Its often called Junque Mail. And with good reason! Why the fancy spelling? Because any way you spell it, junk mail is often very expensive and not always profitable.
Actually and take it from someone who was once responsible for upward of 50 million pieces of direct mail a year the return on investment (ROI) is often marginal at best.
First off, there are no guarantees of success. In most cases the advertiser will be lucky if even two people out of 100 who receive a particular piece of direct mail buy whats being offered. That means 980 recipients out of ever 1,000 who receive that direct mail package or kit as theyre known, will throw it out.
At a cost of between $500 and $800 per thousand kits to produce, thats a lot of precious advertising dollars ending up in the trash bin. For the uninitiated, a package or kit includes a variety of items in the envelope reaching a home.
Theres the traditional sales letter, usually from one to four pages long. Then the brochure describing in words and pictures what that sales letter could describe only in words. Theres also a response device. Never call it an Order Form. Heaven forbid! It can be called a Membership Application, a Certificate, a Response Card, but never an Order Form because people baulk at ordering.
Ordering anything instantly communicates the expectation that the person ordering will have to pay for what was ordered. But joining or responding? Well, it may take a little longer to realize, but that, too, must be paid for.
In addition to the all of the above, theres also the postage-paid BRE, short for Business Reply Envelope. Or the no-postage-paid, preaddressed CRE, Courtesy Reply Envelope. Gotta have something to put that Membership Application in, right?
Oh, and most kits also include the infamous lift note, a little piece of colored paper that says in essence, If youve decided not to accept our offer, but before you throw our expensive direct mail package in with the trash, please read this. Its a last ditch attempt to get you to do what? To order, of course!
And did I mention one of the major roadblocks to using direct mail kits? Getting people to actually open the envelope in which all that stuff is stuffed. Unless theres a grabber printed on the front of that envelope, a few choice words that make a recipient want to instantly tear open the envelope, that recipient, along with 98 percent of the others, will pitch their unopened envelopes in the waste basket. And, yes, there are specialists who get paid big bucks to right effective grabber words.
Is there a better way, a less expensive way, a more effective way to use the mail to sell an individual product or service? My suggestion, based on how well they seem to be working for a growing number of companies, is postcards. No, not those dinky little old-fashioned ones. Im talking about really big postcards, giant postcards, living color postcards, even die-cut postcards, ones in the shapes of cars, or trucks, or cuddly kitty cats.
With these kinds of postcards, theres no envelope that most be opened before an offer can be read. The message, whatever product, service or idea is being sold, will be right there in gorgeous living color for the world to see. And, because of limited space a smaller canvas on which to paint a rosy word picture of the product or service there will be fewer words for the recipient to read. Strange as it seems, people seem to avoid reading these days. They do, however, like colorful pictures.
Mailing list costs are the same for postcards or kits, but the cost of printing postcards will be significantly less. No longer in that $500 to $800 range. Less than half of that. Much less. So, if you want to be a real standout in someones mail box, testing several types of postcards could be worth your effort. Testing, after all, is a large part of what marketing is all about.
2006, Philip A. Grisolia, CBC
Phil Grisolia is an award-winning copywriter, an author, business coach, and educator. To learn more about Phil and the help he provides for his small-business clients, visit him at http://PhilGrisolia.com . While there, be sure to sign up for a free subscription to his best-in-class newsletter Making Sense of Marketing - and learn how you can request a free, no-obligation analysis of your firms marketing efforts.
Direct Marketing for Non-Profit Groups Considered
If you run a non-profit business then perhaps you should try direct marketing and direct-mail to get volunteers and increase donations to your non-profit. Direct-mail and direct marketing does not just work for businesses, as it is a way to catch pe...
Direct Marketing Tools
In business, whenever you identify a new market that you know is going to be receptive and fruitful for your product and service then you also are soon faced with the problem that advertising in that market is not easy to obtain. This is due to the f...
Direct Mail
Increase your companys market reach through direct mail advertising. Send the right people the appropriate brochures, newsletters, and flyers about your company or product launches and see how this kind of mileage can increase your sales and customer...
Direct Mail Marketing to Get a Job
Can you use direct mail marketing to get a job? Well consider if your will that most people already do, because they mail out their resumes to Corporations where they are interested in applying too right? Sure, also solo-professionals, consultants, s...
How To Use Direct Mail Marketing To Your Advantage
Direct mail marketing has become more and more popular over the past couple of years. Companies have been searching for direct marketing solutions that help to grow their business for the cheapest amount of money possible. Direct mail marketing has...
Direct Mail Marketing and Direct Mail Strategies for Gift Basket Companies
Selling gift baskets is not easy and getting a gift basket company going is a marketing challenge in all regards. The challenge is to get a substantial base of customers and allow for the word-of-mouth advertising and referral base to build from ther...
Direct Mail and Direct Mail Marketing for Crisis Centers
Crisis Centers with special call in numbers can do wonders to help people with severe depression and such, and yet if those people do not call in their time of need, then the crisis center can do little good for that individual. The most important th...
Direct Mail Marketing and Direct Mail for Hobby Shops
Local Hobby Shops can do very well as a small business but to do a good business they need a strong customer base. How can a small hobby shop get a customer base and then rely on word-of-mouth advertising to propel future customers thru referrals net...
Direct Marketing Associations
Direct marketing is the most dynamic solution today for sales promotion, lead generation, and traffic building, as well as mail-order sales and database marketing. Like in any other industry-related service, associations also govern direct marketing....
Direct Mail for Taxicab Companies
Taxicab companies must be sure to fill up those cabs so they can max out their ridership and expand to buy new cabs as well. If not the old cabs end up with too many miles with low income-per-revenue figures and that hurts their forward progress in t...
