How to Choose a Direct Marketing Vendor for Your Business

Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 9:53 am  
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Direct marketing, also widely known as direct mail, is a marketing technique that uses database and mailing strategies in order to send marketing materials to a chosen demographic, or use the Internet to target a chosen demographic. This technique is often used by businesses to target a certain demographic, area, business industry, or market with a tailored message. Direct marketing helps businesses achieve many of their business goals by helping them reach a targeted audience. The marketing technique is effective in helping businesses create messages that address a particular sector of the population.

Selecting a vendor for direct marketing can be a challenge; there are many direct marketing companies all competing for the same business. If you need help choosing a vendor, click here. There are some considerations to keep in mind when selecting a direct marketing company:

Price -The price for direct marketing services varies a great deal depending on which company you choose. Remember that if you use direct mail marketing, you will always have to pay for postage, but you should be able to get a bulk postage rate through your direct mail company. Also, look for a company that has an in-house printing and design service to decrease rates that would otherwise be paid to ship a direct mail piece out for printing or design.

Database – All direct mail companies operate using a database. Make sure that the company you select has the most current version of the direct mail database based on current U.S. Census data. These databases are expensive to purchase, so double check that your direct mail company has made the investment.

Additional Features – Additional features might include design and mailing. Many direct mail companies will not only mail or publish your direct mail collateral, but they will also design, print, and consult with you in order to provide a full-service, turnkey operation. If you are looking for such an operation, then ask about the cost of these additional features.

Reputation-Check references, the Better Business Bureau and Google for information on  your potential vendor’s past performance.

Direct marketing strategies, such as emailing, mailing, calling, and targeting your target demographic online, will help you reach a targeted audience because your direct marketing vendor will have access to a comprehensive database of U.S. residents and businesses broken down by demographics and industry. Direct marketing can be a cost-effective strategy. By targeting an audience that may be interested in your product or services, you are increasing the chance that your marketing efforts will lead to a business conversion With direct marketing, your targeted audience will be sent a letter or a postcard that they can hang onto. It usually takes someone eight times to view a company logo or name in order to remember it. When they have a letter or postcard sitting around, they will tend to view it repeatedly, increasing the rate of memory retention for your company name and logo. If you want direct marketing vendors to compete for your business, click here. For additional information, you can visit our direct marketing wiki.

Direct Response Marketing and Search Engine Marketing (sem) Principles

Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at 6:08 pm  
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I produce Pay Per Click how-to training sessions geared to help online marketers increase their search marketing ROI. As Chairman for PPC Summits, I meet online marketers from around the world, and there is one common theme that seems to reoccur frequently: the myth that SEM is some kind of rocket science. What most marketers don’t understand is SEM falls under the category of Direct Response Marketing.

SEM is just another form of direct response marketing and many of the same principles apply. Successful marketing messaging resonates with the intended audience and the same controls apply to search marketing campaigns.

Here are some direct response marketing principles that should also apply to your SEM campaigns:

• It takes work. Successful marketers have to constantly test response rates: copy, keywords, placement, pricing, messages, landing pages…

• You have to test. In direct response marketing, testing rules is never-ending. Just like testing in direct mail, the cost of the campaign can be justified if the lift in the conversion rate is enough to offset the expense. If the lift in conversion offsets the cost of optimizing the pages, keep testing and roll out new ones.

• You have to track results. Just as savvy offline marketers can tell which piece of mail and from which specific message a customer converted, you have to be able to tell which keyword, message and referrer drove your sale. Tracking is easy to do on PPC, harder on search engine optimization, but critical on both.

• Creative is key. Google rewards those with high click-through rates on PPC by better placement, and the way to get high CTRs is to write great copy that resonates with your audience. Similar to an offline campaign, online creative (i.e., your search listings) should be tested frequently.

• It’s all about the benefit. Successful marketers sell on benefits, not features, and look for the messages that play on their customers’ emotional responses to their product or service. Over time, you will discover offers that work only online, but like offline marketing, it comes through the same test-and-learn discipline.

• The “Lead to Sale” conversion rate is important. Just as in the offline world the key to conversions from search is providing the right hook in your listing at the right phase of the buying cycle, and then converting that lead into a paying customer with the right offer on your landing page.

• Analysis is your friend. Like any good offline campaign, you learn a great deal from analyzing your testing and conversions. One set of keywords can perform significantly better than the rest; but because even changing a keyword from singular to plural can have dramatically different results, you have to test and analyze each variable separately.

• It’s all about CPA or CPL. All search engine marketing campaigns need to be analyzed by cost per acquisition (CPA) or cost per lead (CPL).

• Create customer loyalty. Search engines are looking more and more at how many websites link to yours.. You need customer evangelists driving more sales, and links can provide that.

Direct response marketing skills and experience are some of the key drivers in SEM campaigns. There are some nuances of SEM that you can only learn by experience, but if you go into it with the mindset that these rules apply you will demystify the whole experience.

PPC Summit Boston March 3-4, Vancouver March 31-April1, London April 14-15, San Francisco May 19-20, and Los Angeles Sept. 2008.


Direct Mail Blogs

�all State Bargain Homes� Says Goodbye to Unsuccessful Direct Marketing Campaigns by Gaining Free Marketing Tools

Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at 6:06 am  
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�All State Bargain Homes� says goodbye to unsuccessful direct marketing campaigns by gaining FREE marketing tools.

Quality design, clever tracking codes and an automated direct mailing system brought success to a small real estate firm.

After more than 5 years of merely maintaining clients; realtor, Elizabeth Vicchini, began accessing her old marketing strategies. For years she relied upon costly advertising campaigns at trade shows, local newspapers and community boards. Then, as she followed her daily routine, she walked to her mailbox and there it was, the marketing tool she had been searching for. Sitting amongst her telephone bill and magazine subscriptions was a postcard from a local furniture store and another from a national car insurance company. Near and far, companies were using direct mailing to generate new business, why couldn’t she?

Ms. Vicchini explored her options by attending a free seminar hosted by BargainPrinting.com. At the seminar she learned how to use the free online templates provided to her to create her own design. She was schooled in the different coloring techniques used to print as well as the importance of resolution.

By the time the seminar ended, she decided the most cost effective and efficient way for her to market her business was through direct mailings. At home that night, Ms. Vicchini designed her postcard, compiled her mailing list and placed her online printing order before retiring for the night. The next day she smiled as she again opened her mailbox knowing that in a few days, thousands of prospective homeowners would do the same and �All State Bargain Homes� would be waiting for them.

Reward them and get rewarded

For a period of two months after her mailing, Ms. Vicchini offered a free lunch gift certificate to a local restaurant for anyone she showed a home to that used the voucher code �Lunch� from her direct mailing. This rewarding method enabled Ms. Vicchini to track the success of her direct mailing. In all, her direct mailing of 1000 postcards garnered nearly 600 qualified leads for the cost of $399.00; ultimately each lead cost less than 67cents!

Measure your results

Design Side 1 (Free by BargainPrinting.com)

$0

Layout Side 2 (Free by BargainPrinting.com)

$0

Printing (1000 Full color double-sided Postcards)

$149

List Processing (Free by BargainPrinting.com)

$0

Mailing (600 cards- first class mail)

$250

$399

A commitment to marketing

Since her successful direct mailing campaign, Ms. Vicchini has purchased a mailing list from an online real estate lead generation site. Her next mailing will target 2500 prospects and the momentum of her success is gaining as she is including commercial real estate in her new endeavours.


Direct Mail Blogs