Many see email marketing replacing direct mail. Direct mail can be expensive and results questionable if not optimized. On the other hand, using web technologies and platforms in combination with direct mail can significantly lower the customer acquisition cost and increase the response rate dramatically.
When you are developing your next Comprehensive Business Plan, be sure to try this deadly combination of Direct Mail and the Web Social Networks. It will really change the revenue structure of your current Business Planning.
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Put a Web Sales Landing Page on the Direct Mail Piece
Offer a free product or service and provide a web sales landing page to redeem the free offer right on the direct mail piece. You can also offer a discount as the incentive to visit the web page. It is important to give each direct mail piece its own distinct code that the direct mail responder has to enter on the web sales landing page. This will provide you an excellent way to not just track our marketing campaign results but also stay in contact with each of the respondents.
Use an Incentive with Your Social Networking
Now here is how to take it up a notch. Put a Social Networking element in the web sales page by offering an incentive for the respondent to spread the good news through their Twitter, Facebook, My Space and other social networks. Maybe a double discount or two items for free will be a big enough incentive. Make sure to make it easy for the respondent to spread the viral social offer by putting automatic links to all the social networks.
Use Codes to Track
Be sure to offer the social network recipients similar offers of free stuff or discounts so they continue to spread the great marketing offer to their friends and associates. Be sure to keep the code in place so you can track how deep one respondent can send your marketing message virally on the social networks. Also always ask for a name and email so all the respondents and their friends can ne re-marketed to in the future and sent a newsletter, etc.
Exponential Growth
What is the potential here? It is exponential. Say you send 1,000 direct mail pieces. You can leverage that to upwards of 3 times the people through social networking. That is 3,000 people for 1,000 mailers! You will also see your response rate go from the typical direct mail range of .5% – 2%, to pushing 20% – 30%. Wow! And your marketing cost is still pretty much the same provided you can handle the web marketing side in-house. That doesn’t count all the email addresses you have mined for future marketing, which in this scenario could amount to 500 – 600 email addresses!
Here’s an Idea…
If you market to consumers. Target prospect rich neighborhoods by putting the same offer as a Stick Um on a pizza delivery box. This way you get around the clutter of the mail and all the junk mail competition and go straight on the refrigerator of your target market. Throw in the social web viral marketing platform, and you have a killer, cost effective marketing campaign.
Think about all the possibilities! You can really improve the reach, effectiveness and profitability of your Direct Mail offline strategy when combining it with good Search Engine Optimization using the Web Social Networks.
About The Writer
Frank Goley has an experienced background working with small and medium size businesses as a business consultant, business turnaround consultant, business plan writer, business plan expert, small business consultant, business coach, business plan consultant, marketing consultant, business planner and online marketing consultant, and seo consultant for ABC Business Consulting. He has been helping companies to succeed for many years. Frank wrote his first business plan over twenty years ago. He is an expert in developing business plans, marketing plans, funding plans, strategic plans, turnaround plans, web marketing strategies, and project specific business plans. Frank is the author of a business plan book, The Comprehensive Business Plan Workbook – A Step by Step Guide to Effective Business Planning, and he has over 50 published articles and e-books on business success strategies. He also writes the Business Success Strategies Blog and publishes the Business Success Newsletter.
