approach, direct mail is a laser. It’s efficient, with an impressive ROI—$27 for every dollar spent.

You can create a targeted prospect list and design and mail your postcard in minutes—right now, from where you’re sitting.

If you know what you’re doing and you’re ready to mail, you can start at www.prospectsplus.com. If you’re still unsure about how targeted demographics can dramatically impact your response, log onto Opportunity Knocks Custom Campaigns or just give us a call at 877-222-6010.  We’re ready to help.

Marketing can often feel like shooting at mosquitoes in the dark. You want to reach your target audience with an offer they will want, using a message that will get their attention and resonate with them.

Often, you end up guessing what might work.

To succeed, you need more and better information about your prospects—authentic data, rather than guesses or assumptions.

Without authentic data, you end up using your advertising budget to confirm what you don’t know.

“That’s the nature of the beast,” we tell ourselves. “Trial and error. It’s how everyone else does it. Isn’t it?”

Well, yeah—uh, no…not exactly.

Some people are nailing it a lot more often with a lot less trial and error—and getting phenomenal response and marketing ROI.

You can, too.

Punch #1: Demographics

Demographic data—physical traits like location, gender, age, ethnicity, etc.—are important, especially if you are promoting a local or regional business to the people within that area.

It’s the #1 punch and provides a certain level of targeting. So, if you were marketing a new kid’s clothing store, for instance, access to demographic data would enable you to reach households with children.

That’s a start and it can increase your ROI. With hundreds of data choices, you will find and reach more of the kinds of customers you’re targeting.

But there’s a way you can fine-tune your targeting to create dramatically better response and ROI.

Punch #2: Psychographics

While demographics tell you about the physical aspects of individuals or groups, psychographics tells you about their attitudes and their thinking…what their interests and opinions are, their likes and dislikes…what makes them tick.

Once upon a time, you could advertise a box of soap and people bought it because it was among only two or three boxes of soap available.

Today there are hundreds of “boxes of soap.” Customers have become more sophisticated. Their needs have become more specific. So in addition to demographics, you need the scientific advantage of psychographic data to reach them with your marketing.

It’s the #2 punch that can produce mind-blowing response and ROI.

For instance, if you were marketing an alternative health clinic, you wouldn’t want to spend your money trying to reach people who favor conventional medicine, believe that prescriptions drugs are the only answer, and the like. Rather, you would want to reach people who favor natural methods, alternative healing, chiropractic, and who have spent money on such things in the past.

Psychographics enable you to do just that.

Nielsen, the consumer research organization, makes this psychographic data easily accessible with PRIZM codes.

With a few mouse clicks, you can design your first postcard, target it by PRIZM segmentation and schedule the mailing.

If you know what you’re doing and you’re ready to mail, you can start at www.prospectsplus.com. If you’re still unsure about how targeted demographics can dramatically impact your response, log onto Opportunity Knocks or just give us a call at 877-222-6010.  We’re ready to help.

How many businesses can you think of that a customer interacts with on a daily basis? (Starbucks maybe?) There aren’t too many.

If you’re a doctor, you see the same patient once a year for their annual check-up. If you’re a house painter, you see the same customer once every four or five years. If you’re a wedding photographer, it’s even less often.

If that describes your business, then between now and the next time you see that customer (or get a referral from them), it would be kind of…awkward to continually promote your services to them.

But, at the same time, you can’t just drop off their radar. That would completely violate The Law of Consistency. You’ve got to remain in their life and on their mind (“top of mind,” as we marketers like to say).

Luckily, there’s a way to do that without becoming a nuisance. And it’s a total win-win for everybody too.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is how you keep your name in front of your customers without selling to them. The “content” in content marketing is any information that’s interesting and helpful to your customer.

By giving your customers information they enjoy and look forward to getting, you create an ongoing relationship with the person, in addition to the less frequent relationship with the customer.

Content marketing can come in a lot of different forms, both online and off. UK-based paint and wallpaper supplier Farrow & Ball created a completely separate website called The Chromologist (the term for someone who interprets color) which provides content for people who are passionate about color (their target audience)—and not just in terms of paint. Another is made-for-action video camera maker GoPro, which creates and posts tons of action video…and even welcomes customers to upload their own GoPro videos, which other users can then access, edit, and compile into their own videos. That’s not just content marketing; it’s a content community.

These approaches work because the content is important, inspiring, or exciting to customers. 

How to Get Started with Content Marketing 

Step 1: Identify your customer 

Sit down and write a description of your typical customer—also known as a customer avatar or customer persona. Ask yourself these questions:

• What is their age?
• Where to they live?
• What is their annual income?
• Marital status?
• Kids?
• Pets?

From these questions (and depending on your niche, you might think of more, which is okay), you will come up with a statement of the customer persona, such as “Ernie is in his early 20s, lives in Los Angeles, is unmarried, has no children, is a career person, and makes $30,000.” 

Step 2: Identify Actions and Interests 

Put yourself in Ernie’s shoes for a minute. What’s his average day like? What might he need help with?

• Drives to work
• Pays rent
• Is dating or is interested
• Goes to parties and/or happy hour
• Often eats out or on the go
• Looking to move up, make more money

Look at what you come up with. Then compare it to the things you’re an expert at that you could assist Ernie with. Of course, you want it to be something that’s related in some way to your business.

Step 3: Choose Your Channel(s)

Now it’s time to pick the best way to reach your customers with your content. For a company like GoPro, who makes video cameras, online video was the obvious choice but most businesses opt to put written content out on one or more of these channels:

• Email newsletter
• Snail mail newsletter
• Blog
• Postcard series

To get even more bang out of your content marketing, make sure the different channels are integrated: Your postcards should urge people to sign up for your newsletter. Your newsletter should mention your blog. Your emails should—you get the idea. But you don’t have jump in all at once. Start with one channel and build it from there.

Once you’ve done Steps 1, 2, and 3, then it’s time to start writing. Remember, you’re writing for your customer’s benefit, not your own, so sincerely focus on delivering a meaningful and valuable content experience to them.

Then send your content out!

Lastly, you’re going to want to monitor your results, to ensure that the content is really “hitting home” with your customers. You could also just go directly to them with a survey to find out what they really want to read about. 

Do these things and you will succeed in keeping yourself “top of mind” with your customers. They will appreciate it and will pay you back with the next sale or referral.

You can get a trial content market postcard campaign out the door right from our web-to-print platform right now. It’s easy! 

But if you need a hand getting your campaign off the ground, call Opportunity Knocks at 1 (866) 319-7109; they can create custom campaigns and plan it all out for you!