One of our subscribers wrote us regarding last week’s article on using personalization in direct mail campaigns. In that article I suggested that it was never a good idea to use both the first and last name in the salutation of your direct mail letter. I advised that instead you should address your letter either “Dear John” or “Dear Mr. Smith” but never “Dear John Smith.” What our readers are saying
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A personalized sales letter can often improve response, especially in database marketing. But poor personalization can hurt response. Here are 3 common personalization blunders you can’t afford to make
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It’s sad, but even when your customers want to receive your email, it still might end up getting trashed. Recently, we discovered that an average of 20.5% of all permission-based emails in the second half of last year ended up in recipients’ spam folders or didn’t get delivered at all. 73.4% of consumers said they have had email they wanted to receive either end up in their spam folders or go missing.
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The recent postage increase is just settling in and already they are already talking about another one. In fact, it’s possible that a case regarding a postage increase of 5.4% for next year may be filed with the Postal Board of Governors as soon as next month.
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If you’ve been doing direct marketing for any length of time, you know that a powerful P.S. can dramatically increase direct mail response. And everyone who knows direct marketing rules agrees. But most experts do a P.S. wrong. Tips to failproof your P.S.The main blunder many direct marketers make is failing to understand the psychology behind the P.S. They don’t use it as a hook to get customers intrigued or motivated to read the letter.
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Back in the 1990s, I experimented with putting yellow post-it notes on the outer envelope of my clients' direct marketing campaigns. In those tests, we saw a 12% to 30% increase in response. The post-it note was effective for both consumer and business-to-business mailings. However, this direct marketing technique was most effective with business to business.
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Several issues ago I raised what has turned out to be a fairly controversial issue. That of dishonesty in our industry. I have had a number of comments from readers about whether my concern over letter shops and other vendors is justified. There was a theme in the comments that we should only be working with vendors that “we trust.” My response to that is that I started out trusting my vendors...but have learned the hard way that I must take precautions to ensure that my trust is warranted.
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Since the advent of the Web, an interesting phenomenon has occurred: It has become more difficult for marketers to accurately track the response from their mailings.
Many multichannel marketers have as many as 50% of their orders untracked (I have one client who's untracked orders looks to be up to 70%). Most marketers will be in the 30% to 40% range.
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Over 40 million Americans will move this year. And of those, a startling 35% will not complete a change of address form with the post office.
That means if you rely on National Change of Address (NCOA) data to update your mailing list, you are going to miss more than a third of your bad addresses every year.
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Thrilling Results! Amazing ROI! Rip Roaring Response Rates!
Why your company should look into 3D direct marketing!
When you've got a high margin product to sell to a small group of hard-to-reach executives or very wealthy prospects, very few marketing techniques work as well as 3D direct mail.
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