There are many different “flavors” of designing direct mail but only a few effective ways of design for maximum impact that will result in your prospect opening up the envelope or reading your mail piece and contacting you to buy.
Here is a link to Bill Fryer’s website that has 28 value packed direct mail design tips.
http://www.billfryer.com/design/
We agree with most of these tips except for tip #8 where Bill suggests “long copy” sales message versus short. We are of the belief that “short and concise” is better. Of course, the idea of the long copy sales letter is to thwart off any objections in the sales message before the customer can think of, but we would rather “tease” interest with a specific benefit that would compel them to contact us or to stop by our business location.
Let us know what you think…click the comments button below…
Filed under Arizona mail services, direct mail, direct mail campaign, printed mail by on May 11th, 2010. Comment. 
Looking for a reliable direct mail house that can handle any size mailing while making you money? Choose us, Business Helpers in Scottsdale Arizona for your mail marketing needs.
Call 480-483-7677
Although we are located in Scottsdale, Arizona, we can handle a job from anywhere in the USA. Here are just some of the services we offer your business:
Call us now at 480-483-7677
Filed under Arizona mail services, bulk mail, direct mail, mail services by on Apr 25th, 2010. Comment.
Quite often, when planning out a direct mail campaign, you focus too much on the product or service and ignore the message to the target market. This is most important piece of the marketing puzzle that many professionals even skip when being hired to boost sales for their client.
Here is a video from Ford Saeks that explains how important it is to match the sales message to the target market. Do it right the first time!
Filed under Arizona mail services, direct mail campaign by on Apr 15th, 2010. Comment.
Here are several key reasons why you need to do direct mail in your business.
- It allows you to connect with your target audience with dead on accuracy.
- It markets your business 24 hours, 7 days a week.
- It gives you immediate response of your offer.
- You can track your effectiveness of your marketing message.
- You get the complete attention of the person reading your direct mail piece.
- It doesn’t cost much to test your offer to the market.
If anything, use direct mail to make sure you are offering products and services that people or businesses will buy. What good is being in business if you have a product that does not have demand?
Also, remember that direct mail allows you to build your client base. If you get any response from your mailing, put them on your next direct mail campaign. Anyone who has responded previously is a willing candidate to buy your product!
For your direct mail processing needs call Business Helpers at 480-483-7677. Serving all of Arizona, USA.
Filed under Arizona mail services, direct mail, direct mail campaign by on Feb 26th, 2010. Comment.
Did you know that:
- 17% of Americans change addresses annually?
- 42 million people move each year
- One out of every six families move
Not enough of our direct mail customers pay attention to keeping a very updated list of customers to mail to. Can you imagine how much waste in money and time it causes from undeliverable addresses? It can easily cost into the thousands. That can definitely make a big cut in the profitibility of your business!
Here are some ways you can reduce your costs when doing your next mailing while keeping your list current and updated.
To make sure that you are getting a list with accurate addresses, ask about the National Deliverability Index (NDI) of the list. The NDI rates the percentage of addresses in a list that are deliverable. Use the NDI to target the address elements you need to get the delivery —- and postage price —- you want. For example, if you are targeting a specific 5-digit ZIP Code, look for an NDI of 100% for address element.
The United States Post Office provides many ways where you can validate the accuracy of postal addresses.
You can also use www.USPS.com to check zip codes in your list.
You can submit your list directly to the USPS on a printout so they can mark any changes of addresses. There will be a small fee for this service.
You can also run your list through a NCOA approved vendor that can check over your list with special software and make on the spot corrections.
The most important thing is that you should make a conscious effort to ensure all addresses are good. As stated earlier there is so many people and businesses either moving or changing contact information on a daily basis that it is sometime to pay attention to early on in order to save waste and wasted money in the process!
Filed under Arizona mail services, US Postal Service, direct mail, direct mail costs by on Feb 17th, 2010. Comment.
We found a great article that Entreprenuer Magazine did on direct mail marketing…..”99 Tips for Direct Mail Marketing”
http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/guerillamarketing/article193436.html
This article was brought to you by Business Helpers in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Here is a quick list of services we are able to assist you with.
- Mail List Preparation: Merge/Purge, clean, remove duplicates, CASS certification (ensure accuracy and deliverability), NCOA (updates change of address)
- Mail Processing: Address (directly onto mail piece), collate, stuff, fold, seal, affix wafer seal closures, sort, stamp/meter, bundle for postage discounts, and deliver to the post office. We can accommodate a wide variety of insert and envelope sizes
- Letter Shop Services: Print personalized, high quality laser letters, folding, tabbing, and inserting while accommodating a wide variety of insert and envelope sizes
- Custom Printing: We find the best price and quickest service available through our printing partners
- Hand Assembly: Quality hand assembly (collating, folding, inserting, labeling and addressing) for custom or unusual jobs
Let us make a no obligation quote for your next mailing job. You will notice the difference on the service and attention we provide! We love what we do and looking forward to helping you.
Call us now at 480-483-7677
At this time, we want to wish all of our customers, vendors and visitors a most successful and prosperous new year!
Filed under Arizona mail services, direct mail tips by on Jan 4th, 2010. Comment.
Here is the 5 most common direct mail mistakes most businesses make.
- Not spending enough time and money on the list. Quite often we throw a direct mail campagin together without a thought to what kind of list we are going to market too. We find out later that the direct mail piece, the message and the call to action was perfect but the list, which we “rushed” to purchase without checking the validity and the integrity of the list broker has let us down. Think more of the list broker and explore the quality of the list and also the types of buyers the list has. Sometimes it could change the direction of what kind of marketing message you are going to plan for if you find another target market ready to buy your product or service.
- TESTING! This is a biggie. More than half of direct mail customers will give us a direct mail campaign to mail out, give us the list and fail to give us some parameters of changing out how the mailing piece looks to test the headline, the direct mail piece design, etc. There are so many things to test, the color of the envelope, size of the piece, the message, making it “lumpy,” and so on. Be a test “junkie” and you will find you will be consistently doubling and tripling the money brought in on a campaign.
- Stress the benefits to the customer in your marketing message as opposed to the features your product or service has. The buying customer does not care about the fancy, schmancy features your product has, as a matter of fact, they do not have the time to listen to how great you are, they want results! What kind of result can you customer achieve by using your product?
- Have an offer. What is a direct mail campaign good for if you do not have an offer. Even just asking for the order in your message is good enough to get you results. Research what kind of offer you are going to make. It has to be compelling and benefit driven.
- Lastly, and most importantly FOLLOW UP with your customer list. I highly suggest you get the phone numbers of all your direct mail prospects too. That way, you can follow up and get a good probablity that you will make sales right on the phone from the mailing. Do not underestimate the power of follow ups!
For your direct mail processing needs call Business Helpers at 480-483-7677. Serving all of Arizona, USA.
Filed under Arizona mail services, direct mail campaign, direct mail tips by on Dec 7th, 2009. Comment.
Quite often the simplest way of mailing is the best. I am talking about a simple letter on your custom printed letter head and stuffed inside of a #10 business envelope with your logo on the return address and sent to your targeted prospect list.
This could be a simple introduction of your services to a full trial coupon of your product or service attached. Sending something on your stationary is far better than sending it in a postcard or fancy custom cut piece. Personalized stationary builds strong branding to the eyes of your prospects.
Sending personalized letters just to thank the customer or to continue to expose the prospect with the kinds of products and services you offer is a great goodwill builder with prospects. Remember the old sales adage, a minimum of “7 touches” is required before anyone will buy from you. What better way to send at least as series of 7 letters to your prospects to get their trust and attention.
Whatever you do, keep consistent with mailing out your letters or mail pieces. Believe it or not it will eventually convert at a modest rate and make your mailings pay for itself.
Filed under Arizona mail services, direct mail campaign by on Nov 29th, 2009. Comment.
Direct mail is the most important part of your marketing plan. Developing and executing the campaign can be very confusing. Today’s mailing regulations are getting more complicated–postage rates are changing all the time and the flood of mail makes it harder to get noticed. The right message and presentation is very important and must get to your target market in the correct way. Capturing your reader must happen quickly and your reader must be motivated to take action.
Here are some valuable tips when planning out your direct marketing campaign:
- consult with a direct mailing house before planning your next campaign
- keep your mailing piece simple and readable
- consult with a copywriter regarding your sales content
- use a reputable list broker
- use colored envelopes to get attention
- personalize the message in your mail piece
- have a clear message on what you offer
- insert a strong call to action – call in, fax in or mail back
- develop a free gift to further intice action
- offer a free trial period of your product or service
- have a professional graphic artist design art work
- mention guarantees (risk avoidance)
This is only a partial list of direct mail marketing techniques, but you get the idea. There are so many things to develop for your next mailing. Always remember to test and change things slightly to measure the effectiveness of your mailings. For example, the wording of the headline on the mail piece can be changed to make two or three versions. You measure the response rate of each headline….the headline that brings in the best return or response will prevail on all mailings from now on.
Stay tuned for more valuable tips and tricks from Mail Marketing Masters!
Make a comment here if you have some tips you can share with our readers. Just click on the comment button below.
For your direct mail processing needs call Business Helpers at 480-483-7677. Serving all of Arizona, USA.
Filed under Arizona mail services, direct mail campaign, mail services by on Nov 20th, 2009. 1 Comment.
Before you start your direct mail campaign, make sure you know your target audience thoroughly before spending any money on renting a list to mail to.
You have spent some good money on making a great product, and you know that it fits what your market needs, you composed attention grabbing copy on your sales piece and you have all your call center in place to take orders. But remember that the most important thing is the mailing list you are sending mail to. What good is your sales piece going to do if you send it to a poor performing list?
Here are some pointers on how to “shop” for a profitable mailing list.
One of the most important things you can do when selecting a mail list house is to look in the Standard Rate & Data Service Directory under mailing list brokers. This is a very reputable publication that only contains good to very good list brokers. These brokers explain within the directory the different lists that are available for rent, what kind of buyers the lists are made up of, and the date the list was last cleaned–that is, the last time all the names on the list were verified relative to the correctness of addresses.
Once you narrow down your list brokers to a select few companies, contact them and let them know about your current mailing campaign and ask them if they have good lists to attract their specific lists. Quite often, a good list broker will have much knowledge and start asking you pertinent questions to further help you. When you get the feeling that you are talking to a sincere list broker, ask them for their minimum list of names along with prices. Then call on the other companies you were also intersted in and see if you can spot a trend of pricing and kind of lists available.
Once you and the list broker and have decided upon the mailing list best suited to your offer, the broker will require you to rent a minimum of 5,000 names. The going price will range from $35 to $95 per thousand names. This may seem like a lot of money to you at first, but you have to look at the quality of the list that the broker will give you to translate those names into “paying customers.”
Remember too, that the list brokers have their own interests to get repeat busines from you and will do their darnest to give you a quality list.
For all your direct mailing service needs, call us at 480-483-7677.
Filed under Arizona mail services, direct mail by on Nov 9th, 2009. Comment.