Tag Archives: direct mail

Direct Mail How and When to Mail to Prospects

It is the prime aim of every business to sell their products and services to generate the absolute maximum revenue possible. Direct mail has stood the test of time and here is how.

Your marketing methods and strategies play a crucial role in the success of your online, as well as, your offline business.

If your offers are not marketed correctly, no one will ever be able to learn about your products and services no matter how effective and beneficial they are. You can use a number ways to market your business, however, advertising methods like flyers, direct mail, posters, banners, exhibitions and product shows are tried and true ways to attract new business.

Direct mail marketing is a promotional technique that helps you in advertising your business by mailing your specifications directly to the customer. With the help of direct mail marketing, you capture those potential customers that are actually interested to purchase your products and services.

You can access a consumer mailing list to mail directly to a targeted demographic that will likely have the highest response rate. You can also use a number of tools to find out the mailing prospects like you can use social media, business listings, yellow pages, telephone directories to find more even more addresses.

We’ve found that the best time to distribute flyers and send direct mail is when you have clear, definitive business goals in your mind. If you do not know what your actual goal is from the mailing or distribution, you can’t help but fail.

The biggest benefit of flyers and direct mail is its effectiveness in generating new customers. At the same time, it can also help you to expand your market to serve wider, more diverse demographic. It is also effective to drive repeat business from existing clients and customers.

However you use your flyers and direct mail, keep in mind the most important element is creating goals and tracking the results. Without measuring the success of your direct mailing or flyer distribution, you will never actually know what is working, and what is just costing your business money.

According to a 2018 survey direct mail drives higher return on investment (ROI) than any other marketing channel. Discover just how by clicking HERE.

The survey, which polled more than one hundred small business advertisers on a variety of sales and marketing-related topics, also found that most respondents spent an average of £5,000 to £22,000 on ads each year.

Additionally, 34.71% of respondents listed direct mail as their top marketing channel by spend, followed by social media (18.18%) and search engine marketing (14.88%).

So to book your next leafleting campaign in and around Cheltenham get in touch with Hallway Distribution today, before your competition beats you too it.

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Direct Mail Doesn’t Work?

When people say that direct mail, flyers and leaflets dont work it makes me laugh out loud, and also they make pronouncements about particular marketing strategies, for example;

Direct Mail doesn’t work!
Google AdWords is expensive!
Yellow Pages are history!
No one reads Emails!
Junk mail is dead!

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Whenever I hear statements like those above, a cheeky little voice inside me says “yeah who says?”. That is quickly replaced with a more professional thought and response (the result of years of training and hard won experience) “is that an opinion or based on market tests?”. Asking that question often leads to marketing breakthroughs, as all too often it turns out that the person making the statement is reflecting their own PERSONAL like or dislike of that type of marketing.

The simple fact is, your views and mine are just opinions. They do not reflect market sentiment. They are not a guide to marketing success or failure. It is fine to have personal views, I have them too, but it is deadly to bring them into the office and impose them on your marketing strategy.

To find out what your market thinks about how they prefer to source suppliers of your products and services, you had better be open to testing, otherwise you will limit your marketing, and your business.

Here’s a good case in point.
Plenty of people think that flyers and leaflets are dead. But that didn’t stop Lana and Stewart Brown of Vibralife from being prepared to run a small test when it was recommended by her Business Builder Program advisor. Vibralife are a new type of fitness clinic offering vibration training technology with luxurious and high-class members facilities.

The key to their success is generating good quality, low cost leads and getting prospects through the door (they are really good at converting).
As part of the overall development of a marketing system for their business they worked closely with us to create and test a flyer to be distributed to 5,000 local households.
The total cost of the A5 flyer including design, print and delivery was £307.

The Result?
Within the first month, the first 5,000 flyers generated 18 new enquiries. So far, they have converted 10 new clients, worth £3,631. That’s a 10x return on investment, and they are still getting enquiries and conversions.

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By extrapolating these numbers, they have worked out that if the flyers were sent every month for 6 months to the original 5,000 households, plus an additional 10,000 households in the area, this flyer strategy could earn Vibralife a return of over £65,000 for an outlay or around £5,000! But the best bit is what this successful test could now mean for the future success and growth of Vibralife.

As you can imagine, they are now busy rolling this out. Needless to say direct mail is not the only strategy that Lana is implementing. They are busy creating a marketing machine for their business of which leaflets and flyers will be an important part.

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We all Like to Receive a Letter

 imagesAlthough door drop campaigns are often described as leaflet distribution campaigns, in reality more items than just leaflets are delivered by door to door distribution companies. These other items include product samples, company brochures and, in some cases letters, we all like to receive a letter don’t we?

Although leaflets are the bulk of the items delivered through the letterboxes by distribution companies and have proved to be highly effective in attracting customers, there are always some people who will prove resistant to leaflets, no matter how well designed and printed they are, resistance may be stronger if the leaflet is advertising an expensive product or service. There are people who often need more convincing when they are asked to consider buying a high priced item.

No matter how persuasive a colour leaflet is, they need more substantial information than a leaflet can convey. They need a well written and persuasive sales letter that arrives through their letterbox in a sealed envelope.

Now letters arriving through the letterbox from companies selling their goods and services is not a new thing. Direct mail companies have been sending letters to prospective customers for years. These letters are addressed to named individuals and have personalised salutations.

But the direct mail industry spends thousands of pounds building or buying mailing lists of people who have been identified as possible clients, and they are mailed to households nationwide. Now while buying mailing lists and sending personalised letters may not be a viable proposition for companies operating in a local area and on a limited marketing budget; sending a well written sales letter to all of their possible customers can be a viable and profitable proposition.

A company that operates in a relatively local area selling high-priced items, such as patios, driveways, or even swimming pools, could benefit by using a well written sales letter delivered through people’s letter boxes in a sealed envelope simply addressed to “The occupier”.

No matter how resistant people think they are to advertising, and leaflets, in particular, no one will discard a sealed envelope before opening it. And if the first thing they see is an attractive professional letter heading, with an eye-catching headline followed by an unbeatable offer and a list of benefits the product has to offer, nothing will stop the prospect from reading until they reach an irresistible call to action.

The main purpose of the or call to action is to collect the names of people who wish to become customers. But it also has a secondary but equally important function, and that is the collection and filing the names of people who did not buy after showing some initial interest. These people could be contacted again once a reasonable time has passed, and politely asked why they did not take up the initial offer. Once they have revealed their objections, it could be possible for the seller to overcome these objections and make a sale.

The direct mail industry uses this method all of the time to scoop up those extra sales that may have gone forever. There is no reason why it will not work for those businesses that use door to door distribution companies. A sales letter enclosed in an envelope and addressed “Important Message to The occupier” could break down the resistance of those people who may ignore sales leaflets. So why not copy what the direct mail companies do and pick up some extra sales.

Remember no one can resist opening a sealed envelope.

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