How and where do you promote your business? With multi-channel marketing, the answer isn’t as clear as it used to be. You have a web site, but left alone, it doesn’t make sales. Emails are effective, but if the spam police don’t block you, too-frequent emails will wear out your welcome.
Ads in print get results for large users, but they’re impractical for a company whose universe of prospects is only a small area. Small ads used to work. I once met a small jeweler who made $500,000 a year in sales from one-inch ads in the New Yorker, but those days are gone forever.
Direct mail is still the favorite of all marketers and fundraisers who want to convey personal messages to individual prospects one-to-one. It always gets results. It worked even before we had computer-personalized letters. The message has always been directly from one person to another, even if it was just a printed postcard. In fiscal 2004, the Postal Service mailed 95.5 billion pieces of Standard (advertising) mail, for $18 billion in revenue. That’s a whopping endorsement!
Direct mail often is the most cost-effective way to generate leads in business-to-business or consumer marketing. In business-to-business mailings, you can always get results by targeting your prospects very tightly from business lists that select job titles or purchasing authority.
For household products, insurance, medications, swimming pools, you can now target personal interest, usage of products, and other fine-tuned selections, in addition to age, income, and other demographics.
In B-to-B marketing, the cost of a single direct mail lead is tiny small compared with the lifetime value of prospect who will spend thousands of dollars with you. For consumer mailings, you save because you mail only to selected neighborhoods, a great solution when metropolitan newspapers, and even local papers, are too expensive to reach your localized market.
Unless you have a famous dot.com name, you already know that you must mail letters or postcards to tell customers where to find you. Direct mail plus the Internet is a tested and successful marketing combination. Just remember you’re not paying for clicks; make sure those mailing pieces get financially measurable results!
The profits of mail order are more accessible than ever, now that we have the Internet. Mail order works for any product or service that has either nationwide appeal, or a specialized appeal to a limited universe. National mail order companies make profits even in bad times, because national markets are not severely affected by localized or regional recessions, weather, disasters, or other impediments.
Direct mail is a marketing tool, not a technology function. Keep the human element in your direct mail. Only people buy products; success comes from meeting their needs, solving their problems, and fulfilling their dreams. Don’t look at ROI or response percentages until after you’ve sent off your best creative effort in the mail.
A former in-house list broker at a full service direct mail firm, Fred Morath is now a list marketing consultant and copywriter based in Natick, MA.
