Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

It is difficult to answer this question without more information. For example, where are you located? What product or service are you selling? Are you generating leads for salesforce? Is a salesforce on straight commission or base plus commission? The more information you can give us, the more helpful we can be in our answers.

I have made phone calls to follow-up postcard campaigns on behalf of an advertising agency, and we would mail a postcard, wait a week, mail a postcard, wait a week, and then place a phone call. This worked fairly well.

Chuck,

Great question, to which, alas, there's no simple answer.

Direct mail works well, but your perception of its success depends on a list of variables:

1. How often your message is repeated.
2. Who your message is aimed at.
3. What is said. How it is said. When it’s said.
4. What your mailing costs to implement.
5. What your marketing brings in in revenue.
6. What you’re offering. What you’re asking for.
7. How often people you approach people.
8. How yout message is delivered (postcard, letter, lumpy mail).
9. What kind of relationship you establish and maintain.

The key to success with DM is to establish a relationship, or to pique people's interest over and over again by either asking specific questions, or by approaching particular pain points.

You’ve GOT to establish trust, desire, and belief and you’ve got to pull these things off by remebering that to get a POSITIVE result, you've got to get SPECIFIC with your questions, your offer, and your desired result.

Elsewhere in this forum I’ve given examples of right message to right audience about right need. If I'm selling chocolate screwdrivers and I'm advertising in magazines read only by blast furnace operators and mailing only to welding crews in the Sahara I’m not going to sell many chocolate screwdrivers, am I?

My point here is that the more you direct your message at people who
are open and receptive to it, the more likely it is that your message
will be received, believed, understood, and acted upon.

So make sure your list is segmented enough to permit your message to
get to the people who may be interested in what you have to say, and who are in a position to act on what they find.

You do this by combing through your list and making sure that the addressee matches what you’re offering, even if this means focusing in on a street by street basis (if your list is local to you). If your list is a larger, national list, this is harder to do, but by eliminating people who are in no position to act on your offer you INSTANTLY improve the effectiveness of your mailing, and therefore reduce its cost and increase its potetential for higher returns.

Direct mail works BEST with particular messages that are addressed to particular people about their specific needs. The glue that holds all this together is repetition., hence the repeated mailings. But these mailings must be connected or related in some way, and a great way of doing this is through your copy (it’s an ideal way to use the old TV theme of “… to be continued”, and “In our previous episode our hero was in dire peril …” )

Send out five or six mailings, all of which interconnect in some way (theme, story, image, offer), but make sure your offer is clearly defined and too good to pass up. You asked about thanking people. If you’re mailing to an existing list, why not use your mailing as an excuse to tell people how thankful you are for their custom and support by offering them a deadline related discount on something you offer, something they need or desire.

Follow up telephone calls must NOT be hard sell, and MUST remind people of the postcard campaign and its offer so that one is linked to the other. This creates continuity and confidence that you have your customers best interests at heart.

And with database merging and print on demand it's now easier than ever to personalize each card so that its salutation is aimed
at the specific card recipient and not just to "Dear Sir/Madam".

In a crowded marketplace, get yourself remembered for being you, not for being just like everyone else.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA