18th Day of Christmas

Take Aim and Fire

Whoo-hoo, today is the day I finally reach into my bag and pull out a gift for direct marketing. This form of marketing can either be one of your greatest returns on your investment or your biggest money pit. Disclaimer: I am biased; direct marketing is one of my favorites.

Direct marketing is when you send your marketing message directly to an individual. Seems obvious, but too many folks get caught up in the size of the list instead of the quality and purpose of the content. Traditionally, this is email, snail mail and telemarketing. Twitter, FaceBook and LinkedIn can also be used for direct marketing.

I love this type of marketing because it is measurable. Let’s look at the numbers. Say your email list is 1,000 addresses. You consistently receive an open rate of 5 percent. That means that 50 people open it. Out of that maybe you piqued 4 percent to click through or follow through. That is a total of two people, who looked but did not buy. At the end of the day you received no new business. That is a money pit. If you were not measuring, looking and assessing you might have been thrilled with the size of your list. Clearly your message to this list was sent to the trash.

When you send something to someone, you want him or her to open it, read it, and act on it. It could be a time-sensitive announcement. Maybe you are reputation building, or just keeping in touch. Whatever you are doing, swap your carpet bombing for my gift.

Today’s gift is a bow and a quiver of arrows. I want you to review the stacks of data you have collected and decide these two important things: When is the best time to speak directly to your customer in the sales cycle? And what is it you want them to do then? You will need to segment your list into interests, as not all of your messages will be interesting to everyone.

Direct marketing is a flexible medium, especially powerful if you have a long tail to your product or service sales cycle. Although sending out an email seems really easy, I did not give you just one arrow. I gave you a quiver full of arrows to launch a campaign. Whatever you decide to do, it must be done with regularity. You will be constantly tweaking, adjusting, fine tuning, and honing your message. This is exactly what professionals do. I hear that groan. Yes, this takes a great deal of work.

Paying attention to strategy, content development and quality craftsmanship assures that the effort you put in will be well rewarded. Never was the saying truer than in direct marketing: Garbage in is garbage out. Make sure you remain a welcome visitor.

What has your experience been using direct marketing?