Marketing Podcast Chapter 11: Direct Mail Campaigns
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Hello and welcome to Tactical Execution, an information series exploring innovative marketing and strategic business positioning for entrepreneurs and small businesses in an increasingly competitive world. My name is Patrick and I’m your host. You can find written versions of these podcasts at TacticalExecution.com and I encourage your candid feedback at the same location. Today, we’ll be talking about good old fashioned direct mail campaigns so let’s get started.
So far in this series, we’ve been talking about online marketing. Actually, that’s not entirely true. The first two chapters were about becoming a recognized expert in your field and acquiring the necessary knowledge. But ever since then, we’ve talked about websites and different ways of driving traffic and building usage. Well, today, that ends – at least for now.
We’ll be using the next 10 chapters or so looking at a variety of offline marketing strategies but it’s important to understand these offline techniques are far from passé. They can play a MAJOR role in your overall marketing strategy and one of the most effective things you can do is to integrate your OFFLINE tactics with your ONLINE tactics. In doing so, you connect your real live business with the often-ethereal internet world. You give your business dimension and depth. You add a physical component to your business identity. You give your business a personality.
Now, as far as statistics go, direct mail remains one of the most effective forms of marketing in existence. Surprised? You shouldn’t be! Just look in your mail slot and you’ll see for yourself. You probably get a dozen junk mail pieces everyday, if not more, and the reason is that it works. There’s no question that it works. It’s been proven time and again. But there’s a science to those results and we’ll be touching on that today.
First things first. Have you ever heard of the “rule of 7”? If not, here’s what it says. In order for a person to recognize that your business EXISTS, they have to see your marketing message at least 7 times. Yes, there will be SOME people who might take notice earlier but the AVERAGE person won’t even recognize the name of your business before they’ve seen your marketing at least 7 times.
Within the context of direct mail, that means you HAVE to send out 7 pieces of mail before you can expect to get any response at all. Think about that. You have to send out 7 mass mailings to the SAME audience before you can expect to get a response. That’s probably the biggest point right there. Direct mail works – no question. But it ain’t cheap! Direct mail can cost a bundle because you have to budget 7 full mailings before you can expect to see any revenue from the campaign.
The vast majority of people give direct mail a try by getting a list of potential clients and sending out a huge mailing. Then, they sit back and wait for the phone to ring. And they get NOTHING. And they get disappointed. Or they even get angry. And they give up. Well, that’s not a fair analysis. There’s almost no way for ONE mailing to be profitable because the vast majority of recipients won’t even know you EXIST from one mailing. You can’t give up on a direct mail campaign after just ONE mailing! You have to give it a CHANCE to work. And in order to do that, you have to plan for 7 full mailings before you expect results. And you better make sure you’ve got a BUDGET for 7 mailings before you even bother.
If you only have the money to send out ONE mailing, don’t even bother. It’s not worth it. It would be a TOTAL waste of time. OR, take one seventh of your list and mail to those recipients 7 times. You’ll get better results sending 7 mailers to 1000 people than you will sending ONE mailing to 7000 people. Don’t waste your time. Don’t get hypnotized by those big numbers. You could probably send a mailer to 100,000 people and STILL get nothing! Bottom line, there’s absolutely NO reason to do direct mail unless you can afford to send something out to the SAME audience at least 7 times.
Last year, as a Mortgage Broker, I got a list of 5000 homeowners and sent a large postcard to each one. I really shopped around for the best prices and the mailer cost me $1800 including everything. Soup to nuts, $1800. That’s actually a really good deal. But I didn’t get ONE call. Nothing. I couldn’t believe it. I thought for sure I’d get maybe 1% or ½%. 1% would be 50 calls. ½% would be 25. But no. I got absolutely nothing. Not even one call. I was miserable. I had completely wasted $1800.
Now, had I done the same mailing 7 times, there’s no question I would’ve gotten results. But a campaign like that would’ve cost me $12,600 and it would’ve taken 7 months to execute – if I sent out one mailer each month, that is. And that’s only when the campaign would’ve STARTED to work. I would’ve had to keep the campaign going for an 8th and 9th month, and beyond, to start seeing the results direct mail can provide.
THIS is the reason very few people do direct mail. It’s also the reason the people who DO direct mail have been doing it for a LONG time and are usually sending out thousands and thousands of pieces each month. The cost of the first 7 mailers is essentially a sunk cost. You just have to eat it. Don’t expect to get it back. It’s the cost of getting into business. But after that, you should start seeing results and the cost of keeping the campaign going should then start to make the investment worthwhile.
A good friend of mine did a lot of direct mail down in
Meanwhile, a competitor was sending out a far inferior piece with almost no information at all – and certainly NO customized information – and THAT campaign was delivering steady business. What was the difference? Well, the competitor (which he knew personally, by the way) had been sending out the same marketing piece every single month for over two years. THAT was the difference.
You see, generally speaking, the more customized a marketing piece is, the more response it will generate. But even the most customized marketing piece imaginable can’t compete with an ugly competitive piece that’s been sent out consistently over time. The KEY to success in direct mail is consistency. Consistency wins over quality. You HAVE to keep doing it. You have to stay in front of your audience. And the only way you can do that is to keep sending them your marketing pieces, month after month after month.
Now, it certainly wouldn’t hurt if the consistent marketing piece ALSO had some personalized information on it. You want your marketing piece to speak directly to your customer. The more personalized it is, the higher the chances the recipient will actually READ it. In fact, let’s take a few minutes and talk specifically about that – getting people to READ your marketing piece.
There are lots of studies being done on this stuff all the time. As I said earlier, direct mail is a science and lots of money is being spent trying to optimize direct mail campaigns. But the consensus is that window envelopes generally get opened a lot more than non-window envelopes. Now, there’s ONE exception and that’s when the envelope has the recipient’s name and address HAND written on the front. THAT is the definitely the best. A hand-written address takes top honors. But after that, a window envelope comes in second place.
The standard #10 envelopes are the most common but you’ll have a lot more luck sending out stuff in those greeting card envelopes. Because people usually associate that size envelope with a greeting card or a birthday card, the chances of getting it opened are much higher. We’ll be talking about that in a later chapter on “drip marketing”.
Now, what about those big manila envelopes? Well, that’s another approach and your odds of getting it opened go up dramatically. I’ve done this myself and people definitely open big manila envelopes. But it’ll cost you. In fact, the last time the USPS raised their rates, they raised the rates on those big envelopes WAY more than everything else. So it’s a lot more expensive to send those out now than before. In my case, the postage went up from 83¢ to $1.40 or something like that. It was a HUGE increase.
Here’s another one. Turns out, envelopes with real stamps get opened more than envelopes that are metered with postage. Makes sense. Anything that makes your envelope look like it was personally put together has a greater chance of being opened. And by the way, a lot of the mailing houses have fake stamps they can put on your envelopes, making it LOOK like it was individually stamped even though a machine did the whole thing. I would say it’s definitely worthwhile to look into something like that.
More and more people are sending out postcards these days. You don’t have to worry about getting them opened and the marketing impression is made right away. They’re also a lot cheaper and there are tons of places that specialize in sending them out. In fact, the USPS even has a service you can access on their website where you can arrange the entire thing online and they’ll even give you a 5¢ discount on the postage. It’s called NetPost and I’ve added the URL to the Links tab on the Tactical Execution website.
If you’re going to send out postcards, I suggest you send out the bigger ones. The standard size is sooo overused these days that you’re marketing message will undoubtedly get lost in the shuffle. But with those larger 8.5 x 5.5” postcards, your message will stick out from the crowd. Literally. A card that size is bigger than most of the other things coming in your mail so it physically sticks out. That’s a good thing. Generally speaking, it doesn’t cost much more and the benefits are measurable.
The next big hurdle, of course, is the message itself. What are you going to put on the card? Or the letter? Well, there’s a science to this as well. And there are a couple schools of thought here. On the one hand, you can think of something catchy or clever – something short – and have that slogan prominently across the piece along with a graphic of some kind. That’s the traditional approach and people have been doing it that way for a long time. Fact is; it works. Over time, people become accustomed to the slogan and begin associating it with you and your business. We all know dozens of examples of companies branded with short clever slogans.
But there’s another approach you can take as well. You can slap the reader with a powerful question addressing his or her primary “problem” directly and then squeeze a whole bunch of educational information onto the card and reference your website where the reader can get even more information. In doing so, you’re appealing to the readers’ desire to better understand the situation and giving them useful information that might reduce “pain” in their lives. Furthermore, they can get this information without a pushy salesperson breathing down their neck.
There have been studies done on this strategy as well and it can be quite effective. The argument goes like this. If the reader is interested in the opening question, you can include as much copy as you want and the reader will probably read every word. The idea is to clearly remind the reader of some existing “pain” he or she has, and then give him or her a way of relieving the pain quickly. Give them the information they’re looking for. Even give them some real detail – specific stuff. Educate them.
Now, some people argue that many readers will look at all that cluttered text and won’t read ANY of it. Well, that’s true but those people aren’t your market anyway, are they? I mean, if they read the opening question and are NOT affected by it, they’re not the people you’re looking for. If they don’t have the PAIN you can solve, they’re NOT your customers. So don’t worry about them. They can look at all the text and roll their eyes and throw it away if they wish. No problem. The ones you WANT are the ones who will be struck with your opening question. And they’re also the ones who will appreciate the extra information you’re providing on the postcard, even if it’s squished in using a small font.
This strategy works well with the “make yourself useful” moniker. It gives something of value and invites the reader to enter your funnel and learn more. I’ve used this in the past and have been surprised at the difference. In fact, I’ve found that some recipients actually KEEP the marketing piece – sometimes for long time, just because they appreciated the information so much – and then they followed up on it months later when the need arose. Personally, I’ve always wanted my marketing pieces to be SO useful, so full of information, that recipients WANT to keep it.
It’s also worth noting that timing plays a major role in the success of your marketing. If you’re sending to a group that’s used to getting tons of this stuff, the chances of having your piece thrown away are much higher. But if you send something out to an audience that isn’t being inundated with solicitations, your campaign will do much better. A friend of mine sends out a nice personal letter to all newly registered businesses. He does graphic design and corporate logo development and gets a really good response from that campaign. The people receiving his mailing are brand new businesses. They’re not getting that much marketing yet. And meanwhile, they’re exactly the ones who need his services. The timing is perfect.
Thinking back now, when I first opened my own business 5 years ago, I got a nice letter from an accountant. I remember it because it was the ONLY letter I got from an accountant. As it turned out, I already had an accountant and never used his services. But I remember that letter 5 years later and still remember thinking it was a great introduction when I first received it. If I needed an accountant, I definitely would’ve called him. And why? Because he was the ONLY one I was introduced to.
There are lots of different angles to direct mail. We’ve only just touched the surface today. We could go on for a few days at least, discussing the various aspects of the process. But I hope this chapter has given you some ideas on how you can incorporate direct mail and do so in an effective way. I’ll probably come back to this in the future, one way or another, and we can go into more detail then.
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