Mailing Offline Customers - Yay or Nay?

Peter, when understanding the effective use of pain,
there are 3 things to consider...

1 How big it is
2 How soon it will happen
3 How likely it will happen

Those are the quick filters a prospect will use.

Those will help you to craft a more compelling message.

Best,
Doctor E. Vile

Best success I've had using any of those methods for starting a conversation with prospects has been with cold email.

I've used direct mail and phone.

Haven't tried cold email, only because many brick & mortar small business owners that I target simply don't use email as much/often.

Anyway I've had much more success using the phone for the initial contact and then following up with a mix of direct mail, phone and email.

But what you're going to have to do is test.

Hey thanks for all of the replies. The reason I ask is most of my prospects I cannot find an email for. Some don't even have a website. My hope is, I can send snail mail showing the issue they currently have and that will be more personal

Interesting you said that jamesfreddyc.. I've sent out about 20 emails and had 0 response... keep in mind I realize that is a tiny sample size but like I said, I can't find the email addresses all that easily! I may have passed by thousands of businesses I could approach only because there is no email address listed on their site, OR they have no site.

I'm curious, what is your typical response rate via cold email?

It isn't really something that should be a this or that type deal. If you can call them, call them. If you can email them, email them. If you can mail them, mail them.

There is no "best" way to market to potential customers. Each thing has its' advantages and disadvantages. The more people you can reach, the better your chances are of them doing business with you.

I've found physical mail to be good when you've got a few things in place.

You need to be sending the mail to the right prospect. I don't buy leads. All we do is choose similar clients to our existing clients. Most of those are corporates or regional Government departments.

We usually do an initial phone call to the prospect or the department we are targeting just letting them know we are sending them something in the post and we usually say it is because so and so from other business suggested we call.

Then we send the item, which in our case is usually a physical sample with a recommendation of how others in the same industry or department etc are utilising our product.

I have staff making up various components of the mailing package out of waste product from their other work orders and we stockpile a few packs ready to go at all times so we send 3-4 mail packs each week.

We include testimonials and invite them to visit product specific landing page to check out other features. Provide all contact info for them to reply and also let them know we will follow up with a phone call.

In most cases we get a response before we need to follow-up and they are usually email responses requesting pricing structures, terms etc.

In about 10% of cases we get direct sales from the initial mailing via the website product link from the package.

In the cases where we get no response we follow up via phone call to ask if the samples arrived and whether there are any questions.

This is often the most valuable call we make as in the cases where the client is already buying a similar product from a competitor they will often tell us the problems they are having, the prices they are paying, volumes they are ordering amongst other things.

We usually make a really soft pitch at that point to just email over a "special quote" that they can keep on file for when they are next considering a purchase.

Sales may not be immediate but I find these types of prospects can purchase anywhere from 3 to 12 months later and in many cases we get them passing our details on through their internal departments and in many cases we go from getting a small sample order to a larger order and if the client is National or Multi-national we often end up picking up orders from all branches.

So I'd sort of say mailing is a pretty important part of business generation for me.

The solution here is simple. Do all of them.
Marketing is about testing.

Personally I would call and email because its free and you can get started yesterday
and if I was getting traction but thought I could get more from paid methods like direct mail then I would consider it.

Wow pure gold in this thread. Thanks to everyone for all of this valuable information.

jamesfreddyc can you give me a link to a specific Aaron Ross product that you feel will help me best?

I only use email to find advertisers for my co op mailing program.

It works, if you have lots of patience.

Rinse and repeat...test different wording...tweak ongoing.

This is so subjective, because some guys are going to be rockstars on the phone with cold leads and others are going to hate it, so they'll opt for email or direct mail.

I like my prospects calling me - so I will use a really creative direct mail approach, or email them something of value. Anything you can do to get your foot in the door.

But whatever you do - know who you are prospecting. Know their pains, what issues are affecting their success online, etc. How can you help them right now, and in the future? You can find out lot just by spending 5-10 minutes on a little research.

As some really good offliners have already mentioned- there's more than one way to position yourself in front of qualified prospects. So give each one a fair shot, and find out what works best for you.