10 Yetis Guide to Making Sure That Your Mailing Aint Failing - Direct Mail Campaigns

Marketing companies that do cover the entire marketing mix are known as “full service”. 10 Yetis is a full service public relations company in that we can provide a tailored solution to your every marketing need, and even go that little bit further in that we have the capabilities to offer in-house creative services as well.

Since we brought our unique services to the small to medium size enterprise market one of the most common marketing areas we have been asked to help with is direct mail. Direct mail is an age-old part of any good marketeers toolbox and works really well when followed up with telephone calls.

The thing with direct mail is that the response rates differ. Historically, industry standards say that for a cold mailing (where the customer has never heard of you) the average response rate to a mailing is 1-3%. This means that for every 100 mailings you send out, you can only expect a maximum response of around 3 replies. And remember this is response only and not even sales. Yep, I shudder as well!

I use the word “historically” as recent statistics by a leading direct mail monitoring company has said that, using the financial services industry as the example, if your mailing is totally “cold” and not in the recipients mind-set as seeing your company as a “preferred supplier” your mailshot will end up in the bin without even being scanned.

What all this jargon means is that if the person you send it to sees your logo and does not immediately recognise it as a brand that they trust then your mailing will be trashed. Nice thought hey, especially when you have put so much time, money and effort into it.

The following chart sums up the new current average industry stats:

From a preferred supplier

%
Action
100
Recipient has exposure to it
70-100
Sees it and glances through
48-80
Read in depth
20-50
Retained for future action

From a preferred supplier

%
Action
60-100
Binned
20-100
Recipient has exposure to it
0-20
Read in depth
0
Retained for future action

So it all comes down to getting your brand or product into the intended recipients sub-conscious with a message that it will bring benefit to them. Wow, that is all a bit Paul Mckenna isn’t it?

One way to do this, and we are trying this for 10 Yetis as I type, is to strategically bombard the target audience with positive marketing material over a period of time, but with no immediate call to action message.

What the flying plopper is a "call to action" I hear you shout? A "call to action", explained simply, is the way in which you get the reader of any piece of marketing literature, be it an advert or a mailshot, to get in touch with the sender, i.e you. This could be in the way of an offer or discount if they get in touch with you by a certain date, or the promise of a free gift once they use one of your services.

The thinking behind this is that if your mail is different enough to stand out and place a positive seed in the viewers mind then that seed will begin to grow over time. How many times have you made a sale to a person who you met with months ago and who you got on well with?
The reason you made that sale further down the line is that the person associated you in their sub conscious with a certain business area and when a problem arose in that same area, it was you who came to mind to solve the problem.

This is what you need to be doing with your mailing, planting that seed in whatever way possible so that when the recipient is faced with a problem that your business could solve, they come to you, rather than just doing one mail shot, following it up and then wondering why no sale was made.

There is, of course, no harm in every now and again sending a mailshot to a person with a call to action on, but I would suggest that you should go down the route of trying to plant that positive message first.

In next months newsletter I am going to talk about the key factors and messages you should use in order to get on the readers sub-conscious list as a preferred supplier… I bet you can’t wait can you.

As ever, if you have an idea for a newsletter, or if you would like to chat about direct mail campaigns, then why not get in touch?