If Your Name Isn’t Down, You Aint Coming In - Mailing Campaigns
How many times have we all heard that on night club doors as teenagers? Unless you were the height of uber-cool as a young twenty-something then you will have no-doubt been turned away from entering the event of the week for no real reason.
Sadly, all those people who say that it gets better when you grow up were lying! The same applies in business today, unless your company and you look cool, you aint getting a foot in the door to make the sale.
This months newsletter continues on from the direct mail theme of last month. Basically, last month we talked about how direct mail industry experts have just finished a two year study of the direct mail sent by leading companies, only to find that a whopping 0% of all mail sent gets any form of response, unless your company is somehow already in the readers sub-conscious.
And that is for large corporate companies, so where does that leave you and I as small business owners… not in a good place, that is where.
Part of the direct mail analysis meant sitting down with all the recipients in a form of focus group. A focus group is where a company usually pays a load of strangers to come and tell them what they think about a product or service. From these focus groups companies can structure their next marketing and advertising campaigns based on user feedback and hearing what “real” people require and desire.
The direct mail focus groups came back with some interesting, but fairly common sense, information.
These are the main factors that recipients cited as being why they would discard marketing material without evening opening a letter:
The company appeared to have little credibility
The company appeared too small to be able to cope with the recipients demands
Current market conditions meant the senders services where not suitable or of use
The “personality” of the mailing did not fit with the recipient
The level of motivation of the recipient was not high
Senders business was competing against a very congested market place
Mailing quality was poor
Mailing was over 3 pages
As I say, some of those are straightforward, e.g. I hope no-one sends a mailing over 3 pages long, a big sin in the world of marketing. The one that made me smile the most was the “level of motivation of the recipient”! I mean, isn’t our job hard enough without having to cheer the recipient up before we even send the mail shot. Realistically, there is no way to control that, but hey, worth a try if you can.
The focus group also gave information as to the main drivers that would get you “in the game” as our American friends would say. These are:
You having the best product in the market place
Your brand is one they trust
The recipients get the feeling from your brand that they could see a lengthy relationship
You offer the best service levels
The recipient understands exactly what your business does
What also came across was that if you got the above few bullets in one single mailing they may even get in touch with you without being contacted first. Hoorah, simple then? No! How do you get the above bullet points across in a mailing?
I would suggest that you should identify what your key selling points are and then try to translate these into the ethos of the points made above. This will then get you a foot in the door of the company.
Once you have identified the key messages you need to consistently get them across so that every time the recipient sees them they are thinking the same positive thoughts about your brand.
One area that fell out of the focus group but was not only related to direct mail related to customer service. I think it is worth sharing with you as it is quite startling.
The business owners were asked how long it would take them to re-use a company where they had experience sub-standard customer service. The reply was “never”. The only way a company would be used again was if there was no other service provider about, or following on from reading positive mentions in the media.
The business owners would not respond to any direct mail that made claims about service improving, as they perceive that it could not be trusted. So how’s that for an incentive not to mess up! If you do, you will never see that client again… until you use public relations services to get over how much better things are. Did I mention that 10 Yetis do public relations!
Going back to the direct mail focus groups. The recipients commented that “direct mail hardly ever works”. Again a scary statistic, but they did accept that it does help get across the points mentioned in the last set of bullet points, above.
So to sum up, what works for direct mail?
You need to apply your brand consistently.
You need to regularly send direct mail, but not too many
Making sure it is not too big to read
Make it striking to look at
Make sure the mailing gets over your outstanding product proposition
Of course, we at 10 Yetis can help you with your direct mail campaigns, so why not get in touch for a free no-obligation chat to find out more?