We talked about creating an offer in the last post and the thinking and factors that needs to go into them in order to gain a high response.

Now here are some idea starters… just a quick list of possible offers for all sorts of businesses. Hopefully some will spark some good ideas for you.

Insurance – a free review of your coverage. A free home safety booklet just for setting an appointment. A booklet of ten free car washes when we write your auto insurance. Guaranteed handling of your accident claim in five days or a 10% cash bonus on the settlement.

Real Estate – a free home appraisal. One hundred heavy duty moving cartons and boxes free when we list your home for sale. Buy your home from us and we’ll get its carpets steamed cleaned free before you move in.
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We’ve been talking about selecting the correct mailing lists for your company and strategies you can employ to identify the right mailing list to purchase for your business.

Now I’m just going to randomly select a couple SRDS listings and go through them with you to bring about an even better understanding.

Under business executives, the Kiplinger Washington Letter lists are available. This is a tax, business and political newsletter. Let’s see what the listing tells us.

1. The average unit of sale is ‘on average’ is $68.00
2. The list source is direct mail. That means all the subscribers were gotten through direct mail as opposed to say advertisements in other magazines or reps selling subscriptions door-to-door.
3. There are 406,000 subscribers available.
4. There are approximately 10,000 hotline subscribers available each month
5. The lists costs $85.00-95.00 per thousand names. Expired subscribers are available for just $40.00 a thousand.

So if you have a broker you can now call that list broker or you can call the broker handling this list to get additional information for your regional or local marketing.

For example, you might want to know how many subscribers there are in Indiana or in Indianapolis, Indiana. Who might use this list? Banks, stockbrokers, insurance agents, realtors, seminar marketers.

If you’ll take the time to review the entire SRDS directory you’ll be amazed at how many lists you’ll discover that contain people who are logical prospects for your business, goods or services.

Let me tell you how to get super sophisticated with this. Let’s say you sell fairly complex, expensive real estate limited partnerships. You need people in high tax brackets with good credit and some knowledge and experience as investors.
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Yesterday I pointed out to you the three main categories of available lists. Just as a quick review, there are:

1. Subscriber Lists
2. Purchaser Lists
3. Compiled Lists

Each list will offer different specialized sort capabilities. You want to consider the value of each one of these as it relates to your defined needs.

You can get geographic sort in just about any list, at least by state, sometimes by county, city or individual zip codes. This allows the small local business to access the national lists.

This also allows you to test a promotion in just one area. To zero in on an area for a grand opening of a new outlet or to target market by area for any number of possible reasons.

Sometimes there are recency sorts available. Subscriber lists, for example, often offer hotline lists comprised of people who have subscribed or renewed within the past ninety days.
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In my last post, I discussed direct marketing and gave you five different ways that it can be utilized including (but certainly not limited to) advertising in media, electronic media (Radio, TV, etc.), the internet, mail, telemarketing, and door to door selling.

Of all these direct marketing methods I’m most partial to direct mail. I like direct mail marketing for many different reasons including:

#1: There are lots of options regarding formatting costs.

#2: You get things directly into the hands of the prospect.

#3: At least for a brief moment you have the person’s undivided attention.

#4: It is completely results measurable.

#5: It can be combined with other marketing methods. And

#6: You can learn to do your own copy and graphic work.

There are several different ways you can use direct mail too, including acquiring or attracting new customers as a pre-approach prior to a telephone or personal call and to communicate with existing customers.
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…Before you even meet them.

We’re still talking about the three aspects that make for a successful marketing strategy and so far, I’ve identified the first two…the list and the offer.

Of course, the third stepping stone to direct mail success is the mailing piece itself. If one is the list and two is the offer, then three is what we might call the packaging or the presentation of the offer.

In mailing development you will basically deal with copy, graphics and format. I want you to understand that it is not necessary or even necessarily advisable for you to engage the expensive services of graphic designers or ad agencies to create your direct mail pieces.

If you will make the format decision yourself, write the copy yourself and provide some graphic components yourself, all of which I’ll help you with during our journey together, then you can have your piece prepared by a small store front printer and his typesetter.

An ad agency or graphic designer may charge you thousands of dollars to prepare a single mailing piece. If you choose to use such services, you must stay in control and avoid creativity for creativity’s sake, or pretty or clever at the expense of function.

But given today’s PC’s, just about anybody can do much of this themselves, especially if sticking to simple, serviceable formats.

There are two commonly used formats that can serve most of your needs….
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Yesterday I covered list selection, which is the starting point of the direct mail marketing process.

Today, I want to hit on the development of a ‘matching offer.’

The offer you make in a direct mail package needs to be carefully thought out and matched as closely as possible to the interest, needs, and motivations of the list. And as a general rule of thumb the more specifically matched the offer and list are the higher the response rate.

Here are two simple examples to help you understand this idea.

Example one, John’s Sporting Goods Store mails a brochure about his upcoming sale on skiing and hiking equipment to every resident in his store’s neighborhood. His offer may be great, 25% to 50% discounts, a free gift for everyone who comes in, but his response will still probably be very low because of a high waste factor in his mailing.

Let’s say John mailed 10,000 brochures. As few as 15 to 25 people may come in. A response rate of only one half of one percent or slightly worse but that’s deceptive because of the waste factor.
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I am not a great fan of the United States Postal Service.

Overall there’s no doubt in my mind that it is a poorly managed, inefficient, financially troubled operation sadly in need of reform. But in spite of all its faults that system gives you a powerful and effective sales force at a bargain price.

Using the postman as your salesman via direct mail advertising is a great bargain and one of the most effective marketing strategies available to most businesses. Direct mail gives the marketer tremendous control over the sales process. You can do direct mail marketing cost effectively in relatively small quantities.

You control who gets your advertising and who does not. You can control to a great degree when they get it. You can test and evaluate a promotion very inexpensively before committing a big budget.
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This is a classic interview between Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer from August of 2000.

Enjoy!

Dan: Welcome to another Gold Inner Circle tape. I’ve got on the phone with me this time of year, or actually pretty soon a very busy fellow, Bill Glazer. Many of you will know him from having seen some of his ads in the newsletter. Bill’s been a Platinum member now for two years, right?

Bill: Yeah.

Dan: Has two businesses. His menswear stores in the Baltimore area, which are enormously successful and big users of our kinds of marketing, and then his company which provides marketing information and advertising information to the menswear retailing industry. And increasingly more by accident than strategy, to some retailers in other fields as well. There’s one very specific topic that we want to spend the majority of our time on. But Bill, for starters, maybe you can give everybody sort of a thumbnail description, background, what your current business is like, that kind of thing.
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