Guide to writing successful Direct Mail

Transcription

1 Guide to writing successful Direct Mail Step One Who are you writing to? Get an image in your head of the sort of customer you d like to attract. Are they young or old, male or female, rich or poor. What are their interests, preferences, likes and dislikes. What sort of house do they live in? When you have this image clearly in your mind it helps you with the following: Deciding on the criteria for the database you require. Choosing the sort of language to use Concocting an offer that will appeal to them By now you have probably looked at some of the Crowndell website. As you can see we ve already gone through the above processes. Would you like to know what we think you re like? To emphasise the points above we ll tell you. Obviously you are responsible for marketing your business, well educated, quite driven in business terms, busy - the demands on your time seem to grow steadily every year. You re interested in new ways of attracting business. You re probably slightly resistant to new ideas initially but are happy to think ideas over and then run with them. You want information but in a format that you can look at when you choose without being pestered to do it. You re not particularly impressed by jargon, you d rather people got straight to the point. You have a budget to promote your business and you don t like to spend more than you have to. Hopefully we re right with these assumptions about you. If not we won t get much business from this website and we ll then work out why and try again. Based on these assumptions we ve written this website in a friendly, informative tone. We haven t included dozens of acronyms or swathes of mailing jargon (although there would have been plenty to choose from). We haven t bored you with details of all our machines and what they do. We haven t banged on about our company size or history because you re probably not interested in that. We ve focussed on what we can do for you and how we can save you money.

2 Step Two What do you want them to do? This sounds obvious but surprisingly this is one crucial area that sometimes gets neglected. If you re promoting an open day where and when is it adding a map will help. If you re promoting a new menu what s on it, what s special about it. If you want people to order a product how would you like them to do it? Fill in a form and post back, order off the web, come to your shop, visit a dealer. If you want people to donate to a charity have you made make it as easy and secure as possible. There are so many ways you can use direct mail. Here s 30 of them: 1. Repeat Business Invite customers to a sale preview A privileged customer offer 2. Catalogues highlight related items, shift slow movers, target specific catalogues to particular types of customer 3. Order taking design material with built in order form, fax back facility 4. Targeting remote areas where Reps don t go 5. Target lower value customers / difficult areas 6. Selling a group of products in sequence Computer software upgrades 7. Asking for testimonials 8. Ask for leads from current clients with incentives 9. Testing new products / services / ideas on your existing customers 10. For sending out questionnaires 11. Send out leaflets with your invoices 12. For direct sale cut out wholesaler and retailer margins 13. To avoid keeping items in stock and showrooms 14. To maintain regular contact with customers 15. To start a club for customers build loyalty 16. Rent / buy or compile lists of prospective customers and write to them 17. Target a particular group of people People who ski, Cat owners 18. To keep you busy in the quiet times eg Summer Offers 19. To describe your product or service in more detail 20. To send a sample of your product 21. To sell Add ons Extra items to go with the first item. 22. Test your new prices 23. To launch a new product 24. Send a gift Christmas Cards / pens / diaries 25. To tell your clients that you ve moved 26. Invite delegates to a seminar 27. Test your promotion before rolling out the whole campaign 28. To make use of your spare capacity 29. To remind people of your presence 30. To ask for donations

3 Step Three How are you going to persuade them to do it? This is where you pitch in with the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for your organisation. Tap Unique Selling Proposition into any search engine and you will find many great examples of what this is. In short you know your business better than anyone. Use this knowledge to think about the following: 1. Unique What sets you apart from your competition, making your company / organisation the most sensible choice. 2. Selling What will persuade your customer to exchange money for your product or service. 3. Proposition What proposal or offer are you going to use to encourage your customer to accept. To help work out what your USP is it s useful to consider what the features and benefits of your organisation are. This again is a notion fairly well covered on the web. Here are a couple of ours to help explain. Feature We have fast mailing machines We can obtain postal discounts Benefit You can get your letter posted quickly You will spend less on stamps Note the use of We and You. If, when you re writing your promotional material, you see We or I a lot you re doing something wrong.

4 Step Four What do you need to give them to make this happen? A few things to consider here are the Nine Vital Human Needs. These are: Make Money Save Money Save time or effort Help your family Be Secure Impress Others Gain Pleasure Self-improvement The need to be belong. And that s it. Simple being human isn t it. So when writing direct mail, incorporate knowledge of these needs into your mailshot. Particularly important in this context is Save time & effort. If you re lasering a letter and sending a form why not laser the form with the details from the database so all your customer has to do is tick a box and post it back to you. No one wants to sit and write out the same things time after time. Same with the envelope. Put in a return envelope (preferably Freepost) If you want to send a fax response form print the details ready to come back to you. Make it as easy as possible for your customer to respond in a way that suits you best.

5 Step Five Is it clear? Have you tested it? Will it Work? Before you print and mail your final item/s circulate it round your staff, friends, and family to see what they think. Explain to them what it is you re trying to achieve and ask opinions. If you can t explain it quickly and easily chances are it s too complicated and needs to be re-written anyway. It s vastly cheaper to re-write before printing than after. We have occasionally been asked how much it will be put affix a sticker over a particular section of text in a publication. The answer sadly is very expensive! Having produced and mailed your item ensure you monitor the response against the cost. If the campaign is successful it is then easy to roll out your campaign to a wider audience and broadly speaking expect similar results. If your campaign was unsuccessful it s back to the drawing board to work out what could be improved. There is an old adage that say s Half of my marketing budget is wasted.. trouble is I don t know which half One of the joys of direct mail is that this short-sighted and costly view does not need to apply to your business. You have the ability to control your own destiny with a flexible, accountable, predictable medium that will deliver results.