Direct Mail for you IM'ers.

I just got an email from someone who owns a small brick & mortar biz but also is heavy into IM. His question asked why would people should pay $500 or more for a postcard mailing versus spending $300 to be in a coupon booklet that gets sent to a lot more people?

I think the answer to this might help some of you who have an IM background, get used to the way effective direct mail works.

Before continuing I just want to clear up what some terms mean in case you aren't familiar with them already.

IM = Internet Marketing

DM = Direct Mail

Solo, or Solo Ad = when internet marketers write a promotional email out and pay someone with a list of subscribers to send that email to. The goal is that the solo providers subscribers will open the email and read what's inside, in hopes of them clicking on whatever link you have for more information.

Clicks = the term used for when an email subscriber clicks on the link sent to them. For example if you did a solo email ad and the solo provider got you 100 "clicks" that means 100 people voluntarily clicked on the link that sends them to your page with more informatil.

Often it may take a list of 5,000 subscribers just to get 50 people to click on the link.. which would be 50 'clicks'.


Comparing DM to IM

We can compare IM and DM very closely if we relate them to the practice of doing a solo email ad.

Should you just send a solo ad out to any random group of people? No of course not. You have to send your solo email ad out to people that are likely to be interested in your product.

For example, if you created a product about training your parrot to talk you wouldn't want to pay for a solo email ad out to a list of people who want to make money online.

Will some of those people also have a parrot that they wish talked? Possibly, but why pay for something that isn't likely to reach your targeted audience.

Instead, you find a solo ad vendor who has a list of subscribers in the same niche your product is in, therefore increasing your chance of getting interested people to open up your email and find more information. That's step one.

So finding a targeted audience to market your product to is the first step, but then you need to convince those people to open your email, which means the subject line has to be strong enough to grab their attention and the more compelling it is, the more people will take a bigger peek at it to see what's next. That's step two.

Then you have to make your body copy even MORE compelling because you need to motivate that person to take the next action, which is directing them to even more information where they will be likely to ultimately purchase the product. That's step three.

The big question

Now let me ask you this fellow Im'er...

Would you rather spend $300 to send out your solo email ad to my list of 15,000 subscribers or would you rather spend $600 with me provided I guarantee you 1,500 clicks?

If you've done solo emails before you should know the answer to this. You'd take the clicks in a heartbeat. Today we're smart enough to understand that the size of the list doesn't matter. The open rate is what we base our value on.

Direct Mail

Direct mail is really similar to email marketing and most of the same rules apply. You need to have a targeted audience to send it to.

With a saturation mailing (no targeted list) the advertisers that are most likely to capture the interest of recipients are ones that appeal to a wide variety of people. A lot of people like pizza for example, so there's really no need to target pizza lovers since the majority of people already like pizza. Oil change stations, restaurants, bakeries, car washes, are all good examples of businesses that target the general population.

If you send a saturation mailing out and you're advertising a yacht dealership, you can't really expect many people to be interested, so instead you'd find a list of millionaires who are interested in boats.

Open Rate For DM

Just like in the solo email ad earlier, direct mail requires the recipients to actively open or view the message in order to find more information. With email marketing your 'subject line' needs to compel them to open it.

With direct mail you have all sorts of options to increase the chances of it being opened, such as strong headlines, colorful envelopes, or 3 dimensional feeling to it leading to curiousity.

This is important to consider when doing direct mailings because your open rate is critical. You could send your yacht dealership brochure to 10,000 millionaires who own boats but if you send it in an envelope that looks like a credit card offer, you'll have almost no opens.

Increasing the open rate

You can simply use a postcard because then there is virtually no 'open rate'. A strong headline is still important though because that's what will capture their interest to read more but still, 100% of the people will be exposed to the message which is unbelievably powerful.

Imagine sending a solo email ad out to a list of 15,000 targeted subscribers with a 100% open rate? That would be an IMers wet dream, but it's a reality in the offline world of direct mail.

Solving the original problem

Now back to the original email I got from the business owner/Im'er, the answer is that coupon booklets that are sent out to 20,000 random people may only have half of them opened. The chance of the advertisers message being noticed is significantly reduced. There's often competitors advertising right along side of them as well.

You can also even throw in the fact that people who open coupon books may not be the best choice of recipients to target in the first place, kind of like groupon buyers.

The mistake is basing all the value on the list rather than the actual views. In reality, the coupon book is significantly more expensive because you may only get 500 views for that $300 versus 10,000 views for $500 using a co-op postcard with 100% forced exposure.


The offer is the response accelerator

For both internet marketing and direct mail marketing, the more compelling an offer is, the more sales there will be. Why do you think crappy info products can sell thousands within a day? It's because of strong headline copy, body copy, and marketing to people who are interested.

Now if you want to really turbocharge sales, you add things like reduced prices for a very limited time. That will spur people to get off their *** and respond with a purchase or they risk losing out on this incredible limited time offer.

Same thing with direct mail guys, the offer will be what really accelerates response.

Overview

So I hope this helps you understand how similar direct mail and IM can be and why the value can often be deceiving.

The list size doesn't mean squat compared to open rate.
The $300 shared coupon booklet going to 25,000 people is more expensive than the $600 shared postcard going to 10,000 people.

to compare the same concept with IM: The $300 solo email ad to a list of 15,000 people is more expensive than the $600 solo email ad for 1500 clicks.

The headlines will capture more peoples attention.
Screw this up and don't expect people to dig into find out what you're actually offering.

Compelling offers will spur more response. Screw this up and don't expect your solo emails to convert highly, or your direct mails to generate significant response.


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Just like most brick & mortar business owners, you as an IM'er may not understand what exactly will make effective direct mail campaign but hopefully now you grasp it enough to be more comfortable with the concept.



- Bob