Then share the most important ideaswith the ones that make you money.
There are numerous tools of the trade you’ll find when using direct marketing and mail. If you have read a few of my posts on using both within a direct to customer strategy, there are an incredible amount of tactical tools to help you reach your end game.
Considering your customers can be challenging to determine what makes them buy, because one day this, another day that, but sending the same marketing message again latter, you get a different result. Who would of thunk it?
These are just a few ways the pandemic has uprooted our daily lives to earn a living. Unemployed people and empty company locations will leave your marketing message unread, unseen, or unheard.
Marketing, advertising, and selling professionals, must remain vigilant to stay connected. For instance, build a customer list of recent purchasers and even others who have not recently made a purchase. Do not be salesly with your conversation but show concern about your contact and their company. Offer to help by stretching out customer payments, free shipping or whatever benefit people love about your product and service. Saving money never goes out of style.
Small businesses restaurants or a fitness center, and many other companies, are under siege via mask mandates, times or days allowed to be open, losing quality employees or letting them go because of the lack of funds. I am sure you get that point. This is not a good situation.
So what do you want to do? Stay on the same path and hope for better results?
Now is the time to plan your attack but first, read on for other ideas. But while you study all channels of communication to reach your audience, write personalized messages n your blog like there is no tomorrow about on what is to come down.
There’s so many channel preferences people have at their disposal, but the most important ones are what communication channels your desired audience may use. Unless you are one of the few waiting to determine peoples desired channels of choice, I am sorry to inform you, it is up to you to make that happen.
In the past 25 years or so, I preached to many audiences everywhere to spend time to learn your customer’s habits, needs and wants, and to enter your results in a customer-contact management system. Or, if you sell a product or service, then into your busy book. When the information you collected is entered in a database, you first move is to develop customer segments. Start small and add on what else you learn. The knowledge you get from studying this data will make your marketing messages more relevant.
I created a lot of marketing and sales tools to help a business like yours learn how to analyze the data you collect. For example, how to segment your customers and prospects, start by building an easy form to help you see the big picture for achieving marketing and selling success.
Clients have more choices to buy than just your company. If your business is in everyone’s busy book, how do you stand out? So for instance, a direct marketing strategy is one of the more valuable tools in building an offer. An offer is vital for success. Still, many businesses assume their product is good enough to sell as is without an offer. Guess what? Wrong.
Why? In one quick answer, the offer causes a person to stop and give your message a second look, a second thought. Is that the way your mind is rolling?
Now, many of you reading this may consider an offer of lower prices. But, if you took the time to learn more about your customers, you may have found a certain percentage of customers and prospects have other values when making a purchase. At the heart of any direct marketing message will always be an offering, whether you’re selling a product, promoting a service, driving traffic to a Website, or taking people to a retail location.
What is an “offer”?
It is not to love and cherish a product for the rest of your life, but it can be. And no, it is not a discount, but it can be. It could be any number of other things as well.
On the simplest level, an offer is the “terms of the deal.” It is you saying, “Here’s what you can get. And here’s what you have to do or pay to get it.” It’s the combination of several elements that make up the “deal.”
Individuals who operate in the direct marketing and mail business understand the importance of creating a sense of urgency in a marketing offer. The value of having the sale happen now is that if it does not, it may not happen at all. Condition that the sale happens now, it increases the likelihood that another sale will happen later.
These are just a fewtried-and-true strategies to help your customers and prospects overcome the dreaded disease of delay!
Want to learn more about direct marketing? For a limited time only, I have placed our most requested white paper, “The Right Notes in Your Direct Marketing, Make Beautiful Music for Your Customer’s Ears and Your Accounting Department”, on our report sending website free for the asking.
This powerful report can change your opinion on your direct marketing strategy and realize, there is a better way to communicate with your audience – when you spend some time to get to know them! Your messages become more relevant and your customers feel more appreciated. And we both know what that means!
Thanks for reading.
Remember to get your free ideas on how to get into building segments in just a few steps.
Get FREE sample charts on how to start segmenting your contacts when you join our community
(From DMS 17.3, article 2. Download the complete publication at the end of this post)
Which one scores your highest ratings in marketing and advertising?
In the past, having a conversion rate when using direct mail, one percent was acceptable. What was the conversion rate number?
First, let us look at another example. A response rate is an important metric for analyzing a mailing or any other communication channel your customers may prefer. But a high response rate is not always the best goal.
If you’re trying to generate sales leads for a high-dollar service where the contract might be over one million dollars, a single reply that results in a sale might give you a low response rate, but it would likely represent a significant return on investment.
Therefore, your goal is not to maximize response but to maximize profit. Direct mailers in the past century would continually buy more lists to increase their mailing number hoping to get more responses. Hence, the name, junk mail.
Some of today’s digital marketers love telling anyone that listens they have over 200,000 followers. Hence the name, digital flame out.
So, how do we raise our profit? One way is a mindset of delivering an offer, direct to the customer, and add another channel, such email or social media channel, and test to verify your outcome.
Testing allows adjustments which can create a nice increase to maximize your profit.
While there is a lot of creativity that goes into writing and designing communications, testing should be a careful and disciplined process. This is another example of using science in your marketing efforts within our data driven era.
Test one item at a time.
It may be temptation to test a variety of ideas in every message. If so, it is impossible to know what element is responsible for changing your results.
For example, if you use a new subject line at the same time trying a new segment, which change will affect your results? By testing only one change per message, you can immediately see what causes your positive or negative results.
If you want to improve your landing page conversions, then use Split testing, better known as A/B testing.
For example, use A/B testing with two versions of your landing page that are almost entirely the same but have one specific difference you want to test. For instance, you could A/B test which headline or offer converts more by creating one page with a headline or offer A and the other headline with an offer B. Half of your visitors will see version A and the other half will see version B.
Test against your “control.”
A/B testing can work with any communication channel you want. Even your control can be an email that has proven to be a winner. Once you have determined a winner, you can test other email messages or formats against it.
This type of testing works like a contest, with the old and new competing against each other. If your control wins, you know you should continue using it.
If the challenger wins, you know you might have a new control and should consider emailing the new message or format instead.
While there is a lot of creativity that goes into writing and designing your marketing communications, testing should be a careful and disciplined process.
Summary
The key takeaway is to test one marketing or advertisement message at a time. Plus, check out your analytics for additional campaign insights for maximizing your profit.
Are you looking for more business? Or better business? Or a new prospect list?
You are not alone. The Covid-19 pandemic has turned our business marketing and selling world upside down.
Maintaining your team’s enthusiasm to get people to buy your product and/or your service in our present pandemic is mind boggling at best. Try this! Do that! That never works! And the beat goes on.
It’s always been a challenge to create consistently awesome attractions. But now, it is a overwhelming challenge to earn the attention of potential prospects. The playing field of marketing and sales has changed dramatically.
One such solution is finding a group of marketing sleuths in your organization. Look for people with a varietyofability, suchashaving a keen sense of solving problems,peoplein your marketplace looking for change and even good thinking customers.The resultis mixing all suggestions and ideas in a marketing blender and spilling it all on a table for you and your team to sort out.
You need to arriveatideas which is the right marketing content and communication channels that can reach your contacts and temptthem in ways with a compelling mix of opinions and insight in today’s economy as transformed by the pandemic within your industry.
So much of the knowledge and thought leadership from the people on your list thatworks them may also work for your company. You need to stop thinking that the pandemic will somehow disappear, and everything returns to normal. So many of the normal ways of attracting customers are no longer useful. Business’s small and large, are laying people off every day.For example, when was the last trade show you visited?
Comment and offer at the end of this post.
Delegate a technical customer manager.
This role is for someone that sees the value of the science of data analytics and the art of marketing. Then, make itin the employee’s job description and might include incentive pay. Goalscould be copywriting, using printed materials, landing pages, personalization, digital, and whatever is collected fromprospects and customer segments. Without a single ‘owner’ to take responsibilityon marketing, sales activity and response of testing, the investigation is often disorganized, and the results are inconsistent.
If you are a company who believes in and use some of the concepts ofa customer-centricmarketing strategy, you probablyhave an advantage with communication channelschoice.Conversely, if you are not a fan, you need to start.
Just the other day I saw these two headlines.
Walgreens Marketing Moves into Mass Personalization
Mercedes-Benz marketing boss: Our customised agency is making us more human-centric
Customer-centric marketing, or whatever you may call it, is a known marketing strategythat works.
Experiment with a little bit of this and just a touch of that.
Think of customer-centric marketing as a consistent delivery of value to each customer. Your company marketing and sales must be centered on listening to what your customers wantand have a particular opinion, belief or ideasusingmore ways for building business relationships with personalization.
Our second strategy, data driven marketing isalso based on personalization.It assumes that you know something about the contacts to whom you are mailing, emailing, or sending to a landing page and so forth. It’s an effective way to keep customers spending their money on your products and services, by understanding their needs
Number three, a digital marketing strategy, design solutions for your business to attract and keep customers, get end-to-end visibility into all marketing and selling campaigns, from impression to revenue. You need a customer-focus mentality (personalization) to see and understand why your customers buy or not buy.
Digital marketing is a goodmarketer’schoicefor the near future.
Direct mail, websites, email, advertisements, even content marketing, are a few of the communication channels, you may use today. They each have their pro’s and con’s. But this is a challenging time with so many unknowns.
At this point in time, what works? Marketing and sales?Are the salespeople getting appointments? Are they still making sales? These questions need answers. Staying on the same course may work for now, but for how long?
Depending on your answers, your new technical customer manager will have her or his back to the wall, to have answers you needto compete in the pandemic marketplace. Ease in other company contributorswith theirspecialties in the wheelhouse. Challenging times can uncover thought provider ideas or insights that may enhance marketing and sales success.
Summary
The only known that I am sure of, is not to do nothing. I recently read an article on the CDC website that this pandemic may last through 2021.
Your advantage is what you decide on doing now, going hard after new and present business, will keep working for your company in the new world you are facing when a vaccine is available for controlling and ending the pandemic.
Could you comment how your company has changed the way they are marketing in the pandemic.?
Conversely, if your company is facing tough times in marketing and sales, send me a note or comment about your situation and I’ll be happy to share some suggestions.
Everyone who responds will become a subscriber to our Direct2Customers community.
Thanks for reading and please share with others – except your competition! Your time is genuinely appreciated.
Learning and doing, marketing, and selling ideas, is what you’ll find at your Direct2Customers community.
The goal of writing great marketing copy is to get people into taking action.
Like buy my product or service.
The more you address specific human elements that motivate your audience, the greater your chances of moving them into action, calling, e-mail or buying.
So, what moves people, besides a big truck?
People cannot resist a bargain. People seek pleasure and satisfaction. People like exclusivity. And some are even moved by greed.
People seek to improve themselves. They want to save time. People seek security and safety.
People seek power, stature, fame, flattery from others and inside information. They are often envious, revengeful and proud.
People want to make money, save money, save time, stay healthy, become more knowledgeable, increase their status, boost their prestige.
This is a never-ending list as we try to understand the human mind and how it relates to purchasing your products and services. You need not attempt to solve the human condition in every direct marketing copy you write. But it’s recommended to learn continuously about your customers.
What you need to do is think carefully about what you sell, to whom, and how best to make them want to act.
It’s a complicated activity and, at the same time, it is easy. Your direct marketing must lead people to consider worthy opportunities to improve their personal situations. Train your mind to react to them.
It becomes much easier when you take the time to keep learning more about your customers and provide products and services that exceed their expectations.
Some of those expectations may even be in the preceding paragraphs. It’s all about learning and doing.
Imagine if you were able to accelerate your marketing message frequency to customers,byboosting response using strategic marketingin direct and customer-centric marketing?Next, imagine directly reaching customers online with a dash of traditional marketing, such as email for example,with a higher frequency of response, building and writing a series of relevant marketing messages.
If you like this idea, here’s how to start.
Learn how to study your marketing data.Today, your company mustcapture and study marketing data,to determinewhat you need if your goal istoincrease sales. The best way to startis by buildingcustom marketing segments based on customer data.It will allow you tosendspecific messages to like-minded buyers from your database. Maybe you’ve thought of testing marketing segments, but time slips away. Today it’s not a dream. You cancreate data–driven direct marketing with ideas from your traditional marketing resultseasilyby using anothercommunication channel, such as email.For example, if you’re a small business-to-business company with 500 or less employees, it’s a good time to learn how to build a company specific multi-channel marketing platform.It canleadyoutowards a fair share of new or larger corporate customers. Borrowing a few customers from your competition is also within reason. If that’s your goal, a customer segment project will cause companies to stick around. Learn how byreading the next 5 points on customer acquisition.
1. Don’t waste time on building a strategy.
Yes, tongue in cheek.The best strategies we always recommend is direct and customer-centric marketing strategies, developed for company growth. Think of the direct marketing strategy asa message sent directly to a prospect or a past customer. The customer-centric strategy means you know something about your contacts and customers to deliver a relevant message to their needs. Check out the article in this issue of Direct Marketing Success;“How a multi-layered personalization can snag a few more customers…when something is known about the recipient which provides a significant benefit for advertising.”It’s guaranteed to stimulate an idea or two.If you are hungry for more information using segmenting in your database,it’s a great article to help you understandwhat you need toincrease your customer base.Start tinkering with personalization and customer segments as such and you’ll experience first-hand how the two work together in great unison and see the resultsfor yourself.
2. Use a silicone emollient,such as learning customer data,that keeps your marketing running on all 5 cylinders.
Data, data analytics, and data management are the work horses that hold your marketing platform together. If you feel that dataanalysisis not your strong suit, find someone who does understand marketing data. There are more people available today who understand and can interpret the appropriatedata for you. Start and stay in a learning mode in your quest to understand customer data. Steady the course and avoid trying to do more until you have a better understanding of the assembled data.The more you know, the more your campaign will growas well as the marketing segments.
3. There are many advertising channels to choose from.
If you feel there is a lack of customer data, staythe course.Test your assumptionsand learn morefrom existing customers. Test your ideas by talking to a select group of your best customers.Next, use direct marketing mail to reach other contacts. Direct mail is usually a great place to start data collection because everyone has a mailbox.Add email to the mix of direct mail. Using the Pareto Principal, 80% of mail business addresses have an email address. If you start out with direct mail, use a simple website landing page to capture additional email addresses from those who have purchased from you in the past.Offer something free. For example, agift to offer a percentage off their next purchase.Eventually, you’ll have enough information and data, which will make multi-channel your double-digit marketing response of choice.
4. Besides having an address, use direct marketing mail techniques, specifically for creating offers.
Most, if not all direct marketing professionals have a very strong motivation gene in their DNA to go after the consumer tooth and nail to make a purchase. For instance, powerful direct marketingcopywriters can use the right words and craft creative offers.Copywritingprofessionalsknowthe importance of an offer no one can refuse. Bring in the customers with dazzling design,pulling the reader into the mail piece, to consider an offer. Lastly, frequency of messages is like finding a pot of gold, especially if you can do it below budget!
5. Customers like to play coy.
In today’s economy, prospective customers don’t want to be sold to. Customers can decide where, when, and how they want to interact with your company. They want to make their own decisions. This decision could be in your first contact, or after two months of messages before there is any contact.With the capability of better web searches, the growth of social media and even communication with business associates, there is literally a mountain of information available to gather for the next copywriting project. That’s a big reason why we knowfrequency is an important direct marketing tactic.When used with multi-channel communications, you can collect additional data to record, and even sell products and services.Cross-selling and multi-channel communications get a better response. It even makes your customer service better. The list of accolades for a great customer information and list data is a job no one regrets tackling.
Summary.
Customers that receive relevant messages tend to respond higher. Revenue increases with every marketing campaign. Add as much information as possible to your database. Data is the key for better business and more business for the future. Start today. Thanks for reading. I can be reached at Mdoc@direct2customers.com or phone 800.251.3608 (USA)
So what do you want to do? Stay on the same path and hope for better results?
In the past 25 years or so, I preached to many audiences everywhere to spend time to learn your customer’s habits, needs and wants, and to enter your results in a customer-contact management system. Or, if you sell a product or service, then into your busy book. When the information you collected is entered in a database, you first move is to develop customer segments. Start small and add on what else you learn. The knowledge you get from studying this data will make your marketing messages more relevant.
Please share with others – except your competition! Your time is genuinely appreciated. Please join our Direct2Customers Marketing Community today!
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