So last week I left you with the basics on getting commercially available lists for your business. As usual I posted that last conversation on my blog. To review, go over to the blog. Today we’ll go over some other ways to grow your mailing list.
One way to grown your existing list is to use “turn-key” vendors who can get you lists that match your target audience. Then, they do the entire direct mailing for you, including the writing of the copy, printing, mailing, all the grunt work you shouldn’t be doing. we do a lot of this for our clients here at 3D Mail.
There are two others that I would highly recommend you check out. One is Dean Killingbeck's New Customers Now program. Dean works with restaurants, auto repair shops, chiro's, dentists and others to get new people moving into your area and introduce them to your business. Check out the site and tell Dean Travis over at 3D Mail Sent ya.
The other is Rory Fatt's Royalty Rewards. Royalty Rewards is a complete "auto-pilot" rewards/loyalty program that is great for getting your clients to come back more often and get them to buy more each time they come in. A great combination! Here's a video you can watch on Royalty Rewards. It's hosted by Rory and my dad Keith. We did a webinar on this a few months ago. Check it out here. I give both my highest endorsement.
A third way to grow your list is by compiling it yourself through lead generation marketing. We've discussed lead generation marketing before so I'll be very brief here.
Lead generation marketing is the ultimate ‘pull’ marketing strategy. It allows people who are interested in your product or service to pull information for themselves about you and your business, rather than
the usually ‘push’ marketing that you usually see.
Almost all “Madison Avenue” marketing is push marketing. What you need for prospects to ‘pull’ information from you is great bait, or a lead generation magnet. This is something that you’re prospects request from you. They come in many forms, but the most typical is free information about your business or industry.
That's a wrap on our discussion on mailing lists. I'll be back next week with some more great information for you. See you then!
To Your Direct Mail Success,
Travis Lee
www.3DMailResults.com
Friday, May 28, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
How To Get Mailing Lists
Earlier in the week we discussed the lists you should be using in your business. If you missed that discussion or want to review, go on over to the past blog entries to catch up. Today we’ll talk about ways to get lists, and how to grow your own in-house list.
One way to get a list is to rent commercially available lists. This article discusses the basics of renting lists. We'll get to other ways of growing your list in upcoming tips.
First, understand you will be RENTING these lists for one-time, two-time or multiple use and the price will go up with each option. The lists will be “seeded” with false names and addresses that deliver your mail to the list owners, so they can police the use of their lists.
Second, you’ll probably wind up working with a List Broker. A good List Broker can be of great help to you and can usually help you uncover ideas that you did not originally consider. You’ll find the List Brokers in your own area in your Yellow Pages, under MAILING LISTS and LIST BROKERS or similar categories.
Third, you will need to educate yourself about available lists, in order to clarify your ideas about what you want BEFORE meeting with or talking with List Brokers. You can start at your nearest major city, main public library, where you’ll find a current or one-year-old copy of a huge directory called “SRDS”, for ‘Standard Rate And Data Service’.
While at the library, you should also read some back issues of trade magazines like Direct Marketing and DM News. In a couple of hours, you can become conversant in the terminology, the language of the list business, so you can ask smart questions and deal with List Brokers.
There’s more on renting lists, but I think you’ve got the basics covered here. Next week we’ll talk about ways to grow your own in-house list without have to buy or rent a list. See you next week.
To Your Direct Mail Success,
Travis Lee
www.3DMailResults.com
One way to get a list is to rent commercially available lists. This article discusses the basics of renting lists. We'll get to other ways of growing your list in upcoming tips.
First, understand you will be RENTING these lists for one-time, two-time or multiple use and the price will go up with each option. The lists will be “seeded” with false names and addresses that deliver your mail to the list owners, so they can police the use of their lists.
Second, you’ll probably wind up working with a List Broker. A good List Broker can be of great help to you and can usually help you uncover ideas that you did not originally consider. You’ll find the List Brokers in your own area in your Yellow Pages, under MAILING LISTS and LIST BROKERS or similar categories.
Third, you will need to educate yourself about available lists, in order to clarify your ideas about what you want BEFORE meeting with or talking with List Brokers. You can start at your nearest major city, main public library, where you’ll find a current or one-year-old copy of a huge directory called “SRDS”, for ‘Standard Rate And Data Service’.
While at the library, you should also read some back issues of trade magazines like Direct Marketing and DM News. In a couple of hours, you can become conversant in the terminology, the language of the list business, so you can ask smart questions and deal with List Brokers.
There’s more on renting lists, but I think you’ve got the basics covered here. Next week we’ll talk about ways to grow your own in-house list without have to buy or rent a list. See you next week.
To Your Direct Mail Success,
Travis Lee
www.3DMailResults.com
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
The Lists You Should Be Using
So where’d we leave off… That’s right, using direct mail and lists. To see where we started off last week, see my first blog post on the subject. To see where we left off last week on the use of lists, see that blog post below. Today we’ll pick up where our last post left off on the lists you should be using in your business.
The first thing to know is that all lists are not created equally, nor should they be. Today we’ll go over the four different kinds of lists you’ll encounter, in order of importance, starting with the most important.
First and foremost is your list of current and active clients segmented and sorted by a myriad of
topics. They can be sorted by SIC code in B2B, the products or services they’ve purchased, they’re buying behavior (do they buy only on sale, or at full price, one time of year, or year round, by brand etc), demographics and psychographics and many others. Your task as a marketer of your business is to ID and filter the segments that make the most sense
in your business.
A distant second to your sorted and segmented in-house list is your in-house list unsorted. While this certainly is better than advertising to the unwashed masses, it’s certainly not as good as having your list sorted and segmented as we described above.
Third on the list is a response list. A response list is a mailing list of individuals who have responded previously to direct mail offers, hopefully selling similar/complimentary to your. You can further segment these lists by the demographics and psychograpics we have discussed in previous posts.
Finally, there are complied lists of consumers and businesses. This is basic consumer and business data taken by survey, public records etc. There can be and is money in lists like these. You need to be sure you’re getting the right kind of demo and psychographics to match your copy and your offer to them.
There are few more kinds of lists out there, but those are the one’s we’ll concern ourselves with the most. So how can you go about getting those lists? We’ll talk about that a little later in a separate post.
As we discussed, getting the proper list should be your #1 priority when starting a new direct mail campaign. You’re in-house list should be your most profitable one. But what if you’re ready to move to cold prospects? How should you start? I’ve teamed up with a list
company to make that quick and easy for you. Just some of the benefits include:
To Your Direct Mail Success,
Travis Lee
www.3DMailResults.com
The first thing to know is that all lists are not created equally, nor should they be. Today we’ll go over the four different kinds of lists you’ll encounter, in order of importance, starting with the most important.
First and foremost is your list of current and active clients segmented and sorted by a myriad of
topics. They can be sorted by SIC code in B2B, the products or services they’ve purchased, they’re buying behavior (do they buy only on sale, or at full price, one time of year, or year round, by brand etc), demographics and psychographics and many others. Your task as a marketer of your business is to ID and filter the segments that make the most sense
in your business.
A distant second to your sorted and segmented in-house list is your in-house list unsorted. While this certainly is better than advertising to the unwashed masses, it’s certainly not as good as having your list sorted and segmented as we described above.
Third on the list is a response list. A response list is a mailing list of individuals who have responded previously to direct mail offers, hopefully selling similar/complimentary to your. You can further segment these lists by the demographics and psychograpics we have discussed in previous posts.
Finally, there are complied lists of consumers and businesses. This is basic consumer and business data taken by survey, public records etc. There can be and is money in lists like these. You need to be sure you’re getting the right kind of demo and psychographics to match your copy and your offer to them.
There are few more kinds of lists out there, but those are the one’s we’ll concern ourselves with the most. So how can you go about getting those lists? We’ll talk about that a little later in a separate post.
Marketing Tip Reader’s Only Special
As we discussed, getting the proper list should be your #1 priority when starting a new direct mail campaign. You’re in-house list should be your most profitable one. But what if you’re ready to move to cold prospects? How should you start? I’ve teamed up with a list
company to make that quick and easy for you. Just some of the benefits include:
- 95% Average deliverability rate. Your mail gets delivered and into the right hands each time.
- 92% Delivery guarantee. Other list companies only guarantee 90%. You mail will get delivered, opened and read.
- Updated monthly so you have the most up to date records and information
- 100% Nine digit zip codes
- Age, gender, income, marital status & more!
- Date of Birth
- Interests and Hobbies
- Credit
- New Movers
- New Homeowners
- New Borrowers
- Pre-Movers
- Even Voting party preference
- Plus Dozens more!
- SIC codes
- Sales volume
- Employee size
- Phone numbers
- Emails
- Website information
- Women Owned Indicator
- Square footage
- And dozens more
To Your Direct Mail Success,
Travis Lee
www.3DMailResults.com
Friday, May 14, 2010
The #1 Reason to Use Direct Mail
So, did I do a good enough job of teasing you and leaving you hanging with my last email? To review our conversation from earlier on the benefits of direct mail, see my blog post.
So the #1 reason to use direct mail is that we get to use lists! I know you’re probably saying to yourself, “Well… Duh, of course we use lists.” But let’s go over the power we get when we use them correctly.
In no other media can we laser target and shrink our world to the exact demographics (like age, gender, income, etc.) and psychographics (like what they buy, where they buy, they’re interests, hobbies, charitable giving, etc.) like we can when we use well selected.
I’ll steal a line from my mentor. Dan Kennedy:
“If you want a list of one-legged midgets in Akron, who have 2 kids, a dog, is married and bowls in a league on Wednesday nights, you can find that list. Now, admittedly it won’t be a very big list, but you can get with a little digging.”
You certainly can’t do that in radio and TV. There’s a reason they call it “broadcast” media. You cast a big, broad message and hope something sticks. If you’ve ever advertised in or investigated newspapers, TV, radio etc, they’ll tell you something like their average listener/viewer/reader is male, age 19-45, has a household income of 25K-150K etc.
Now, for big, dumb companies with marketing budgets to burn, that may be good enough, but not for me. I want to know their age within a few years (say 40-44), their interests, what kind of car they drive, their voting preferences, what books they’re reading, and I can get that, plus whole lot more with a direct mail list.
There’s enough information there for you to ponder for a few days. We’ll continue next time on the different kinds of lists you can and should use. Have a great week!
To Your Direct Mail Success,
Travis Lee
www.3DMailResults.com
So the #1 reason to use direct mail is that we get to use lists! I know you’re probably saying to yourself, “Well… Duh, of course we use lists.” But let’s go over the power we get when we use them correctly.
In no other media can we laser target and shrink our world to the exact demographics (like age, gender, income, etc.) and psychographics (like what they buy, where they buy, they’re interests, hobbies, charitable giving, etc.) like we can when we use well selected.
I’ll steal a line from my mentor. Dan Kennedy:
“If you want a list of one-legged midgets in Akron, who have 2 kids, a dog, is married and bowls in a league on Wednesday nights, you can find that list. Now, admittedly it won’t be a very big list, but you can get with a little digging.”
You certainly can’t do that in radio and TV. There’s a reason they call it “broadcast” media. You cast a big, broad message and hope something sticks. If you’ve ever advertised in or investigated newspapers, TV, radio etc, they’ll tell you something like their average listener/viewer/reader is male, age 19-45, has a household income of 25K-150K etc.
Now, for big, dumb companies with marketing budgets to burn, that may be good enough, but not for me. I want to know their age within a few years (say 40-44), their interests, what kind of car they drive, their voting preferences, what books they’re reading, and I can get that, plus whole lot more with a direct mail list.
There’s enough information there for you to ponder for a few days. We’ll continue next time on the different kinds of lists you can and should use. Have a great week!
To Your Direct Mail Success,
Travis Lee
www.3DMailResults.com
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Direct Mail Strategies
It’s no secret that I’m a big believer in using direct mail or why else would I be in the 3D Mail business! However there are a lot of great reasons to use it.
The biggest reason to use direct mail is it’s as close as we can possibly get to one-to-one, nose-to-nose, toes-to-toes selling without actually beating a path to our clients. Not only that, we can multiple ourselves several times over by sending many message at the
time. I’ve yet to find a sales person who can be in two places at once, selling to two different prospects. And like selling face-to-face we can customize our message to meet the needs, desires, wants and demographics of our prospects or clients, but more on that as we move forward.
We can also get involvement with the client or prospect and there are many ways to do this, including using 3D Mail. When we get involvement, we get a commitment of time, and if we get the proper commitment of time, the chances of making a sale goes up dramatically.
We’re also given format flexibility and tons of creative space when using direct mail. There are postcards of all shapes and sizes, regular ‘flat’ envelope mailers, greeting cards, self-mailers, magalogs etc. with even more sub categories in those listed above. And using all these different formats is crucial when selling to the same people over and over again. Just when they tire of seeing your postcard mailers, you can change it up with 3D Mail, then change to another format, then another, keeping your content ‘fresh’ in the eyes of your clients.
But the #1 reason to use direct mail isn’t any of those listed above. I’ll reveal that later this week. Until then.
To Your Direct Mail Success,
Travis Lee
www.3DMailResults.com
The biggest reason to use direct mail is it’s as close as we can possibly get to one-to-one, nose-to-nose, toes-to-toes selling without actually beating a path to our clients. Not only that, we can multiple ourselves several times over by sending many message at the
time. I’ve yet to find a sales person who can be in two places at once, selling to two different prospects. And like selling face-to-face we can customize our message to meet the needs, desires, wants and demographics of our prospects or clients, but more on that as we move forward.
We can also get involvement with the client or prospect and there are many ways to do this, including using 3D Mail. When we get involvement, we get a commitment of time, and if we get the proper commitment of time, the chances of making a sale goes up dramatically.
We’re also given format flexibility and tons of creative space when using direct mail. There are postcards of all shapes and sizes, regular ‘flat’ envelope mailers, greeting cards, self-mailers, magalogs etc. with even more sub categories in those listed above. And using all these different formats is crucial when selling to the same people over and over again. Just when they tire of seeing your postcard mailers, you can change it up with 3D Mail, then change to another format, then another, keeping your content ‘fresh’ in the eyes of your clients.
But the #1 reason to use direct mail isn’t any of those listed above. I’ll reveal that later this week. Until then.
To Your Direct Mail Success,
Travis Lee
www.3DMailResults.com
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Get an Endorsement
Today we’re going to wrap up our ongoing discussion on getting past the gate keeper. It can be one of the toughest and most frustrating things you can do as a B2B marketer. Hopefully I’ve shared some ideas that can help you out. To see my previous post, and all my posts on this subject, just hop on over to my blog.
A great way to completely bypass the gatekeeper is to use an endorsed letter from someone the decision maker knows and trusts.
An endorsed letter is a very under-used direct mail approach. These are similar to ‘influencer’ letters, but on steroids. In an endorsed letter you have a “champion” of yours, someone who sings your praises, send a letter on his letterhead, from him, to prospects who know and respect him, but do not (yet) know you. Or he writes the cover letter that is included with your letter, brochure and sales material endorsing you as the business to choose.
Another way past the gatekeeper is to be “invited in” by the decision maker himself. I know this may seem easier said than done, but there are some strategies you can use. The easiest way is to have the decision maker specifically request your information through ongoing lead generation marketing. There’s more to cover on lead generation marketing than I have time to cover here.
Finally, there is one way to cut the gatekeeper out all together and go directly to the decision maker. There’s always the option of going directly to the home of the decision maker instead of going to the office. There are commercially available lists of home addresses for doctors, executives, etc. They’re out there and with a little digging you can get them.
Some of you may know we offer lists as part of our 3D Mail Services. I can’t guarantee I can get home addresses for your niche, but I can find lots of them. Shoot me an email if you’d like us to look into that for you.
This puts a nice bow on our discussion on getting past the gate keeper. Next week we’ll start a brand new discussion on direct mail and list segmentation strategies. I think you’ll really like it. Have a great week and I’ll see you then.
If you’ve read my emails for any length of time, you know I’m a huge Dan Kennedy fan. Heck, we may have even met you at a Kennedy event over the years. Due to some technical difficulties you couldn’t get their resources and products online. Well, they’ve now fixed it.
You’ll want to check out their new online home here. One resource I highly recommend is the Creating Copy That Sells Online Course. I’ve gone through the course myself and it’s THE reason why I’m able to create copy that gets response and, most importantly, sells.
For more information click this link, and then click on “Copywriting Mastery Resources” at the top. Let me know what you think.
To Your Direct Mail Success,
Travis Lee
www.3DMailResults.com
A great way to completely bypass the gatekeeper is to use an endorsed letter from someone the decision maker knows and trusts.
An endorsed letter is a very under-used direct mail approach. These are similar to ‘influencer’ letters, but on steroids. In an endorsed letter you have a “champion” of yours, someone who sings your praises, send a letter on his letterhead, from him, to prospects who know and respect him, but do not (yet) know you. Or he writes the cover letter that is included with your letter, brochure and sales material endorsing you as the business to choose.
Another way past the gatekeeper is to be “invited in” by the decision maker himself. I know this may seem easier said than done, but there are some strategies you can use. The easiest way is to have the decision maker specifically request your information through ongoing lead generation marketing. There’s more to cover on lead generation marketing than I have time to cover here.
Finally, there is one way to cut the gatekeeper out all together and go directly to the decision maker. There’s always the option of going directly to the home of the decision maker instead of going to the office. There are commercially available lists of home addresses for doctors, executives, etc. They’re out there and with a little digging you can get them.
Some of you may know we offer lists as part of our 3D Mail Services. I can’t guarantee I can get home addresses for your niche, but I can find lots of them. Shoot me an email if you’d like us to look into that for you.
This puts a nice bow on our discussion on getting past the gate keeper. Next week we’ll start a brand new discussion on direct mail and list segmentation strategies. I think you’ll really like it. Have a great week and I’ll see you then.
Marketing Tip Reader’s Only Special
If you’ve read my emails for any length of time, you know I’m a huge Dan Kennedy fan. Heck, we may have even met you at a Kennedy event over the years. Due to some technical difficulties you couldn’t get their resources and products online. Well, they’ve now fixed it.
You’ll want to check out their new online home here. One resource I highly recommend is the Creating Copy That Sells Online Course. I’ve gone through the course myself and it’s THE reason why I’m able to create copy that gets response and, most importantly, sells.
For more information click this link, and then click on “Copywriting Mastery Resources” at the top. Let me know what you think.
To Your Direct Mail Success,
Travis Lee
www.3DMailResults.com
Monday, May 3, 2010
Sneak Up
Last week we picked up our discussion on getting past the gatekeeper when using direct mail. The first thing I suggested is you may want to enlist the help of the gatekeeper, a novel idea. Here’s my blog entry on that discussion. Next, I suggested that whatever you send, the gatekeeper must fear block it. Here’s that entry today we’ll touch on another strategy is dealing with gatekeepers.
I’ll call this the ‘sneak up’ approach. This involves putting “teaser copy” on the outside of the envelope, box, or whatever it is you decide to send. The teaser copy on the outside will usually say one a few things like:
Another great way to get through is to send mail that looks, acts or hints that it’s from a person or company thing that already gets through. Here’s an example. Let’s say you have a product for dentists. You can purchase a list of dentists who also subscribe to a specific magazine. For this example let’s say they subscribe to “Muscle Car Monthly.” On the outside of your envelope you would want to write:
Gift and Special Invitation Enclosed for VIP Readers of Muscle Car Monthly
Since most gatekeepers know and recognize the magazine title, whatever you send will likely be sent right on through.
I’ll call this the ‘sneak up’ approach. This involves putting “teaser copy” on the outside of the envelope, box, or whatever it is you decide to send. The teaser copy on the outside will usually say one a few things like:
- Personal & Confidential
- For John’s Eye’s Only (assuming your prospect or client’s name is really John)
- Confidential Report for John
- Or any number of phrases that indicate that the contents is only for the recipient.
Another great way to get through is to send mail that looks, acts or hints that it’s from a person or company thing that already gets through. Here’s an example. Let’s say you have a product for dentists. You can purchase a list of dentists who also subscribe to a specific magazine. For this example let’s say they subscribe to “Muscle Car Monthly.” On the outside of your envelope you would want to write:
Gift and Special Invitation Enclosed for VIP Readers of Muscle Car Monthly
Since most gatekeepers know and recognize the magazine title, whatever you send will likely be sent right on through.
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