Should You Just Throw Away Your Direct Mail Campaign?

By: Joseph Ratliff
Submitted: 2007-01-17 12:15:02
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Well, should you?

Do you get the feeling that is where all of your postcard or envelope style mailings are going anyway?

How do you relieve this “pain” in your marketing? Take two of these and call me in the morning…message and market!

Message

What does your message sound like? That’s right…I said sound like. When you read your message on your direct mail pieces out loud to yourself, do you cringe with boredom? Is there anything on those pieces where it absolutely makes sense for your reader to “contact me”, “take advantage of this free offer”, or “get your free book for calling”? Is the information even valuable enough to get from you in the first place?

Remember, in the last post I wrote about your Unique Selling Proposition. Does your mailer even have that on it? If you have not read the post on USP, please do so now and develop one. Your message must compel the reader to take action, without forcing them to. Your USP combined with an effective headline, offer, and contact info will enhance your direct response results dramatically.

More importantly, you have just a little bit of time to catch the reader’s attention (less than 7 seconds) in your direct mailed material. The client has other things on their mind, and “interruption marketing” is not one of them. If you fail to overcome this obstacle, your mailer ends up in the trash almost immediately, without being read at all.

A high quality message must be delivered…but what if you are not targeting the right readers in the first place?

Market

That’s right, your message cannot just be randomly mailed to everyone in the phone book and expect good results without a lucky streak. I don’t know about you, but I am not a gambler. Do you want to gamble with your marketing results? Didn’t think so. You must research your market thoroughly, and send your message to those potential customers most likely to invest in your service or product. You wouldn’t fish for fresh water fish in salt water would you? You need to get the fish that are hungry for the bait you are casting.

Go to your public library, and look in the reference section. There are tons of resources available to research your local market there. Very best part? They are all free! Who is most likely to buy from you?

For example, a mortgage company would not want to hunt for new business by mailing to home owners who just signed up a new mortgage less than 90 days ago. But maybe home owners who have had their mortgage over 1 year, or even two years? If the mortgage company does refinances, which most of them do, this is an ample, targeted market.

List companies can help here as well, doing the sorting for you, for a fee of course. What you get is a pre - sorted list of potential business to mail. Once the responses start coming in, those that provide you information can be followed up via telephone call or another mail piece to start a relationship.

Message to market. The right message to the right market. The key to direct mail success. Don’t throw away your Direct Mail Campaign just yet, because you have a world of profits coming your way!

Joseph Ratliff is a professional direct response copywriter, marketing consultant, and author of The Profitable Business Edge... a brutally honest look at marketing your small business. Joe can be reached by email at joe@perfectwebcopy.com or on the web at http://www.perfectwebcopy.com ... If you contact Joe after reading this article, he has prepared a number of free gifts valued at over $500!

The Profitable Business Edge is located at http://profitablebusinessedge.wordpress.com

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