Does Direct Mail really work?

Yes, ultimately I'm trying to sell theses people on my product. They are computer consultants and (like me until recently) know nothing of how to effectively market their services using direct mail.

If I enter a room with a hundred computer geeks who haven't a clue on how powerful a DM piece can be for growing their business, me being the sole voice saying "It works", especially when a thread on the subject is filled with "tried it, it doesn't", doesn't make me look like much an authority.

Yeah, I know. I wrote a 23 page instructional guide on how to modify, mail and follow-up with my sales letter so my customers could use it to achieve the 3.5% conversion rate I did.

Looking forward to learning how to improve that conversion rate a bit, but 3.5% is still quite effective for the purposes of the letter and for my customers.

Please believe me Warren, this is much easier said than done. When it gets down to brass tacks, you hear a whole lotta "I'm not quite ready yet. As soon as I take care of so and so..."

I think I've gotta raise my prices. If I get these guys paying a grand a pop, darn straight they'll actually use the stuff.

Thanks for the advice.
-Rob

Dan, My Man!

So sorry for not keeping you in the loop. It's been pretty wild since testing the mailing. Right along side testing the letter, I ran my first product launch, which also went really well.

So immediately following that, I jumped right into traffic generation so I could finally take advantage of all this good stuff I've got going by actually having some customers to sell to.

Lots going on and we'll be talking real soon!

Thanks for the congrats man. I owe you the same!
-Rob

Well, I can tell everyone who's reading here that Daniel Scott is the MAN and if you need a hand making sure your copy gets results, then contact the guy toots-sweet!

Now give me till tomorrow to write you up something proper.

Thanks again, Dan. Lots more good stuff to come!
-Rob

What do you suppose is happening with most email these days? 4 years ago, marketers were getting open rates of 75-80%. Now, open rates of 25-30% for email is more often the norm.

The problem is most people do direct mail incorrectly and try it once... then complain that it didn't work for them.

Completely false.

If you chose the right prospects to target and get a list of those prospects or customers (a.k.a your house list), then it's highly targeted.

Earlier this year, I wrote a 14 page direct mail letter that have pulled $70K in the first 3 days of the promotion. When I owned a massage therapy center years ago, one of my direct mail pieces pulled a 17% response rate from my house list.

According to DM News, business direct mail has been increasing in use in 2010, not declining. Information publishers like Agora, Boardroom, and Rodale are increasing their mailings, not cutting them back.

And many of them are mailing bigger mailing pieces, not smaller. I just finished a 24 page salesletter for a major mailer and the first mail-out will be to a list of 500K targeted prospects. We'll track the response rates and then roll out to even larger lists from there.

As for response rate... it depends on what you're selling and who you target with your offer. ROI is actually more important than conversion rate.

Case in point: If you're selling high-end cosmetic dentistry where the average patient is worth $5-10K, then you don't need a high conversion rate to have a very profitable direct mail campaign.

If it's a lead generation piece, then you may be fine with taking a small loss on the front end because you have a number of back-end offers already lined up to offer that new customer.

Not likely unless his average new customer is worth $10-20K... then he's not going to care about the response rate as long as he's getting positive ROI on his mailings.

Of course, I know a college dropout who built a 8 figure per year in sales painting company using direct mail as his primary marketing method.

That's an ad insert or a piggy-back flier. That's not direct mail in the traditional sense because you don't have any control over the list (or list segment) being used and it means you're probably poorly targeting. Maybe with a national newspaper like the Wall Street Journal, you can select an area to mail to, but it's not nearly as easy to target with as traditional direct mail.

Mike