Marketing by mail

Black Enterprise, June, 1996 by Robert W. Bly

The author of Power-Packed Direct Mail shows why this marketing alternative may be the best way to grow your business

HAVE YOU RECENTLY STARTED using direct mail, or are you thinking of using direct mail for the first time? Congratulations. You're taking the first step on a road leading to more leads, inquiries, sales and profits.

If you've already tried direct mail but were disappointed with the results, don't despair. By learning new techniques and avoiding past mistakes, you can make direct mail work for you as never before.

WHAT IS DIRECT MAIL?

Direct mail is unsolicited advertising or promotional material (that is, material the recipient has not requested) sent to an individual or company through the mail.

Most direct mail is sent to rented mailing lists containing the names and addresses of people your company has not done business with before. The purpose of such a mailing is customer acquisition: You want to turn this person into a customer by designing the mailing to generate an order. Or you can use the mailing to generate a lead, then follow up to convert the prospect into a customer.

Direct mail is one example of a type of marketing called direct response or direct marketing. Other examples include telemarketing, infomercials and other TV commercials giving a toll-free 800 number, and magazine and newspaper ads containing reply coupons you can use to request information, order a product or send for a sample.

A direct mail letter that asks you to fill in and return an order form to subscribe to a magazine or join a book club is one type of direct response advertising. "Everything I do is direct response," says Howard Ruff, publisher of Financial Success Report. "How can you measure how well you are doing if you don't use direct response?"

DIRECT MAIL IS BOOMING

Direct mail is a widely used and fast-growing area of marketing.

Consider these facts:

* According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), direct mail is the third most popular advertising medium (TV commercials and newspaper advertising lead the pack), with 19% of all advertising dollars spent on direct mail.

* Pitney Bowes recently surveyed small businesses and found that, of those using direct mail, 85% are pleased with the results, citing new customer acquisition as the primary benefit.

* A survey by the Printing Industries of America found the printing of direct mail to be one of the fastest-growing sources of revenue for printers in the 1990s, second only to brochures and other marketing support materials--and ahead of annual reports, inserts, coupons and wrappers.

* In 1992, direct marketing generated revenue of $350 billion. During chat year, 55% of adults in the United States ordered one or more products by mail.

* A Simmons Market Research study showed that 68% of consumers surveyed said they found direct mail interesting or useful. Only 15% of those surveyed throw away direct mail without reading it, while 75% open and read their direct mail or set it aside for reference.

* Approximately 13.5 billion catalogs were mailed in 1992 (the majority of them, my wife notes, to our home).

* The direct marketing industry provides more than 5 million jobs, accounting for 6% of U.S. employment.

* More than 50 billion direct mail pieces are mailed annually--more than one every other day for every American.

ADVANTAGES OF USING DIRECT MAIL

Obviously, direct mail is just one of the many weapons available in your advertising arsenal. So you may ask, "Why spend money on direct mail? With that money, I could run an ad or a TV commercial, call prospects on the phone or hire a salesperson. Why direct mail?"

Direct mail has a number of unique characteristics that make it the medium of choice in many marketing situations:

* It generates and immediate, tangible response. Although it can do many things, direct mail is primarily a response medium. Few other advertising techniques can match direct mail when it comes to generating immediate replies in volume. If you want people to renew their insurance policies, visit your trade show booth, requests a demo diskette of your new software, send for a free brochure, place an order or subscribe to your publication, direct mail is a good bet for you.

* Direct mail can pay for itself--quickly. No other form of advertising can give you such a rapid return on your investment. Especially with lead-generating direct mail, where the size of individual orders is larger than in mail order, a single sale resulting from your direct mail package can often pay back the cost of the entire mailing.

And in mail order selling, a package that is profitable--that is, a package that generates $1.50 to 2 or more in revenue for every $1 spent on mailing--is literally a money-generating machine. You simply keep mailing to more names on more lists, and collect the profits.

* The response to direct mail can be measured-- scientifically and precisely. When you run an ad, do you know how successful it will be? If your goal is to build an image, how can you measure whether a particular ad or series of ads had changed the public's image of you (let alone how much it has changed or how this translates into greater sales for you)?