Direct Marketing News

Are your ‘Squeezing the Max’ from your direct marketing campaigns?

Testing & measuring your direct marketing campaigns can save you a substantial amount of money, time, stress and… make you a winner.

But you need to know what to do & how to do it.

There are 3 key areas to focus on, they are measuring your marketing campaigns, integrating your marketing media and testing & improving your response rate.

Measuring Your Marketing Campaigns.

A good idea is to create a spreadsheet so you can record all the details such as -

Number of responses.

Number of sales.

Value of sales.

Gross profit.

Campaign costs.

Campaign profit/loss.

From this information you can calculate your response rate, the cost per enquiry, the cost of each sale, the average sale value and the overall return on investment.

This information is extremely important as Campaign A may have generated 20% more sales than Campaign B however the overall cost of Campaign B may well have been 50% more than Campaign A.

So the campaign that initially seemed a success was a relative failure.

Integrating Your Marketing Media.

Some campaigns will be much more successful than others. This can depend on the media used, the type of industry you’re in or both.

Initially it’s wise to test & measure a number of media types to ascertain which works best for you.

Some suggestions are -

Email only.

Direct mail only.

Telemarketing only.

Email & direct mail.

Direct mail & telemarketing.

Email & telemarketing.

Email, direct mail & telemarketing.

By accurately testing & measuring the results you’ll know very quickly which works best for you.

Testing & Increasing Your Response.

Here’s som (more…)

A promotional item also known as advertising specialties is merchandise imprinted with your company name, logo, and contact information given away free of charge to the public, customers, or prospective customers in an effort to promote a business or increase interest in, or sales. Although promotional items are used for different purposes, their main goal is to constantly expose a company’s name.

While there’s a lot to be said for being innovative, when it comes to promotional items to advertise your company, some of the old standards are still the best and most popular (ex: pens, adhesive pads, magnets, etc). If you’re looking for advertising gifts to put your name in front of your customers, sometimes it pays to follow tradition. There isn’t an item that fits a company per say, factors changes the qualifications such as the project, incentive, goal, budget, etc.

Promotional products grab people’s attention every day (ex: mugs, pens, key chains, etc). They are the only medium that engages all five senses. Customers can see (ex: all), hear (ex: AM/FM radio), touch (ex: fan), taste (ex: chocolates), and even smell (ex: candles) them. Promotional items are a proven benefit to marketing a company at a reasonable price as they vary from very inexpensive to more costly. Just like any other marketing strategies it all depends on your project.

Promotional items can be used to:

Build new business- to motivate sales representative to increase sales or introduce a new company.
Retail promotion- to increase retail sales.
New product launch- to increase the awareness of the public.
Creating awareness- to raise revenue such as for research projects.
Employee motivation- to improve employee’s attendance and customer service quality.
Fundraising- to generate a higher profile for the foundation and rais (more…)

SMS marketing is definitely the most personal and effective method of direct marketing. I have asked myself recently why small businesses are in particular not keen to take advantage of this awesome marketing mix. Now that I think about it, for most people the problem is not the why but the how. The potential of SMS marketing can be fully realized without costing your small business company arm and a leg. In business we talk about 20 to 80 rule where there is 20 % of the things you can do to obtain 80% percent of the results. Below are the examples of how a small company can utilize 20% of its resources to get 80% of the results through SMS marketing to its customers.

Here to the 20 % you can do

1. Sponsor a SCHOOL:- You can sponsor a school where your target market resides by paying for the SMS sent by the schools to parents and add your own advertising tags.

2. Sponsor an NGO: You can sponsor an NGO where your target market resides by paying for the SMS sent by the NGO to concerned stakeholders and add your own advertising tags.

Here to the 80% Benefits

1. SMS Marketing Enables a truly personalised communication with customers. How often do you get that these days?

2. Shorten your time to market considerably. SMS will get to your customers in time( Well unless its Christmas day or New Years Day) .Instant info at your customers fingertips.

3. Allows the transmission of time-sensitive information. You may, for example, wish to reach your customers just before lunch hour (if you have a restaurant) and you want to promote daily specials particularly on slow days of the week.

4. Ensures SMS message delivery corresponds to your business marketing efforts through scheduling of your messages.

5. Guarantees that your marketing messages are always welcome. Your marketing is tied to a good cause. The good (more…)