The Direct Mail Solution
A business owner’s guide to building a lead generating sales driving money making Direct Mail Campaign
By Simpson and Kennedy
Fact: More commerce and wealth is created by direct mail than any other media. This was true before the internet..and is still true now. If you’re serious about growing your customer base, growing your revenue and growing your business then you need to read ‘The Direct Mail Solution’ by marketing gurus Craig Simpson and Dan S Kennedy.
This book is packed full of valuable gems, takeaways and actions you can begin implementing straight away. Kennedy and Simson explain the real ‘nuts and bolts’ of direct mail. From building your list, to writing your sales piece. The Direct Mail Solution really does cover everything you could want to know.
In short, you really shouldn’t send another mail campaign until you’ve read and digested the lessons in this book.
Book Summary.
The front cover says that The Direct Mail Solution is a ‘business owner’s’ guide to building a lead-generating sales driving, money making direct mail campaign. This book actually covers this and much more. What’s more the book isn’t based on theory or fluff, It’s based on REAL campaigns that have delivered real results for real clients and businesses. It walks you through the steps of creating killer direct mail campaigns from start to finish, guiding you through the process and sharing nuggets that you’re not going to want to miss.
Just a little here about the Authors. Dan S. Kennedy is a strategic advisor, consultant, business coach and editor of six business newsletter. He directly influences more than 1 million business owners annually. He is a champion of small business owners and entrepreneurs with a long track record of taking entrepreneurs to seven figure incomes. Craig Simpson is the owner of Simpson Direct Inc, a direct marketing firm based in Oregon. Since beginning his career in direct marketing nearly 25 years ago, he has managed thousands of direct mail campaigns, helping to gross hundreds of millions in revenue for his clients.
Here’s four reasons why most direct mail fails:-
- You have a poor list of customers and prospects.
- You have a boring message.
- You have a poor match between the message you’re sending and the list you’re targeting.
- Your messenger can’t get the message across.
In The Direct Mail Solution, Simpson and Kennedy tackle these four main reasons head on, sharing their real-life experience and great examples of just how you can avoid making such mistakes. And it starts with getting your head in the right place!
How to Think about Direct Mail and Grow Rich.
More commerce and wealth is created by direct mail than any other way of marketing, So much so, that if direct mail marketing was outlawed on the 1st of the month the whole economy would grind to a halt by the 30th. But so many businesses are still yet to fully – or effectively – embrace the power of direct mail. And for one simple reason- most of them are thinking about it wrong. Thinking that it cost too much; thinking that it takes too much time; thinking that it’s too complicated. And until your head is in the right place, and you’re thinking about direct mail in the right way, it’ll never work for you. The ‘right’ way?
“How can you best reach, reach out to, and obtain favourable attention from prospective customers, clients, patients, or donors ideally suited to your product, service, business, or charitable cause?”
With your mind-set right, Kennedy shares his five best reasons to rely on direct mail:-
- The power if the opposite direction.
Modern commerce is a battle of the cheapest. Howard Schultz though, went in the opposite direction and now we have ‘Starbucks’. Kennedy explains that success comes from going in the opposite direction. Use of direct mail is now its own opposite direction.
- Power of ‘Evergreen’ and ‘Autopilot’ predictability and reliability.
With the use of an evergreen direct mail campaign (one that you can use again and again as it’s not time bound), you can land yourself with a marketing asset that can be used time and time again- without losing its effectiveness.
- Power of Showing up Alone.
Whether you’re in a commoditised industry or not, customers are constantly faced with excessive choice when it comes to choosing products or services, both in store and online. Direct mail gives you the power to show up alone and command attention.
- Power of Full and Best-Told Story.
With a character limit on twitter and a limited time to tell your story through video, you have to dilute your message. With direct mail, you can send a 19 page sales letter and command your customers attention.
- Power of Time Commitment.
The more time a prospect invests with a marketer, the more likely they are to buy from them. Sales letters are basically salespeople in envelopes, and give you an endless timeframe (especially if you’re sending a letter, brochure or DVD..) to deliver your sales pitch.
USPS and Simpson Studies – Direct mail in action.
The authors are the true masters of direct mail, and quash those who nay-say direct mail with two killer case studies. The first Simpson shares is from the United States Postal Service (USPS). They surveyed 5000 visitors after they left 135 retail websites, to see how they came to the site and how much money they spent, The results? They swung in the favour of direct mail. They uncovered that 60% of those who received some form of direct mail were more influenced to visit a retailer’s website. Once there, prospects who received a catalogue in the post bought 28% more items and spent 28% more than those who hadn’t.
In one of his own examples, Simpson discusses sending out 45,000 direct mail pieces to drive website traffic for a client (encouraging them to opt in). 5,345 prospects opted in, a rate of 11.94% – and of those, 231 made a purchase giving the campaign a conversion rate of 4.32%. But that wasn’t and isn’t the only result you should look at. Simpson was then left with 5000 leads targeted, specific leads to continue to market to. If this can work in his clients business it can work with yours.
Copy, Design & Delivery. The key take aways for Simpson and Kennedy.
The Direct Mail Solution then moves on to discuss how to successfully combine the copy, design and delivery of your sales message to ensure maximum impact. Simpson says that “writing an effective sales piece requires a real understanding of what you’re selling & putting all your enthusiasm into the piece”. In short you need to make the audience as excited as you are about your product or service.
To do this, he suggests following the marketing classic AIDA principle:-
A: Gain Attention.
I: Create Interest.
D: Build Desire.
A: Request Action.
What’s more, emotions drive purchases. As Simpson says; no one ever spends tens of thousands of pounds on a new kitchen because they need one. They do so because they WANT one. Your direct mail piece needs to make people WANT whatever it is that you do. Simpson recognises that there is a lot of debate about the length of copy when it comes to direct mail. Is less really more? Not according to Simpson.
Instead, “the more you tell, the more you sell”; don’t be afraid then to send 10 page sales letters. Longer copy (as long as it’s all relevant and well written) will help you build a relationship with your audience.
Simpson goes into great detail, covering off everything you need to think about when writing your sales piece. From the message to the audience, the offer, to your ‘voice’, he notes that each is equally important and all add up to a quality sales piece. So to does the content itself. This should include:-
- Headline
- Benefits (always benefits before features, Simpson says)
- Offer
- Call to action
- P.S
Simpson also talks about ‘adding spice’ to your sales piece. It should be easy to read, include images, tell a story, build intrigue, have an angle, and include those “magic” phrases that make people take action e.g. “Limited number of” etc.
As for the design, Simpson and Kennedy note that it’s the best way to get attention and get people to take action. After all, it needs to make an impact when it lands on someone’s door mat or in their mailbox. But perhaps not in the way you’d always assume.
Simpson shares an example of a split test to cold data where exactly the same sales letter and direct mail campaign was sent out with only one difference. One used a brightly coloured envelope with a catchy headline and business logos. The other was a plain envelope with a single stamp. The result may surprise you.
It was the plain envelope that had the biggest open rate and drew the most enquiries. Simpson explains that this is because the letter doesn’t look like a sales piece. It could be a letter from a friend, which seemed to increase the open rate. In short, it got the client over the first barrier.
Mailing Your Mailing List.
An analogy used by Simpson perfectly displays the importance of nailing your mailing list. To paraphrase:-
Imagine you ran a face cream business, mailing 10,000 people each month and getting a 2% return (around 200 orders). If you wanted to grow this face cream business, what if you could grow your mailing list and send out 100,000 pieces of direct mail. Even if you now only got a 1% return then you’d still be getting 5 times more orders (1000 as opposed to 200).
That’s how direct mail works. The more you mail, the more orders you get, it’s simple maths.
The trick though, is to mail to the right 100,000. Reiterated once again in this book, is the importance and benefits of targeted list testing, especially when it comes to direct mail. As Simpson discusses, this is perhaps the biggest reason why a campaign is a success or a failure.
He discusses the concept of ‘increasing your mailing universe’. In short, growing your mailing list organically. Simpson speaks of the importance of defining your customer avatar (Click Here to use our client/ customer profiling tool) and researching your list early on. In a bid to reach out to a wider audience, he recommends changing the tone of your copy, testing prices and price points, and increasing the lifetime value of your customers.
Understanding the lifetime value of a customer (LVT) is hugely important when planning a direct mail campaign, say Simpson. LTV is the average amount a customer will spend with you over the time that, that customer will buy from you. This should help you to determine how much you’re willing to spend to acquire new customers.
He shares the example of a health club that planned a flyer campaign, offering a one-month gym trial for a one off fee. They added up the total revenue they expected from the one off fee and subtracted the cost of the campaign. They thought they’d be operating at a loss so didn’t go ahead with the campaign. Factor in the LTV of a customer though, saying on average people stay for a minimum six months once they signed up, the exact same campaign had the potential to bring in £17,000 revenue to the gym. That’s why it’s so important. For direct mail campaigns, Simpson recommends tracking 9-12 months LTV of your customers.
Simpson also talks about “Merge purge and data hygiene”. This is the act of cleaning up your database regularly, and is a must before embarking on any direct mail campaign. In fact he saved on client $52,000 by cleansing their database.
Check for duplicate records (including the same person’s home and business address), people you no longer want to market to, and incomplete and undeliverable addresses. Depending on the size of your list, you can do this manually, with software or outsource.
It’s Not Over Once It’s Out The Door…
So you’ve spent £3000 on a direct mail campaign, and now it’s out the door you can sit back and wait for the customers to call you, right? Wrong. Tracking is one of the most critical parts of the campaign and Simpson recommends tracking numbers (unique telephone numbers that are unique to that piece of direct mail, these can cost as little as £3 a month) and codes on each individual campaign as the easiest way to track leads and orders bought in from each sales piece. You also need to test, test and test again. There are multiple variables in every campaign that you can test (Headline, tone of the sales letter, the way it’s delivered, colour scheme, branding, offer, call to action, envelope etc) but you should only test one variable per direct mail piece at a time.
Final Words.
The Direct Mail Solution ends with a truth all business owners need to know. Only a tiny percentage of people give their attention to your advertising and marketing. You must fight for every response. Every headline choice, each photo, each graphic choice and each list choice matters even if it affects only one person per hundred reading it.
The Direct Mail Solution dissects the process of creating a campaign and places it under the microscope. If you’re serious about nailing your next mailing and want to grow your business, then this book is a must read. Click the link to get your copy.
Happy reading
Twelve intensive half-day meetings.
