You may have all the right info, but how you deliver or organize it on your postcard will determine your response and if your reader understands the product you´re offering. Take a look and let me know what you think.
-Joy
I just got one of those e-vites… you know what I’m talking about?
It’s an e-invitation that you RSVP to online from websites like Evite or Pingg. As you respond, “Yes,” “No” or Maybe,” you can see who else is coming and not coming to the party in real time. It’s a great tool.
But the party I was just invited to is what I want to tell you about. It’s a brilliant marketing idea. The party is a “girls’ night out” at a great local restaurant, Flamestone. You bring your old gold and get top price for it in cash AND there is another jeweler there SELLING pieces. Perfect setting for both — and it’s fun for the ladies.
I really wanted to share this with you so you can perhaps come up with a great innovative marketing idea of your own that is fairly low cost to produce and allows you to co-op with another business.
It will definitely work in more industries than just retail or restaurants! For example, an auto shop may be able to co-op with a gas station to offer 5 gallons of free gasoline with any service. How do you e–vite people? You need a list and that’s where postcards work great — they really help you build your email list with sweepstakes, premium giveaways and white papers. Those addresses are very valuable because you can promote with email virtually at no cost.
It’s simple…produce a postcard with the offer, mail the card to surrounding areas with a specific criteria and send recipients to a landing page to retrieve their coupon and in exchange, you get their contact info. The point here is you can promote to them over and over again and we all know repetition is key.
This coupon allows them to get the free gas from the gas station and also gives you their contact info. You could even give them 50% off an oil change and a 10-point check-up (or whatever you want to give them) to ensure they come visit your location.
How about another example? A nail salon pairs up with a day spa or medispa for their co-op marketing efforts. An MD (medical doctor) that delivers Botox® comes to the salon for a Botox® party or the cosmetologist spends the day at the nail salon and answers beauty questions and awards a discount to clients that come in that day for their first service. I can’t tell you how many women would love to ask questions. Believe me; the conversation would start amongst the entire salon while the ladies are sitting getting their nails done. Very inexpensive and a day well spent.
Innovative marketing events are a great way to bring in new leads, but remember: always stick to your marketing staples. Whether it is postcard marketing, email campaigns, radio — whatever pulls in the best return on investment for your company.
Check out this article, How a B2B Company Went From Zero Brand Awareness to 190 Leads With Its First-Ever Direct-Mail Effort with an amazing case study of how direct mail brought in over $100,000 for their business.
Need fresh marketing ideas paired with proven, effective direct mail marketing? Email me at joy.gendusa@postcardmania.com.
Best,
Joy
By Pete Savage
Truition, Inc. is a provider of hosted on-demand e-commerce solutions. Its technologies power online stores for retailers and brand manufacturers such as Sirius Satellite Radio, Philips, Major League Baseball, Dell Financial Services, and ShopNBC.
Despite having some well-known clients, Truition was not well known as a major e-commerce player. The challenge for Mike Hennessy, Truition’s VP of marketing, was to find a way to get Truition onto prospects’ radar screens, quickly establish trust, and generate quality leads for the sales force in a fiercely competitive industry.
Using a classic direct-mail package and a brilliantly simple strategy for getting through the mailroom and onto their prospects’ desks, Truition earned a quick campaign return on investment (ROI) of 200% and flooded its small sales force with leads. All that was achieved with its first-ever direct-mail initiative.
Challenge
With Q4 on the horizon, looking at his company’s revenue targets for the year ahead, Hennessy faced the perennial dilemma common to many B2B marketers: how to fill the sales funnel with quality leads now to get an early jump on sales-cycle activity in January.
The challenge was to execute a compelling campaign that put his small e-commerce company on the map but also established the company as a knowledgeable, expert e-commerce partner.
“We needed a compelling way to get our name in front of busy marketing executives at brand manufacturing companies which, for the most part, had never heard of us,” says Hennessy. “This audience is marketed to constantly, which makes breaking through the clutter difficult at the best of times.”
That problem was exacerbated by the fact that Hennessy needed the campaign to launch in late October, when executives in Truition’s target market are distracted by frantic pre-Christmas sales activity.
Knowing that most of the marketing noise directed at his target audience took the form of email and online campaigns, Hennessy made a lead-generation play that many technology companies dismiss as passé: direct mail.
“Despite all the regular predictions we see about direct mail’s certain demise, I kept seeing examples of effective B2B direct-mail campaigns, so I had confidence that the medium still worked very well,” Hennessy says.
Campaign
Not losing sight of the fact that an unknown company needs to first earn the trust of its target prospects, Truition’s direct-mail campaign made no direct sales pitch but instead offered prospects the opportunity to download a report, titled 2008 eCommerce Guide for Brand Manufacturers.
The 30-page guide was created specially for the direct-mail campaign. Filled with e-commerce best-practices for the year ahead and authored by an industry expert, the report was highly relevant to the target audience.
Simplicity is what carried this direct-mail package through corporate mailrooms, past gatekeepers, and onto the desks of the targeted marketing directors and executives. The package consisted of a plain-looking, white 6 x 9 outer envelope, a two-page sales letter, and a small booklet insert.
The outer envelope featured no logos, branding, or color. It had just a simple headline that read “Inside: Your 2008 eCommerce Guide Brief for Brand Manufacturers,” along with the instructions “DO NOT BEND” in bold block letters.
The minimalist design and language was intentionally chosen to give mail handlers and gatekeepers the perception that the recipient actually ordered the material inside.
The booklet insert made the package heavier, adding to the perception that the envelope contained something of value and should be delivered to the addressee. The booklet inside was an eight-page “Brief” version of the 30-page Guide.
The sales letter acknowledged the reader’s business needs but was written in an engaging human tone. It highlighted the pressures the prospect faced by being at the helm of a company’s e-commerce presence and the need for expert information to guide critical e-commerce decisions. Within the sales-letter copy, the 2008 eCommerce Guide for Brand Manufacturers was presented as the source for such expert guidance.
The letter described the content of the guide in specific detail and drove readers to a landing page where they could download the complete guide instantly, for free, in exchange for contact information.
The mailing was sent to approximately 10,000 names using primarily rented lists and a small number of names from Truition’s house list. Since this was Truition’s first major direct-mail effort, the rented lists were 100% unproven.
Results
In B2B direct mail, a response rate of 1% is typically viewed as a success. The Truition mailing achieved virtually double that rate —1.98%—pulling in 190 new leads for Truition’s small sales team.
“We did not expect 190 leads from our first direct mail effort, especially with so many factors stacked against us,” says Hennessy. “We were thrilled with the results.”
For a B2B company to achieve nearly 2% response with its first-ever direct-mail effort—using an unproven list—is extraordinary.
Shortly after the mailing, Truition secured new business in excess of $150,000, for an almost immediate ROI of more than 200%. (Total campaign costs were less than $45,000.)
Moreover, ROI stood to grow exponentially as Truition’s small sales force began nurturing the leads that flooded in from the campaign. (The exact ROI to date is not known, as Mike Hennessy left Truition not long after the campaign and is now VP of marketing at IntelliResponse, Inc.)
Lessons Learned
Establish trust by giving first and selling second
“Resist the urge to trumpet the benefits of your products and services in your lead-generation campaigns,” says Hennessy. “Especially if you have no established trust with a prospect, bring something to the table first and earn trust. Only then can the sales conversation begin.”
Remember you’re selling to humans
Truition’s sales letter spoke to prospects in a human tone and hit on the emotional factors that come into play when making critical business decisions. Hennessy says that was a key contributor to the campaign’s success.
“Many B2B companies shy away from using human language in favor of stiffer corporate-speak. But if you want your reader to take action, you must inspire that action with human language. Find a copywriter who can write in an engaging, human voice and don’t stifle him or her by insisting that your sales-letter copy be ‘more corporate.’”
Don’t dismiss traditional marketing tactics
Although B2B marketers are enamored with the shine of online campaigns and social media, sales cycles in B2B are actually growing longer.
“Considering it takes multiple touches to win over a new customer, variety in your marketing is important as a way to keep showing up,” Hennessy says. For Truition, that meant adding the proven tactic of a classic direct-mail package to its regular online-marketing efforts. *Mike Hennessy is now VP of marketing at IntelliResponse Inc.
Pete Savage is a marketing consultant and copywriter. His new book, The Wealthy Freelancer shows new and aspiring solo professionals, freelancers and consultants how to build a thriving “business of one” – free from the burden of employment forever! Download 3 FREE chapters at www.TheWealthyFreelancer.com
Company: Truition, Inc.
Contact: Mike Hennessy, VP of Marketing*
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Industry: E-commerce
Annual revenue: Confidential
Number of employees: Fewer than 30
2 minutes of simple wisdom from Joy Gendusa regarding the amount that’s needed and her personal secret about marketing her business.
You may have all the right info, but how you deliver or organize it on your postcard will determine your response and if your reader understands the product you’re offering. Take a look and let me know what you think!
 |
 |
|||||
This is a tough one. I have said it so many ways, so many times, I sometimes feel like I’m pissing people off! The most beautiful thing about direct mail for obtaining new leads is that you can target precisely and then track the efficacy. BUT — if you don’t put the proper tracking steps in place, you won’t know what happened. You won’t really know if it worked or not. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard that a direct mail campaign “didn’t work.” Of course, we always ask customers how they track results. I wish I had a list here of actual conversations we’ve had so it’s not just a mass of generalities coming from me. But I swear to you — it’s very unscientific and sporadic. YOU, as a marketer, are frustrated because you don’t take the time to put the result tracking steps in place. We, of course, when we hear this, call the customer and blind shop their business to see if anyone asks us “How did you hear about us?” — that only happens about 5% of the time. I’m not kidding. The point of this newsletter is not to beat you up and make you totally wrong because you’re not tracking. I just want you to do it. So here are some things you can do RIGHT now
One more thing, if you just cannot track – watch your gross income. We find for us that there is a 4–6 week lag between a mailing and the income it produces. How do you track your marketing? Let me know at joy.gendusa@postcardmania.com. Best, |
||||||
Neal Mendelsohn, CEO of Fourth Wall Marketing, shows you how relationships outlast transactions and where the answer to recession marketing lies. Tell me what you think!
The guy in the beginning talks for about 30 seconds and then the real video starts.
Maybe you have thought about direct mail. Maybe you have wondered whether or not it could work for you. Maybe you have done it, but it never really paid off. Possibly you thought there was so much to learn that you didn’t know where to start. Whatever your particular ’story’ is you are reading this. And yes, there are… continue reading
I met Debra Cope at a conference I spoke at this past November. She is an expert in a very important aspect of marketing — crafting your message. I love the way she teaches and I wanted to share her with you. Discover her 7 strategic steps to communicate a client-focused, action-oriented message in her FREE webinar. Find out more details and available dates at www.YourKeyMessage.net/mania.
Get Your FREE Marketing Reports
Get a FREE PDF of the Book that Makes Direct Mail Easy
