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Written by David James – Bethesda List Center, Inc.

Direct mail is among the most overlooked but one of the most efficient and affordable ways to increase dramatically the leads to your business. Most advertising methods are not working and are not available for monitoring but the worst is that they are totally a waste of your hard earned money. Direct marketing and direct mail are opposed to them. The use of direct mail is cheap and the outcomes are incredibly measurable.

Regardless of your business, you should keep in mind that lead generation is important. Direct mail is also an efficient way of having a predictable number of leads that will enter your pipeline every week or month for a very affordable price.

Direct marketing is not as ordinary and easy as writing a letter, inserting an address and a stamp or popping it within the mail. There are certain major golden rules that you should keep in mind when making your business to business direct mail work efficiently. It does not mean that you need to spend more of your cash so that you will be able to achieve success in the end. Actually, you will find just find yourself spending less or at least you would spend more strategically.

Tips to Attain Success with Direct Mail

• Know Your Target Audience Well – the better you know your target customers, the more efficient your direct mail campaign would be. Is there a particular form of person who buys products or avails your services? Most of the time, it is best to send out many thousands to 100’s of thousand pieces to your niche market like business executives in a certain industry, with other selections. Many business lists and professional or association lists offer many selections besides geography. Some selections often available include Job Title/Job Function, Business/Industry Code or SIC or NAICS Code, Employee Size, Sales Volume. Other, more specialized selections, such as mainframe computer, CRM brand or other technical selections may be available. Of course, these selections cost more than the usual selections as the list owner has spent time and money building this information.

• The best way to get started: You may create a prospect list drawn from profiles of your current customers. Creating a customer profile based on your data is often an eye-opening experience. Sometimes the word-of-mouth in an organization is just not as inclusive as it should be. Getting a third party profile often unlocks hidden prospects.

• The easiest, most reliable way to get a customer profile is to work with an experienced mailing list broker. Brokers are specialists in their niches: some do consumer offers, political, fund raising and business to business. Bethesda List Center is a business-to business list manager and broker. Working with a list expert means much of the “back office” of list profiling, list research, list price negotiations, list procurement, billing and handling the many details are handled for you. A list expert makes you look good.

• Direct Marketing is a game of numbers – -the first is 5,000 – that is generally the minimum order to send out to get a mathematically measureable result. Despite claims to the contrary, every mailer is not immune to this principle – you must be sending out at least 5,000 postcards or letters to find out if the offer works. Sometimes in business to business offers, the entire universe is not 5,000 people. In that case, your only option is to mail just about all of them.

• Once a prospect takes an action such as “Download a White Paper,” attend a webinar, ask for a quote or RFP, then you have to have a Follow up Sequence.   This sequence, often generally standardized within larger categories, often called silos, permits you to build a level of consumer trust with additional information, not just sales efforts. It is not uncommon to have 5-10 different follow-up campaigns in many companies depending on the product family. The timing of your follow-up mailings is something to discuss with your list expert.

• Of course, no prospect is ever just dropped without a very good reason – no longer in their job, or company does not exist. A cycle for follow-up on “dead leads” is important as well. Again, discuss the timing with your marketing team and list expert.

• Repeat and repeat. Why do you hear the same commercials over and over? Because it works. Think about it – on the radio and television, soup and fast food ads start at 6am to set the stage for the day. The same is true in any product – especially business products and services. Your mailings need to continue, each with a twist and maybe some new information. In many professional areas, the amount of information available is often limited (ever see an article on improvement in saws? You are reaching out to prospects who can be influenced to use your services. Instead of Your Mailings many campaigns continue to use the same offer over and over. It hits the trash bin quickly after awhile. When a company only sends a postcard or letter then stops, they have really just dropped the ball. To beat your competitors, you need to have sequential mailings. Each campaign should have at least 3-5 mailings and other interactions such as an Email or trade show booth.

• The key: When somebody calls, you must take his name off of your prospect list and start them on a sequence based on their interest. They are a potential customer until proven otherwise. To boost the efficiency of every letter, reference to previous letters you’ve sent instead of sending exact postcard or letter every time.

• Create a Set of Swipe Files – essentially, it means that when you view or receive any advertising materials that include mail which is eye catching or is simply efficient marketing, you may keep the collection of these for concepts on the succeeding mailer that you give out. If you have a hard time in coming up with what you should say, you may look at your swipe file then adapt your advertising depending on your preferred concepts and pieces you’ve collected at the end of the day.

• Track Your Leads, Including Costs and Closing Rated – through tracking and monitoring your leads and costs for every lead, you will be able to improve your response rate then boost your effectiveness. Some of the simplest ways of doing this involve using various names on letters, numerous telephone numbers, and asking the customers how they heard about your company. Split tests are also a good way to monitor your marketing to find out what works best. You may send out two or more even mote various mailings to your prospects containing different messages or designs to determine which ones obtain improved response rate. Split testing should be done regularly so as to hone your ax and have the most efficient marketing.

• Headlines are All in Direct Mail Marketing – As consumers in business, and at home, we are swamped with ads on TV, internet, and the radio too. Direct mail lets you make your headline compelling and stand out. Also, you can be relevant with your target customers. Most people don’t pay attention to each advertisement. Hence, you need to shake them with information, humor, or any other attention grabbing heading. The headline is the most crucial part of a sales letter. You must grab the attention of your target prospects with your headline. Getting them to agree to spend a few seconds to a few minutes reading your direct mail has to be won..

• Form an Automated System for Your Direct Mail Campaigns – there are different direct mail fulfillment lettershops and, sometimes, even printers who can effectively print and handle the Postal details of your direct mail. Again, your list expert has worked with many and is often an excellent resource. Some lettershops specialize in big or medium sized mailings. Going with a company who is comfortable sending a promotion of your size is key. You do not want to be lost, or overwhelm a lettershop. The results can be disastrous.

• Since you are in an on-going process of contact with your prospect – with multiple offers and information – you will need to establish a good series of sequences. An automated system is really the only way to go. Mistakes can be minimized with a good, reliable system established. Plus, you know your statistics of direct mail -how many postcards or letters you sent out, the number of responses that you’re getting and also the number of leads it takes in converting a prospect into a new customer.

• To Increase Your Response Rates with Direct Mail, Make Sure Your Mails Are as Personalized as Possible. This means you put the prospects name and possibly more information, if available, into the promotion.

• It is key to long-term success to Test to see if you can improve your direct mail package or Email campaign. This often is called an A/B Test, which permits you to test two items such as headline, offer, or, perhaps a PS. Other types of tests are A/B/C, etc. if three items are being tested.

• The envelope is a key for a direct mail letter. Getting someone to open your mail involves a good bit of “teaser copy” printed on the envelope. To make sure that your mail will land on the “A” pile, you should make your mail highly personalized and distinguished. Curiosity, or attention drawing information, can start getting your promotion read.

Some of the marketers make use of what they call “chunky” mail wherein they are putting a tiny object within the mail like a candy that could significantly boost your response rates. Anything you could do in personalizing or, increasing the exceptionality of your mailings would have a definite effect on your ROI or return on investment.

There are more and more top quality products and services providers that fail to reach their objectives because they lack the best direct marketing plan. The tools of direct mail, properly implemented, can work for just about everyone. Correct direct mail and direct marketing achieves success. Be sure to follow what you have learned here.

About Bethesda List Center:

Bethesda List Center, Inc specializes in direct mail, business-to-business direct mail, association mail list, physician or doctor mail list. Company experts are available to work with associations, publishers, medical marketing organizations, business services organizations and manufacturers in the US, Canada and worldwide.

Established in 1992, Bethesda List is based in the Washington, DC suburb of Bethesda, Maryland.