ProfIt-BoostIng secretsA sure-fire way to increase sales is to execute a winning direct mail campaign. Don’t let the slumping economy deter you from effectively promoting your goods

Introduction

Direct Mail Marketing—It Delivers!A sure-fire way to increase sales is to execute a winning direct mail campaign.

Don’t let the slumping economy deter you from effectively promoting your goods or services. Many marketers think that holding onto their marketing dollars due to the state of the economy is a wise decision, but all businesses in almost any industry can use a direct mail campaign to increase sales in any economy. The biggest mistake a company can make is to put a hold on their spending for marketing programs during hard economic times.

When sales are down, you need to breathe life into your business. A well-executed direct mail campaign can do just that. As the economy rebounds, it will only make your position in the market that much stronger.

Choosing the right mailing lists coupled with the right type of offer or promotion is the exact recipe for success. Lists should be up to date and on target. The offer should be easy to read and clearly written with a definite call to action. Sometimes having a deadline or expiration date will lift response. The call to action should make it easy for people to respond by mail, phone or online.

16 ProfIt-BoostIng secrets to Help You get Maximum Profit from Your next Direct Mail campaign

About the Author

David Klein is CEO and President of Macromark, Inc. David has a rich and deep

background in direct response marketing. His experience comes from being a consultant

and strategist for more than 25 years in the industry, working with several hundred

different clients in just about every industry, market or niche found in direct mail. David

is a graduate of the University of Illinois with high honors advanced degree coursework in Marketing Communications from Roosevelt

University in Chicago. Macromark’s vision is to help its clients succeed in

their acquisition efforts for finding new customers regardless of the

marketing channel or media used. To contact David, call

845-230-6313.

• 1 • Contact David Klein at Macromark • 845-230-6313 • www.macromark.com

www.macromark.com

A successful, well-planned direct marketing campaign almost always leads to increased sales and has been proven time

and time again to be the most effective way of reaching any target market. Plus, direct mail is guaranteed to

be delivered by the U.S. Post Office, so you know that every advertising dollar is getting used to its

fullest extent. Your prospective client, without question, will be reached by your solicitation, which means you have a great chance at winning a new customer or, at the very least, making an impression that will hopefully last.

Direct marketing has undergone many changes over the last couple of decades. But the more things change, the more things remain the same.

Marketing your product to the right prospects is the ultimate goal of any good marketer. One of the

biggest changes in direct marketing has come from online marketing opportunities.

More and more businesses have added online strategies and channels including social media like Facebook and

Twitter to the mix. In a nutshell, the Internet has changed the way marketers are spending their marketing dollars. With online marketing

providing additional areas of opportunity for marketers, it is sometimes easy to forget that direct mail marketing is still king in terms of response rates and lifetime value.

Direct mail marketing is alive and well, and recent response rate reports published by the Direct Marketing Association show that direct mail consistently outperforms email response rates.

With the ever-increasing influx of online marketing offers using Google ads, with increasing competition for ad space and email inboxes, consumers are becoming overwhelmed. Conversely, postal mailboxes have become less cluttered, so it is more likely that your prospects will notice your direct mailing piece and respond to it.

The real key to any successful direct marketing campaign is being able to incorporate multiple channels or media into your marketing plans. Diversity is essential to stay ahead of the curve and keep up with the current trends.

So here are our top 16 profit-boosting direct mail secrets compiled from my own personal experiences in the more than 25 years I’ve been in the industry. Even if you’re a direct marketing expert, look at these tips as “refreshers.” And if you’re brand new to the game, study these religiously before you start out in the exciting—and profitable—world of direct mail marketing!


Direct Mail Basics Profit-Boosting secret #1

the simple Way to tell If Your Direct Marketing Is WorkingWhat does it take to be successful in direct marketing?

The only measurement for success in direct marketing is whether or not you are making money.

That’s the question you should always be asking in your business. It doesn’t matter how big you are or how little. We have clients who started working from their kitchen table and are still working from it now, making millions of dollars. We also have other clients representing some of the largest companies in the country who have hundreds or thousands of people working for them.

Whether you are starting out small or starting out big, there’s really only one question you should be asking yourself: how much money will I make from doing the product or service launch that’s been planned and budgeted for? There should be realistic expectations set along with conservative and aggressive “guesstimates.” These will all translate into an initial return on investment, or ROI. With this information, you can determine whether or not the risk you are taking is worthwhile.

Sometimes it makes sense to think of other ways revenue can be made from the promotion and the buyers you are adding to your customer base. This goes to lifetime value, and it’s important to anyone in direct marketing, but it’s nice to know that the promotion you are launching can stand on its own legs as a pure acquisition proposition. This won’t always be the case, however; there are many successful companies that lose money in the customer acquisition process, but then make their money back monetizing the relationship over time through back end or retention marketing.

Don’t worry too much about the services or the infrastructure that will be needed to grow revenues. The truth is there are a lot of smart marketing companies working in a very small footprint, requiring minimal staffing needs. Service firms are available for everything you could possibly need, whether you are looking to do direct mail, TV, space, radio, social media or email marketing.

In fact, in order to keep up with technology and the quickening pace of change, an argument can be easily made for the greater outsourcing of services, whether you’re a kitchen-table millionaire or a “Fortune 500” millionaire—or just trying to become one.

Profit-Boosting secret #2

How to get Your customers to Love You and Buy More!The most important thing you can do as a direct marketer is build a successful relationship with your customer.


Truth is it doesn’t matter what you do as a business or what line of business you’re in, the cost of acquiring a new customer is

substantial.

Why spend all that money to open a storefront, launch a direct mail campaign, or run a television or radio spot to bring in new customers only to lose them the next day, at the point of sale or even a month later?

If you are a good marketer, you’ll make more money from developing the relationship with your customer than what you

likely made on the initial customer acquisition.

In fact, most marketers—or many marketers—are willing to lose money to acquire new customers with the understanding that there’s

a lot of money to be made from a new customer over the lifetime of the customer relationship.

This is called “lifetime value” (LTV), and it’s spoken about when we reference things like retention marketing or relationship marketing.

It’s hard to understand all the things that can affect a relationship and impact LTV because there are so many variables. Most of our clients, if not all of them, spend too little time on this as part of their overall marketing strategy and planning. It’s like learning or exercising; you can probably never do enough of it.

One of the most effective ways to keep a customer engaged is to offer them easy ways to renew or make a purchase monthly on an automatic basis. This is referred to as “auto-ship” or “continuity,” and many marketing firms incorporate this strategy into their promotions right from the very first sale.

You may use discounts or premiums as incentives to encourage this type of repeat purchasing; it’s one of the best ways to maximize LTV.

There are also many ways to increase the amount of the sale at the time of purchase, at the time of fulfillment and in customer service correspondence as a follow-up to the sale. Keeping a customer happy and buying from you while building a successful relationship with them trumps any other acquisition effort you can possibly dream up.

Before you even spend that first marketing dollar, you should already be thinking and planning ahead to make sure the customer experience is maximized, not only for them but, ultimately, for your business, too.


think outside the Box for More revenue streamsI’ve had the good fortune of working with some of the best strategists and marketers in direct marketing, and


the “House” analogy that often comes up in conversation is one that’s pretty simple to visualize and understand.

It doesn’t seem to matter what avenue or channel your customers took to find you, be it retail traffic, direct mail, online marketing, space advertising, television or radio (sorry billboard guys only get an honorable mention here)—the fact is you should push for all the different ways to bring new customers into your business or into your “house.”

While you are at it, I implore you to get all the contact information you possibly can from your customers, so you can build the best possible LTV relationship with them going forward.

Once you have that information, engage your customers in all the possible direct response and communication channels you can for retention purposes. These additional retention and monetization efforts across media channels will lead you to winning marketing strategies that will parlay new acquisition efforts as well.

Think of your business as a big house that’s able to hold an unlimited number of guests. (Who wouldn’t want that?)

Your marketing or media channels are all the doors and windows to your house. Most of us in marketing just have a front door that seems to work well, but most successful long-term businesses use the back door and all the windows on at least the first floor to bring in new guests or customers (acquisitions).

Just make sure that once they enter your house, you make them feel welcome, so they’ll be sure to stay (retention).


Know When to Hold ‘em; Know When to fold ‘em!In any of the direct response fields, sometimes you will hit it just right.

It doesn’t matter if we are talking about radio, direct mail, TV, Internet, cable or alternative media.Sometimes you’ll find in your career of marketing that the ingredients for the secret sauce of success are all there—the media, the product, the offer, the right audience and good timing—everything you need to have a winning promotion.

Obviously, the more media and the more marketing channels you can use for your product, the better, especially when you do have a winning promotion.

When this happens, and it will with any kind of persistence on your part, then let the good times roll—let it carry you forward. When the ROI is high, take advantage of being ahead of the market on something and roll it out as aggressively as possible. In all marketing, your competitors and others take notice of what you are


doing. It might sound like being aggressive here is just common sense, but you would be surprised at how many ways there are to talk yourself out of being bold, especially when the timing is right.

At the same time, you always have to be on guard to pull back your advertising and direct marketing dollars when the proverbial party ends. Test and test some more, and when you find the right mix and the results are spot on, be ready to step on the gas and enjoy the ride!


Why “A.r.M.” can Arm You with a successful Direct Marketing campaign

There are three simple things that all direct marketers have to constantly be thinking of, the real ABCs of direct marketing and the fundamentals of growing a great customer base.

It doesn’t matter what media format you use to market your products or services, these three basic and essential marketing practices need to become the central focus of your business, because they’re what will ultimately create the ROI and LTV for your business to succeed.

What are these ABCs of direct marketing?

Well, they really are known as the ARMs of direct marketing. Everything starts with “A,” which stands for the acquisitions that

bring in new customers or clients to your business; without new clients or customers, your business will slowly fade away as you

implement the rest of your marketing mix. Acquisitions are the reason you are in business; without these new sales, it would be impossible to

grow revenue for any considerable length of time. Thus, it all begins with “A.”

The “R” is for retention marketing; this is the process of extending the same offer and the same product to your existing buyers over tested periods of time or offering completely new products or services to your existing customer base. There are lots of products or services—perhaps even competitive products or services—that you can offer that complement those products the customer originally purchased. The key behind successful retention practices is to always find interesting and meaningful reasons to solicit the continued business of your acquired customers to improve LTV and to lower the costs of the initial acquisition, or increase the return, over time.

Last but not least, there is the “M,” which stands for the monetization of your customers or clients—this is essential to LTV and oftentimes, it can represent the biggest revenue opportunities. Monetizing your customers or clients is really about allowing other marketers access to your customer base on a rental basis, joint venture basis or profit-sharing arrangement. Many times, these partnerships require little effort or investment on your behalf, which makes them important to pursue; these can be very lucrative arrangements or agreements that can make a huge difference to your bottom line.


Like most things in business, there is more than one way to make sure you are as successful as possible. The more time you spend on these three aspects—acquisition, retention and monetization—the more likely your business will succeed. Link your “ARMs” around your direct marketing business, and you’ll be on the right path to success.


How to repeat a success over and over AgainA fundamental concept in consumer buying behavior in direct mail marketing is that consumers tend to make repeat purchases within certain product or service categories more than other categories. These purchases are not dependent on each other, but rather, they function independently. Direct mail survives and works best when the lists of competitors’ customers are available for each direct marketer to use. In practice, this direct marketing idea works equally as well in telemarketing and email marketing.

Most novice marketers instinctively try to avoid targeting or selecting individuals based on their recent purchase history; if it’s competitive to their products or services, it’s counterintuitive. I’m often asked why a marketer would want to target someone who just bought a similar product; it seems like a mistake in marketing judgment. However, history does repeat itself in direct mail marketing, as does the consumer when they are purchasing within their primary interest or psychographic categories.

An individual’s interest in a product-specific category is overwhelmingly the strongest indicator that they will make a similar product or service purchase again, regardless of how recent that purchase was made; in fact, in most cases, the more recent the purchase, the better.

This psychographic buying behavior plays itself out without fail in every consumer product category I’ve ever seen—with maybe the exception of big-ticket items like automobiles and homes. (One car or one house at a time is usually the most we can expect anyone to purchase.) When it comes to everything else, however, you should target individuals who just purchased your competitors’ products. The more recent that purchase was made, the more likely the individual will buy your products as well. This is a proven buying behavior concept in direct marketing as recent buyers have historically been the most responsive. The more competitive the market, the better; the more frequently they buy within the category, the better; the more money spent on the competitive or category-specific products, the better.

Direct marketers refer to this as “RFM” data, which stands for “recency, frequency and monetary.” The more of each of those numbers, or the better or higher those numbers are, the more likely it is that those individuals will purchase from you as well on a cumulative basis. That is the kind of history all marketers like to see repeat itself.


CopywritingProfit-Boosting secret #7

Making them an offer they can’t refuse!Any good direct marketing campaign includes a rock-solid offer.

There are many types of offers in direct marketing that are used in direct mail, television, space ads, web marketing and radio. Some of the more common ones are “buy one get one free,” “pay only shipping and handling” or “call now for your risk-free supply.” You almost always see a 30-day money-back guarantee on any direct response advertisement.

In direct mail, there are the famous “good, better, best and amazing” offers. This is when the customer can load up on the product, and the more they buy, the cheaper it becomes, the more bonuses or freebies

are given away, and the better the offer becomes. Catalogs are big on promoting free shipping or maybe an early or quick order discount.

These offers, or any offer, are always done with one goal in mind—to trigger the purchase decision.

The offer or the pitch (the inducement to make a purchase) is the hallmark or cornerstone of any good direct marketing campaign.

“But wait there’s more!!!!”

How many times have you heard that line used?

Everyone wants to feel like they’re getting a deal, they’re taking advantage of a special buying opportunity or that they’re part of a select group of individuals receiving an exclusive offer. Direct marketing is about selling a product or service. It is not really about providing branding like most general advertising, so it needs a strong call to action. Most marketers want to make money with their prospecting efforts. Without a strong call to action that screams “benefits,” your results will be lackluster, no matter how good your product is.

Make them an offer they can’t refuse, and watch your sales and your response rates grow.


the Most Important Part of Direct Mail copy Is…No matter how good your copy is, the headline can make or break you in direct mail marketing.

Direct marketers put a lot of effort, time and money into creating or paying someone to create that perfect direct mail piece or space ad. Tons of time and energy is spent making sure that the message or copy is just right, that the story is told well. Every word that’s written in a direct mail package or space ad needs to bring the reader or prospect from the beginning of the solicitation to the sales offer or sell page, eventually


convincing them to accept your “call to action.”

Quality copy combined with a well thought-out layout and design has to be just right to make sure you get the best ROI possible. But even the best copy and the best design take a backseat to a great headline. The headline brings the reader into the direct mail piece or the space ad. If you lose their interest from the introduction, you have nowhere to go, because your direct mail piece has already been set down or discarded.

The headline doesn’t have to be long to be effective, but it can be. The headline needs to scream “benefit” or “read me now!” It’s those first few words that every smash hit ad has that creates millions for the marketer or the company that understands the importance of the headline. I’ve seen good headlines create as much as a 50%–100% increase in overall response rates. It seems hard to believe, but it’s true. Five to 10 well-chosen words or less in a complete direct mail package or space ad with thousands of words can impact your bottom line by 100%. It seems silly, but it’s absolutely the truth.

So take the time and the effort to test one of the most important parts of any good direct marketing program. Your headline is your intro into everything you are trying to convey; acquisition, retention, and monetization all start with your headline, which can make the difference between the beginning and the end of your success in marketing.


How to Add Instant credibility to Your Marketing campaignIf you’re looking for credibility for your product or service, nothing compares to the testimonials that you get from your current customers. So many times in direct mail, space advertising, infomercials, radio spots and online marketing you will see the use of first-hand customer experience being used to endorse a product or service.

Don’t underestimate the strength and credibility that you get from using the first-person voice in your promotions and advertisement copy. It’s not uncommon to see testimonials used throughout an entire promotion or ad. Currently, I have a client whose entire ad is being created from a collection of their best testimonials. It will be interesting to see if this approach will work, as there is limited copy being used outside of the testimonials, but like I said before—no one says it better than a happy customer.

Testimonials are not hard to come by. Happy customers will naturally send testimonials to your business, but if you are new and you find that you don’t currently have any or don’t have the quality of testimonials needed for your ads, you can always ask for them. Reach out to some of your more active customers and offer them a free product or discount on future purchases to give you a glowing endorsement.

One of the best things that your business will get from customer testimonials is additional insight into what people like most about your product or service. This additional insight can be leveraged into new benefits or maybe even new advertising or marketing strategies that never occurred to you before.


Use these valued comments, thoughts and praises to not only encourage others to purchase from you, but also to guide you in your future direct marketing product and positioning efforts.

Creative and FormatProfit-Boosting secret #10

How to choose the right format for Your Direct Mail ProgramSo you’ve decided to finally do a direct mail piece and rent a mailing list to do

your first mailing. Perhaps you already do direct mail, and your team is trying to decide if you should mail a different type of format of mailing

piece or mailing package.

I think this is the second most common question I get asked from marketers. (The first most commonly asked question being, “What response rate should I expect from doing direct mail?”)

Mailing packages come in an endless variety of sizes, looks, styles and feels. In fact, I’m not sure that there is a limit to the number of different types of pieces that can be mailed.

There are envelope mailings #10 and 6X9, and at least another half-dozen common envelope sizes. There are all kinds of self-

mailers, snap packs, postcards, oversized cards, catalogs, digests, slim jims, magalogs and tabloids.

But what to mail?—That’s the question.

The truth is most of what makes a direct mail package effective has to do with the product and the target market.

Unless you have a ton of products that you are looking to promote all at the same time (i.e. a catalog of products), any of the above formats could potentially work for you.

One of the best-pulling mail pieces I can recall was a black-and-white postcard of a peanut man standing on one side of the postcard (literally a man that looked like a peanut) with his arms out and the caption, “We’re Going Nuts Trying to Reach You! Please call this 800 number immediately to find out why.” That was pretty much the whole mail piece, but it worked like a charm!

Most mail pieces that do really well have a compelling story, a great product or service behind them and a fantastic offer that when combined, the whole package screams benefits.

If you have all of those essential components, then you should have a winner. The messaging strategy that you ultimately decide to use needs to be well targeted to the right prospects; that’s critical.


Even the peanut postcard had to be mailed to very spontaneous promotional individuals in order for it to pull well. We used a good amount of infomercial buyer lists and sweepstakes-type direct mail buyer files to help make the phones ring off the hook.

There are always things to test in direct mail, and without a doubt, the mail package itself, the design and the format can play a big role in generating greater ROIs for your business, so put your creative hat on and try something different or new.

Online Direct MarketingProfit-Boosting secret #11

email Marketing: How to Make It Work for YouThere are many ways to market your product or services online.

Email marketing is one of the more popular and effective ways to seek and acquire new customers from online marketing. Direct marketers can choose from a very fast-growing market of third-party opt-in lists for their email marketing purposes.

When doing email marketing, you can rent email lists and provide the creative content to be sent out by third-party vendors or by the owner of the data. There are also networks, affiliates and publishers that will take your product and market it to their proprietary databases, charging you an acquisition lead or click fee for purchases or completed lead forms.

All of these forms of email marketing are priced in different ways, either on a CPM (cost per thousand), CPA (cost per acquisition), CPL (cost per lead) or CPC (cost per click) basis. While the payment structure differs from one arrangement to another, one can easily calculate the true customer acquisition cost of any email program. In the end, customer acquisition is the only thing that matters.

The great thing about marketing via email is that once you’ve established a relationship with your customer as a direct marketer, you’ll have established this relationship in a channel that is fairly inexpensive when it comes to communicating offers, services and opportunities. Message and product strategy along with the frequency of communications need to play key roles in your overall email marketing program. As a direct marketer, you don’t want to have newly acquired customers disgruntled over the amount of times you contact them or the type of offers or third-party advertisements you are sending them.

One of the most effective ways of building a quality email list for customer acquisition purposes is to start by building an email “prospect” list by offering valuable information or valuable offers to consumers in exchange for providing their email address. Once you have their email addresses in your database, then the relationship is yours to build and develop, so that it pays back in the form of purchases.



the Win-Win relationship Between Direct Mail and online revenueCan direct mail drive Internet web traffic and sales? The answer is of course

it can!

Most of us in marketing and anyone older than five are familiar with driving consumers from short- and long-form television,

radio, direct mail and cable advertisements to order through the telephone, but more and more of us are comfortable making those purchases online these days.

I think the time has come that website traffic and awareness can be accomplished using direct mail in a more cost-effective way while providing a better ROI than many other popular forms of paid advertising for promoting websites or products online, whether it is banner, paid search, organic search or email

marketing.

Here’s an example:

You own a website that sells a variety of products for equestrians (horse lovers and riders) and you want to get the word out about your website.

One can advertise in equestrian magazines or on websites, or through email marketing that would be non-competitive but complementary to the product, information or services offered by a publisher’s site.

The problem is the cost of reaching these individuals is high relative to your ability to communicate a complete marketing message and offer with the knowledge that they will see your website and business and create that buzz or awareness you need to monetize the traffic.

With direct mail, however, you can use a very strong call to action that will be placed right in the hand of the individual you want the most, literally leaving them no choice but to acknowledge your existence as a business with a compelling reason to jump online and check you out. Why not offer them free riding gloves with any purchase over $50.00? This can easily be done with an oversized postcard mailing. You can also have them enter a supersaver new customer discount code to take 20% off their very first purchase when they register on the site. The direct mail piece can easily reflect the style and quality of the image of your site, while also providing a compelling reason to consider you and your business as a new source for making easy online purchases.

This is the right time for this type of direct mail marketing, with Google keyword pricing continuing to go up as more competition enters the market ultimately bidding up prices.

The clutter and competitiveness of online organic or paid searches makes it increasingly more difficult to remain relevant and on top of search engine results pages. Direct mail breaks through the clutter and allows accurate targeting that gets to the hands of the people you want to reach the most.


Mailing Lists Profit-Boosting secret #13

How to find the Perfect Mailing ListThe old saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” also holds true for mailing lists. Oftentimes, it is absolutely impossible to determine the quality of a mailing list that is being offered by simply just looking at its title. A mailer must be careful when selecting a list and look beyond its title, because the name of a mailing list might lead you to believe you are getting something very different than what is actually there.

The first step is to determine the type of list to select. Your offer and target market will determine whether you choose a response list or a compiled list. A response list usually comprises actual product buyers, subscribers or seminar/conference attendees. They are people who have taken some kind of action. Response lists are viewed as being the highest quality list on the market and pricing is generally reflective of that. Compiled lists can be gathered through the “Yellow Pages,” directories or other public information. Compiled lists lack information about whether the individual has ever responded to a direct mailing, telemarketing or email offer.

There are many other factors to consider when choosing the right list for your direct mailing campaign. A list broker should know exactly how to weed through the tens of thousands of lists on the market; but if you are navigating the many choices out there yourself, remember to check out a few other key elements. In addition to the list source, find out about its update frequency, price point and counts before making your decision. It’s also important to know if a list owner is actively mailing, as well as if the list is being managed by a reputable list manager. Finally, it’s also very good to know who else has used the list successfully. If your competitors are using the list, chances are you are on the right path.

Some of the best and most responsive lists on the market have unusual and unfamiliar list names, while some of the worst lists seem to have the perfect title. It is essential that you know as much about the mailing list as possible to ensure you are making the best list choice.


How You’re sitting on a “Hidden goldmine” for Your BusinessAn antique chair sits in the attic, covered with dust. No one realizes its worth or value. It has been packed away, unused and unappreciated. After several months the chair is found, brought downstairs and cleaned. The antique piece is taken to a dealer and valued at thousands of dollars.

Your customer database may just be your valuable antique chair.


If you sell products or services and have a database of customers with names and addresses, then you have a profit center right at your

fingertips. You can generate substantial list rental revenue by allowing non-competitive companies to market their products to your

customer base.

There are no costs associated with putting your list on the market, and it is easy to get started. Contacting a list management company is the best way to begin. A list management company will start by evaluating your list and identifying its revenue potential.

Every company that has a customer database should consider making their list available for rental. Whether your database is large

or small, business-to-business (B2B) or consumer, direct response television (DRTV) or direct mail sold, the potential value of this asset

should be explored. The list manager you choose should represent you and your list in the marketplace, serving as an extension of your marketing

team. List management is one way to unlock your hidden assets!


How to choose the right List ManagerSelecting the right list management company is vital to the success of your list rental program. You want to select a reputable company with a proven track record and expertise in your market. The experience and knowledge that your manager has in your market will ensure your list is represented appropriately and exposed to the mailers that should be renting your list.

During your initial research, some questions you may want to ask potential list managers may include:

• How long have you been in the business?

• What types of markets and lists do you represent?

• Can you provide references?

• Who will be my contact and/or team handling my list and what is their experience?

The list management company you choose to work with should be responsible for:

• Keeping your data in a secure environment and monitoring whoever uses your data

• Accounting practices—to collect, report and disburse revenues in a timely fashion

• Marketing and promotional activities in the form of trade shows they attend, space ads in trade publications, direct mail campaigns, email promotions, etc.

• Order and data processing

• Sales of the list via outbound and inbound sales calls

• Providing you, the list owner, with accurate and timely reports


Choosing the best company for the job will ensure success and allow for maximum list rental revenues. So, don’t hesitate to put your list on the market; there is money in your database that could soon be in your hands!


Mailing creative or Mailing List: You’ll Be surprised to Learn Which Is More ImportantSupposedly, the rule of thumb is that the list makes up 40% of your success, but in direct marketing, using rules of thumb is short-sighted. Depending on several factors, the list can be everything to your success or it can play just a minor role.

In the following example, the mail piece should bear all the importance to your success:

Let’s say you just opened up a new pizzeria in a relatively small town of 8,000 people. Everyone in that town lives within five miles of your new restaurant. For your money, direct mail marketing is the way to go to build this business into a money-making machine.

What am I not going to do? I’m not going to look for a list of people who like to eat pizza.That would be a waste of time and would likely be a pretty poorly sourced list (only a guru would know this).

What I am going to do, however, is assume that just about everyone will eat pizza. Instead of cherry-picking from a bunch of demographic and psychographic variables found in the over 25,000 lists on the market—I’m going to mail everyone. But what should I mail?

Let’s say I get a saturation mailing list or a current resident mailing list for all 8,000 residents in my town. This allows me to get the best postal rates (because a larger volume is being mailed) and to make sure that every resident, or at least every household, in my town sees my mail piece and thus knows about my new restaurant. Will my mailing work just because I tell everyone about my new pizza shop? Probably not. Grand opening mailings are fine, but don’t expect people to start breaking down your doors in response. In this scenario, the mailing list will have little to no impact on your success.

What you offer the residents in the mail piece will mean everything to the direct mail program’s success.


Send a menu only with “Grand Opening” on it, and you are catering to the whim of peoples’ tastes for that evening or maybe that week. Send a menu with a coupon that offers free delivery and a two-liter bottle of soda, and you’ll pick up dozens of new customers. Send a menu that says order any pizza and get one same-size pizza absolutely free for all new customers during our grand opening, and you will be swamped, especially if you stamp “FREE PIZZA” to the outside of the direct mail piece in big letters.

Makes you want to open a pizza parlor, doesn’t it?

Overall, it comes down to the need to assess each situation to know who to send your creative to and what to include in your creative that will entice your target prospects enough to respond.

final thoughts

Is Direct Mail Dead?

Well, for us list guys and for savvy marketers, I certainly hope not!

It’s interesting to hear what all the prognosticators and media experts have to say on the matter of direct mail marketing. When I started in

the business 25 years ago I heard the same things I hear today...

The truth is that direct mail is really unique in its ability to deliver a controlled marketing message to one’s customer or to a well-targeted prospect list.

If you combine that with the psychographic variable of knowing a reader’s prior purchase behavior, then this form of marketing becomes so strong in predicting future purchase behavior that it becomes really hard to find another

media format that can compete with the ROI of direct mail.

But now add in the advantage or comfort in knowing, with almost 100% certainty, that it will be received in a timely manner

or within days of being sent, and you’ve really got something.

Put all three of these benefits together and add in a compelling offer, and you’ll have an irresistible and profitable business on your hands.

A real reason to get excited

even a list guy can like all media, which I do.And yes, all media can provide compelling examples and case studies of how they do well and when they should be used, but… if I were a betting guru, which I am, I’d bet the house on direct mail every time!

Contact David Klein at Macromark • 845-230-6313 • www.macromark.com

ready to start your successful direct mail campaign? Let me help! give me a call and let’s get started!

In direct marketing, we have the advantage of being able to measure LTV or dollars spent from each customer.

When we add a new customer to our database of known buyers, as a marketer, you have the ability and the advantage to track purchases and buying behavior over an extended period of time. General advertisers or marketers seldom really know the true value of a customer, or whether or not their marketing strategy is affecting purchasing behavior.

Whether you use direct mail, email, radio, print, television, search or social media to acquire a customer, the real value of the relationship is the lifetime value that the customer brings to the table and to your business. Try to communicate with the customer using all the media channels that are available to you, not just the one you acquired them from. Don’t just use direct mail to attract new purchases from existing clients if they came to you from direct mail efforts. Look for complementary products or services to offer your customers as a way to increase lifetime value.

Every dollar earned in sales from a new customer offsets the acquisition costs of acquiring the customer to begin with.

We often talk about low-hanging fruit in business; opportunities to create lifetime value are the lowest-hanging fruit of all.

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ProfIt-BoostIng secretsA sure-fire way to increase sales is to execute a winning direct mail campaign. Don’t let the slumping economy deter you from effectively promoting your goods