Re: Comparing Direct Mail To Internet Advertising

From: Peter I Hupalo <Peter.I.Hupalo-3_at_tc.umn.edu>
Date: Sat 8 Apr 2000 15:49:55 -0500

Hi, a while back I compared DM to Internet Advertising
and Marketing on

http://www.dmnews.com/articles/1999-11-22/5383.html

I also have an short introduction to the value of a
customer on

http://www.hcmpublishing.com/Essays/CustomerValue.html

which just shows how many DM marketers are looking to
buy customers below their "value" as a "long-term"
customer.

The big factors as I see it are 1) no real price
testing with the Internet which is a big factor for
some DM companies. (I'm not considering e-mail offers
where I suppose you could try price testing more
effectively, and this applies more to
marketing-oriented companies than product-oriented
companies.) 2) unlike e-mail lists the person
subscribes to, with DM you can buy larger lists of
possibly new clients, i.e., you can prospect for new
customers.

Never spam. Opt-in Email, as Bruce pointed out, is
great, but this should be compared to secondary
mailings to your existing customer list, not to DM to a
rented list of prospects who are not yet customers.
You expect mailings to existing customers to have
higher response.

In a way, I think banner testing is more like Direct
Mail than Direct Mail :) in that there is more rapid
feedback of what works and what doesn't. But, I'm not a
big fan of banners.

Peter Hupalo
Author of
Thinking Like An Entrepreneur
http://www.ThinkingLike.com




Received on Sat Apr 08 2000 - 15:49:55 CDT