October 28, 2020
Follow the steps below and watch your sales and profits grow.
Balancing your budget, visibility, and messages can be difficult for you and your business.
And when it comes to the digital world, you’re competing to be heard with many other marketing campaigns. If you are doing a lot of advertising using digital technology, you are facing a lot of competition and challenges in getting noticed.
We want you know that direct mail is continuing to make a comeback. Why? Because direct mail is one place where you can rise above the crowds and take advantage of reduced competition. Below are five strategies that will help you conquer the most common direct marketing challenges that many industries and markets face.
1. Measure ROI:
As owner of a direct marketing service company, I see companies all the time do direct mail campaigns and give little thought to measure ROI. Believe me, I try to encourage testing and measuring ROI. Our most successful clients do this all the time!
One of the biggest obstacles marketers struggle with is how to measure the ROI (Return on Investment) of their marketing efforts. If you track ROI, you will see the effectiveness of each and every particular marketing campaign, and the message (i.e. copy).
Not only will you see the effectiveness of each promotion, but you can test differences in lists, offers, pricing, copy, and other factors and see which changes improve or worsen results. As you test different things, you will learn what works better and combining the best lists, copy, pricing, etc. will lead to large gains in profitability.
A simple way to track ROI is to take the entire expense of a mailing, and compare it against the net profit from the sales that result.
If you need help with this, please feel free to contact us at Talon. We are here to help.
2. Do you have strong customer profiles?
Do you know and understand who your marketing audience is? Examining your biggest and best buyers is a great place to start.
Once you identify your target market, make sure your advertising copy fits with your target segment needs and desires.
Next, make sure you are using the best channels for marketing to that audience.
While many companies focus on email campaigns, other methods still produce. As stated earlier, direct mail even though it may cost more, could produce better results.
Combining a better understanding of your customer profiles with tracking ROI, and testing, will almost always produce better results.
3. Are you really connecting with your customers?
Direct marketing experts (backed by numerous studies) have suggested that it’s best to connect to prospects at the minimum of six-to-11 times to convert them to customers. Once they become a customer the percentage of orders-to-attempts go up. The main reason to make so many attempts is the notion that the more you connect with prospects and customers, the more likely they are to keep you in mind when they need your product or service.
Remember, frequency creates awareness and good timing opportunities. Try to embrace variety in the direct mail promotions you do, to keep things fresh and this will also help keep them engaged.
4. Keeping Your Database Current.
It does not take long for business prospects and customer contacts to move to a new address, retire, go out of business, or move to a new company. Consumers move all the time, and unfortunately they eventually pass on.
Be mindful that your customer and prospect lists “degrade” over time and in fact, some of your data becomes stale or obsolete on a monthly basis. Check, fix, and clean your customer database regularly to ensure that the list is as accurate as possible. Talon provides numerous services to help (including updating your list when people and businesses move).
With ROI in mind, don’t mail to lists until you have cleaned and updated them.
5. Are you making it easy for prospects and clients to respond?
The trademark of a successful direct mail campaign is a clear and strong call to action. What’s the call to action on your direct marketing piece?
What steps would you like your prospects and clients to take after reading that call to action? Have you clearly laid them out and have you made it easy for them to do this?
For example, on your mail pieces, have you clearly provided your website address? And a phone number? And when they land on your website, can they easily navigate it and do an order?
Can they reach out easily on their smart phone? Is the website or landing page mobile friendly? Do they need to fill out a form online or do they need to make a phone call to a live person?
ROI will increase if you make it easy for your prospects and customers to take action when reading your mail piece. And it’s important to try to track their actions so you can update your database with additional profile information based on their behavior. Talon can help you with this as well.
Please remember, direct mail is still one of the most powerful ways to build your sales. Follow these five steps and you will see positive results!
Need help with your marketing or direct mail? To learn more about our services, or discuss your direct mail needs, here’s our home-page link and contact information:
