How to Fail at Direct Mail
Direct mail can provide so much benefit to small businesses that I’m surprised how many continue to misuse the medium. Too often, mail is sent out with no offer, no inspection of the message, and no real attempt to sell or get a prospect to buy.
Why is that? Do businesses feel that it is too crass to do things such as selling or trying to convince others to change their viewpoint? Sending mail out with no goal or purpose in mind is simply wasteful and it may be worse than sending nothing at all.
Too many businesses have bought into the general advertising approach of stating your company name and nothing else. The faulty idea is that your company name is all that is needed to motivate a person to buy. That idea is as ridiculous as it sounds. Yet business owners or groups continue to promote their business or charity with nothing more than a postcard.
The question seems to be, does it work? My view? No! It gives groups or businesses an opportunity to feel that they are doing something, anything, for their business. But these businesses measure nothing. The only benefit I can see is that without any real measured result, they can say we put out three mailings in this quarter.
Exciting, isn’t it? How did they do?
Who knows? General advertising is putting your name out there often, and hoping that people will recall your company name or product when you want them to remember it. There is an assumption that if you mail anything at all, you are doing direct mail. Not quite.
Why do you mail these pieces out? Are you communicating anything at all? Are you gathering information? Are you building a mailing list? Are you making an initial sale? Are you getting people involved? These are all legitimate things you can do with direct mail.
Are you communicating in a way people can understand? Are they responding?
It seems that a majority of businesses resort to postcards. It has become hard to tell what result they are hoping for. It can’t be address information. People are not going to send personal details back to you via a postcard. You may get them to a Web site to enter information. Are they doing that? Do you follow the niceties of conversation and thank them for the information?
I can see inviting prospects to a show or a seminar. All you need do is get their curiosity up. Ask an intriguing question that can only be answered by attending your event. If your question is compelling enough, you will get a good response. But don’t expect a postcard do a letters’ job. It will fail. It can be used to remind someone of an event, but don’t use it to solicit funds unless you can get the prospect to a Web site and do your pitch at that point.
Do remember that you are several steps away from being able to deliver your message when you are using a Web site as a medium to deliver your message. You are making it very easy for a prospect to shut down your attempt at communicating with no feeling of guilt.
Does the postcard seem like the best way to deliver your message?
Remember that while a postcard is a low cost route to deliver your message, it is also full of challenges. If you send an inexpensive postcard and the message doesn’t get to your prospect, no matter how cheap the method is, it is too expensive.
Albert Saxon is president of Saxon Marketing, Indian Orchard, MA.
