Successful Marketing Strategies- How To Turn 37 cents Into A Customer

by Dan Kennedy

Dedicated To Multiplying Your Income
www.dankennedy.com

I am not a great fan of the United States Postal Service. Overall
there's no doubt in my mind that it is a poorly managed,
inefficient, financially troubled operation sadly in need of reform.
But in spite of all its faults that system gives you a powerful and
effective sales force at a bargain price.

Using the postman as your salesman via direct mail advertising
is a great bargain and one of the most effective marketing
strategies available to most businesses. Direct mail gives the
marketer tremendous control over the sales process. You can
do direct mail marketing cost effectively in relatively small
quantities. You control who gets your advertising and who does
not. You can control to a great degree when they get it. You can
test and evaluate a promotion very inexpensively before
committing a big budget.

There really is no other media that gives you all of these
advantages for the delivery price of a postage stamp. There
have been many studies done to determine the average cost
of sending a rep out to make a personal sales call, getting an
ordinary business letter done and out of the office or making a telemarketing call.

My observation is that the bigger the company, the higher the
cost. But even in well run cost efficient situations these marketing
methods can easily cost from ten dollars to a hundred dollars or
more per prospect contacted. At that cost they are not the way
to prospect for new business.

Advertising in newspapers and magazines, radio, TV and cable
TV also has a cost factor problem, mammoth waste. When you
buy this type of advertising you're paying for distribution outside
your market area, copies that never reach readers and circulation
that has no possible interest in what you have to offer.

Most businesses can benefit tremendously from the more
controlled targeted process of direct mail advertising. In the
Success Marketing Strategies emails that follow, I want to give
you some insight into the three aspects of success in direct
marketing advertising and introduce you to the two most
common, most successful formats you can use in direct mail
advertising.
 

Part 2 Successful Marketing Strategies- How To Find Prospects Who
Are Interested In Your Products Or Services

The first of three stepping stones to a successful direct mail
campaign is acquisition or development of the right list. Since
the main virtue of direct marketing is targeting to specific
prospects it makes sense that the selection of those prospects
will have a great deal to do with the success of the whole process.

Most experts agree that list selection has a 30% to 50%
impact on the overall effectiveness of direct marketing. In
selecting a list you want to target people most likely to have
an existent interest in what you have to offer as well as some
things in common with your present good customers.

These commonalities might be found in age, sex, occupation,
income level, neighborhood or geographic area, credit card
ownership, family size, magazine subscribed to, or any number
of other demographics. These factors are called demographics
and the professional sources you might rent a mailing list from
can be incredibly sophisticated in finding or compiling a mailing
list of people who conform to your set of desired demographics.

In business-to-business marketing the same sophistication is
available. Lists of companies can be obtained by size, sales
volume, asset value, number of employees, type of business,
geographic area, magazines subscribed to, credit rating and
other factors. Lists of executives, owners, sales managers,
personnel managers, purchasing agents, stockholders, or
secretaries are also readily available.

List selection can be as simple or sophisticated as you need
or want to make it. The owner of an upper class restaurant
might want to obtain a mailing list of homeowners within a 50

mile radius of his restaurant who have at least one bank
credit card.

A private aircraft manufacturer might want the list of
corporate officers and business owners with net worth's in
access of a half million dollars all across the country.

As a rule the more demographic factors you can use in
controlling the list, the costlier the list. To a great degree
extra money spent in narrowing down the list to fit your
desired factors is money well spent.

To find mailing lists you can locate list brokers and sources
in your own area by looking in the yellow pages under such
categories as mailing lists, mailing services and advertising
consultants. There are also many national sources. For a
thorough education in the kind of services and lists available
go to the main public library in your area and review a copy
of a directory called SRDS, Standard Rate and Data Service.

Also a good trade magazine to look at is Direct Marketing.
We also have a preferred list supplier that we use frequently,
Best Mailing List in New York City. You can call them toll free
by dialing 1-800-NYC-BEST.

Small business people should also compile their own mailing
lists. For one thing you should maintain an up-to-date mailing
list of all your customers and clients. Direct mail to this list
can stimulate additional business, introduce new products
and services or promote sales or special offers.

Part 3

The offer you make in a direct mail package needs to be
carefully thought out and matched as closely as possible to the
interest, needs, and motivations of the list. And as a general rule
of thumb the more specifically matched the offer and list are the
higher the response rate.

Here are two simple examples to help you understand this idea.

Example one, John's Sporting Goods Store mails a brochure
about his upcoming sale on skiing and hiking equipment to
every resident in his store's neighborhood. His offer may be
great, 25% to 50% discounts, a free gift for everyone who
comes in, but his response will still probably be very low
because of a high waste factor in his mailing.

Let's say John mailed 10,000 brochures. As few as 15 to 25
people may come in. A response rate of only one half of one
percent or slightly worse, but that's deceptive because of the
waste factor. Of the 10,000 residents mailed only 1,000 of
them maybe interested in skiing or hiking. If that's true and
fifteen people come in that may represent one and a half
percent response rate, which is usually acceptable.

Example two, John's Sporting Goods Store mails the exact
same offer as in example one but he only mails a thousand
brochures to a list of people in his store's neighborhood who
are subscribers to Skiing, or Hiking, or Field and Stream
Magazine.

In example two John's list acquisition cost will be much higher
than example one. In example one the resident list may cost
only $35 to $40 per thousand names. $350 to $400 for the
10,000 names. In example two the list may cost a $150 or
even $200 for just the thousand names and in example two
the cost of printing the brochures will go up dramatically per
unit.

In example one the 10,000 brochures may cost only a nickel
each, $500 total. In example two, the thousand brochures may
cost twenty cents each, $200 total. However, in example two
John saves almost two thousand dollars in postage by calling
the waste factor out of his mailing. Overall he spends about
2,500 dollars less with the sophisticated approach in example
two and gets the same results as he would with the costlier,
less sophisticated example one.

Most small businesses and many big businesses waste
substantial sums of money by taking the less sophisticated,
easier approach. If the typical small business like John's
Sporting Good Stores conducts just four direct mail campaigns
a year and there's a $2,500 differential available each time
that's $10,000 a year that can be wasted or saved.

$10,000 is a lot of money to a small business. Part of the
magic of the sophisticated approach is the list to offer match.
But to be successful you must also develop a very good
attractive offer.

Part 4

A good offer can make all of the difference in the world
in the overall results of your direct marketing.

In order to craft these highly effective offers, here are the
ingredients that can be used in the thinking that should go into
them.

Number one, something new as in new products, new services,
new prices.

Number two, a sale or specially discounted prices.

Number three, a bonus or premium for purchasing or even
just for coming in.

Number four, a gift for responding.

Number five, a time limit on the offer to stimulate prompt
response.

And the best offer includes all five of these ingredients. In fact,
whenever I write a sales letter for a client, I will typically include
every one of them. Think of it this way. Why would you bother
to go to all of the trouble, time, and expense to send your
customers or prospects an offer and settle for a lousy result?