Re: Driving traffic with direct mail

From: Sarah Saunders <saunders_at_redalert.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 11:18:13 -0500 (CDT)

We have been using direct mail as one of many promotional
tools for our website and our monitoring service. There are
a few rules of thumb that we have applied to our direct mail
efforts which have made our campaigns successful, in having
customers sign up online or call our 1-800 number. To date
our campaigns have had paybacks of 9 months or better.

1) Use mailing lists containing recipients who are your
direct target market. There are many mailing list brokers
out there. Right now Internet-related mailing lists can be
expensive, with high prices being fueled by VC-flush
businesses. We've seen prices of .15-.25 cents per record.
2) Continually groom the lists by taking out the a) "Not at
this address" returns and the b) "Please remove me from this
list" requests. 3) Insert spoilers to your lists, to ensure
that your mailings are working successfully: delivery, time
of arrival, addressing, etc. Have your spoiler
representatives send their pieces back to you for analysis.
Send thank you gifts to your spoiler recipients. 4) Test
different messages and formats (letter, postcard, etc.) and
always try to beat your last, best response. 5) Offer to
recipients an incentive for them to respond to your "call to
action". 6) Include identification codes for each campaign
for tracking. Without this, you will not be able to
determine your payback / return on investment. For instance,
we use specific codes for specific messages and formats,
even if they are within the same campaign. 7) For incoming
calls, make sure you ask each potential customer for their
identification code. For signups online, also capture these
identification codes at the time of signup. 8) Hire a
competent direct mail firm which can handle the printing,
addressing, stuffing and delivery to the post office. 9)
Continually look for ways to make your campaigns as
automated as possible, to lower costs.

Sarah Saunders
RedAlert.com

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Received on Thu Aug 05 1999 - 16:50:53 CDT