Winning New Customers with Direct Mail

 “The moMailBoxre things change, the more they stay the same.”

When it comes to attracting new customers, this famous epigram perfectly describes the process. New tools like social media represent the changes, while the fundamentals of customer service and outreach using direct mail remain the same.

The primary objective of customer service is to keep customers coming back. A satisfied customer has no incentive to look elsewhere for the product or service you provide and will, therefore, return to purchase again. A satisfied customer might also provide a recommendation to others to use your business or provide a referral to your business.

Truly great customer service is invisible to the customer. It is the framework for all transactions, but is never in the forefront. Your customer places an order and it is fulfilled on time, as ordered, and at the agreed-upon price. This kind of dependability – meeting customer expectations consistently and quietly – is the ultimate customer service experience and trumps the occasional above-and-beyond effort needed to solve an unexpected problem or respond to an emergency. If you are great at performing in a crisis but inconsistent in day-today performance, you are not delivering a great customer experience.

Remarkable customer service begins when you enhance quietly consistent routine performance with extra touches – anticipating the customer’s needs, turning a job around on an impossible deadline, or providing a creative solution to a problem. Remarkable customer service creates future business.

More…

Engage Your Readers With… Effective Headlines

HeadlineSMWhen you are writing a marketing communication piece – print ad, sales letter, direct mail piece, brochure, blog entry, press release, newsletter, webinar – where do you start? You may be surprised to learn that experts advise starting at the top by writing the headline.

The headline is your promise to readers, a statement of what they can expect if they continue reading. Promises are first made, and then fulfilled. So make the promise to readers through the headline, and fulfill it in the content.

The importance of headlines is not a new concept. Writing in 1923 in his book Scientific Advertising, Claude Hopkins said, “We pick out what we wish to read by headlines.” Forty years later, in his 1963 book Confessions of an Advertising Man, advertising legend David Ogilvy wrote On average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents of your dollar.” Continuing today, busy people decide what to read on web pages, e-mail or blogs based the strength of the headline.

More…

Creating Successful Printer Customer Relationships

dv1221025If printing services is a budget line item for your company or organization, chances are someone is in charge of managing that budget by finding a reliable printing vendor – a company that charges a fair price, is dependable, has expertise in the kind of printing you need, and has the necessary production capability and capacity. When a company or organization that has a regular, recurring need for printing and finds a print vendor with the ability, intention, and willingness to meet that need, the two have a basis for forming a successful printing — customer relationship.

More…

Business Cards… The Indispensable Marketing Tool

BCphotoHere’s an intriguing question — can you name a digital technology that has the equivalent universality of a printed business card? Lots of digital technologies — smart phones, the electronic Rolodex, social media sites like LinkedIn — provide ways to access, organize, and display the contact information found on a printed business card. But none offer the ease of exchange between any giver and any receiver as does a business card.

A January 2014 survey by DesignCrowd.com of 1000 small businesses in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia revealed that 87% of respondents exchange business cards when meeting someone for the first time. Two thirds of respondents said they subsequently enter the business card information into a smart phone or Rolodex. So even though the contact information may ultimately be transferred to a digital format, the printed business card is still the best way to get information into the hands of a customer or prospect.

More…

Let’s Keep in Touch… Six Ways to Stay in Contact

dv1492011Marketing experts agree: the basis for developing new business, whether new work from an existing customer or the first job from a prospect, is to communicate with them. Experts also agree that the more different kinds of communication tools a business or organization uses, the more efficient the outreach and the more likely it is to successfully reach the person targeted. Relying on only one or two methods to make contact is risky when the person you want to reach has voice mail and the “delete” command to avoid phone calls and e-mail, and may not participate in all forms of social media. To help you improve your chances of having a successful communication, we offer six ways to contact customers and prospects.

More…

Economies of Scale… Marketing with Postcards

Postcard_smallA postcard mailing campaign, properly planned and carried out, is an efficient and cost effective way to market to customers and prospects. Less time-consuming and costly to produce than a brochure or folded self-mailer, a postcard is more affordable, yet no less effective. Whether your objective is business promotion, product or service advertising, brand identity, donation solicitation, or a service or event reminder, a postcard gets the job done efficiently and cost-effectively.

Because postcards don’t require opening for the message to be seen, they have an impact even on those who don’t actively engage with them. A well-designed postcard has the main message in plain view and catches the reader’s eye with a strong headline or graphic, resulting in a high read rate. Although a postcard typically — though not always — has less space to deliver the message than a self-mailer, the postcard’s reach can be extended by referring to a website for more details. Postcards have a longer “shelf life” than e-mail, and are easy to file for future reference.

More…

USPS EDDM… Direct Mail Made Easy

MailLadyIn our last issue of Printips, we discussed the viability of direct mail as a marketing tool and presented the elements that make up a successful direct mail marketing campaign.
In this issue we are introducing a simple
first-step campaign for businesses that are new to direct mail or have a smaller budget. The program is called Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM), and it does just what its name implies — the letter carrier delivers your direct mail piece to every single active address in a neighborhood along with the rest of the day’s
mail.

Here’s what makes EDDM different from regular direct mail marketing:
• you don’t have to put an address on the mail piece, and
• the postage rate is the lowest one offered by the USPS — currently about 15 cents per piece mailed.
So in addition to saving between 40% and 70% on postage, there is no need to spend money on purchasing a mail list, checking the names and addresses for deliverability, or affixing labels.

More…

Direct Mail… Your Additional Salesperson

mailbox_loresHere is an easy way to add an extra salesperson to your marketing staff: develop an ongoing direct mail marketing campaign. While the goal of advertising is to create brand awareness and a connection to potential buyers, direct mail marketing aims to motivate a prospect to take action and complete a transaction. A carefully planned and executed direct mail campaign can do just that.

Today more companies are turning to direct mail. According to research conducted by IBIS World and published in its October 2012 report Direct Mail Advertising in the U.S., direct mail is expected to grow 1.4% annually in the next five years. This is in contrast to the 1.2% contraction direct mail has averaged since 2008. Part of this is due to incentives provided by the United States Postal Service (USPS), such as direct mail that includes QR codes and Every Door Direct Mail.

In its 2011 Channel Preference Study, Epsilon Targeting found that direct mail is the top choice of consumers for receiving brand communications, even among 18-34 year olds. Other interesting findings include:
• 26% of U.S. consumers and 30% of Canadians said direct mail is more trustworthy than email;
• 50% of U.S. consumers and 48% of Canadians said they pay more attention to postal mail than email;
• 30% of U.S. consumers said they’re receiving more mail that interests them compared to a year ago, and just 50% (down from 63% in 2010) said more information is sent to them in the mail — indicating marketers are improving targeting efforts;
• The perception that reading email is faster declined among U.S. email account holders to 45% in 2011 (from 47% in 2010), suggesting clogged inboxes are draining time.

More…

A Website is Not a Brochure: Why You Need Both

brochure_web_lrWhen it comes to providing information about your company and its products and services, a good website offers a lot of advantages. It allows prospects to find you, regardless of their geographic proximity. Searching for information is fast and easy. The prospect has complete control, spending as much or as little time as desired on the site.

But all the information gathering can be done anonymously. That means you don’t know the extent of the prospect’s interest – whether an early-stage shopper (slight interest, may not have intention to buy); information seeker (gathering information from more than one source); qualified buyer (has the interest, authority, and budget to make a decision); or someone actually ready to purchase. You can’t answer questions, counter misinterpretations, or offer additional information. In short, you have no control over the sales process.

An effective brochure, on the other hand, returns control to you. It also requires you to think through exactly how to tell a compelling story about your company and its products and services – the basis of any marketing effort, regardless of the strategy used to carry it out.

More…

Six Printed Items… Every Business Needs

AA000167Every business, regardless of size, has a few fundamental needs: accurate financial statements to provide management information; an organization chart so employees know their duties and responsibilities; and sales and marketing material to support the sales effort. Each is an important contributor to the overall success of the business.

In the past, all sales and marketing materials were printed. Later, the Internet added new ways to reach customers and prospects, and later still, provided a way to interact with them, sometimes in real time. Over time, Internet-based marketing replaced some printed materials; enhanced others; and also provided new marketing tools.

Despite the popularity and success of these new marketing techniques, there remain some basic printed items that all businesses need:

MORE…