It has been proven that your customers receiving mail on Monday or Friday will most likely get your mail tossed in the trash. Mondays are known as heavy mailing days and most companies sort out their mail so quickly that anything that looks like advertisements gets trashed. On Fridays, mail is equally sorted out very quickly because there is typically rush deadlines to be made in the afternoons or many workers work only a half day. There is greater chance, just like Monday’s that mail will get tossed in the trash can as well.

Tuesdays followed by Wednesdays are know as “light” mail days and the recipient will most likely study every piece of mail and open them without really checking if they are advertisements or not. This also gives your company a calculated follow up by phone, if you have that kind of program put in place.

Also, remember to carefully plan your follow up mailing to also fall to the target audience in Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.

Sometimes just the timing of sending out mail will make or break your campaign!

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1. Attention – It must attract attention and attract the prospect to your offer
2. Interest – It must create an interest or be compelling to the reader of your marketing message.
3. Desire – It must create desire for your product by providing education about the product, niche or industry.
4. Action – Probably the most important item, it must have a call to action where the prospect either buys the product or makes inquiry for further information on the product.

The above are fundementals of direct sales techniques that have been used for over 100 years. This is the way cowboys sold wagons and horses! It feeds on the psychology of human nature and how to lead a prospect through the sales process.

Direct mail makes use of all these basic sales/marketing principles. So when creating your next direct mail campaign, make sure you use these principles as your guide for better response rate.

In our next post, we will cover the topic of direct mail response rates.

As with any sports team, coaches will state that practicing the fundamentals, training outstanding athletes with this method has never failed a team to the championship. Likewise, when marketing successfully, it pays to practice what has always worked.

The SECRET is repetition. Yes, when mailing to a targeted list of customers or prospects, it pays to repeat mailings in reasonable intervals so that the marketing “message” is constantly reinforced in their minds. Eventually inertia will take over and the customer, and when ready to buy, will be ready to call you and your business to make a purchase.

So don’t measure your direct mail campaign with one mailing to that one list. You need to mail repeatedly to the same list several times before you reap the rewards AND profits of that targeted list you are using!

If you like this article, tell your business associates about it and have them visit and comment!

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…

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!

Hand-written touches are the most important thing that attracts attention. First, hand write the addressee’s name. That way the consumer knows you thought of her personally and thought she would enjoy hearing about the product/service or special deal you are offering.

The body of your letter will obviously need to be typed in order to mass produce and insure ease of reading. Take the time to chose a letterhead style that is appealing to the eyes. Use white for the color of the paper and plain text for content, either arial or times roman at 12 point. And of course, a great logo and your business’ contact information.

To close your letter with that personal touch, sign every letter individually. Now, of course if you have extremely large number of letters to go out, there is technology out there that can “recreate” real looking hand written signatures in mass production. You may want to price that out with your printer if they have that option available.

It would also enhance your response if you add a “PS” at the bottom of your letter. Here is where you could add a special offer or thank them for their business…a great business retention technique. It lets the customer know you value them.

In conclusion, always think how to personalize the letter enough to let the customer know you are giving them personal attention and appreciation. After all, isn’t that what we all want?

For your direct mail processing needs call Business Helpers at 480-483-7677. Serving all of Arizona, USA.

For those of you who thought you knew, watch this entertaining video and give us your thoughts. Comment back to us by pressing the comment button below.

Direct Mail Marketing in Plain English

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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?
4. 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.
5. 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.

We are all guilty of this sorting process of our mail whether it is at home or at the office. Mail is quite often the first thing we give our attention to, so that is a good thing to direct mail marketers. But the most important thing here is to make sure your mail piece is personalized or somehow geared towards getting the attention of the recipient to open your mail piece. It should not be gaudy or obnoxious, slightly business-like, and non “salesy.”

We have a video below from a direct mail marketer that should drive out point, when thinking about your next direct mail campaign.

The Secret of Direct Mail Success

For your direct mail processing needs call Business Helpers at 480-483-7677. Serving all of Arizona, USA.