Targeting and Timing -- The Keys to Successful Small Business Direct Mailing List Marketing
I consult with dozens of small business owners each week. Without exception, each seeks to grow their business as inexpensively as possible--especially in today's tenuous marketplace. Some are quite focused on how to go about building their business and have an actionable direct mailing lists plan that they are just looking to me to fulfill with a list or help them tweek. For them, I am happy to oblige.
But for the most part, the small business and home business owners I speak with fall into three categories: I only want 100 Leads, I Want an Email List, Bigger is Better.
For those looking for 100 leads, or for 1,000 for that matter, there really is nothing I can say or do that can help them. Why? Because at those tiny numbers, the likelihood of getting any responses is remote. We have very low minimums--$200 for Consumer and $250 for Business. Why? Because that is the bare minimum that our experience tells us that you can have opportunity to receive a reasonable response from. If you don't have budget for that, it is going to be quite difficult to make a go of using direct mailing lists to grow your business.
For there person coming in telling me that they want to buy an email list to drive people to their website, or to build foot traffic at their brick and mortar location, I typically ask why? Nine times out of ten when I tell them how much they cost and what the minimum quantities are, they say that it's very expensive. And they are right. Quality emails are not cheap. General Internet untargeted emails (Bulk) are cheap. Then I launch into my spiel and they usually shift interest to a mailing list strategy...like the one to follow shortly.
And for the optimist contacting me saying they want a count for all of the people who buy from catalogs in the country...I try to reign them in.
Always work within your budget. There is no point in overspending on your test. What if you need to make changes and re-test? You'll neeed budget for that as well.
Targeting
Define your target market prospects as tightly as possible. Make the parameters for your direct mailing lists narrow, not broad. You can always loosen up your criteria to increase circulation once you have found your sweet spot.
At this point, I want to share that I ALWAYS recommend that a small business do postcard marketing to drive traffic to their on and/or offline businesses.
Buying Your Direct Mailing Lists
When I first started in the Direct Marketing Industry back in the 1980's, the big buzz was "shotgun" marketing. Lists were relatively inexpensive, postage was a small fraction of what it is today, and the philosophy of the day with many successful marketers was "the more hooks you put in the sea, the more fish you catch." And then targeting started to become more important. And more important. And more important.
Today the buzz words are "relevance", "content", "frequency", or timeliness. Relevance is addressed with proper targeting. Content is strictly a factor of the marketers' ability to effectively communicate their message to the recipient. And Frequency is the focus of this post.
Timing
Frequency, frequency, frequency. In email, you can find marketing experts that claim you need to send a prospect message 5 times or more to maximize effectivness. Well I have found that it is not a lot different with certain direct mail.
You are a small business that is opening a new location, or seeks to generate new customer activity at a site (New Memberships, New Customers, etc...) then you want to saturate your target market within your target geography. And to do so you need to mail more than once over a period of time. Say once every three weeks for at least 3 times. This enables you to build up recognition with a prospective customer (even though that postcard might get tossed the first time, there will be some recognition established for the second or third time received). They might have looked briefly at the card, considered it and either put it aside--where it sits until this day covered by something, or they might dismiss you the first time. But when they receive your card the second time, they take action.
So my recommendation is to:
1. Define your Budget.
2. Target your most responsive customers.
3. Purchase direct mailing lists for unlimited use, keeping within #1 above.