Direct Marketing News

You are driving to work in rush hour traffic, half listening to the news on the radio. You hear the date and realize that today is your sister’s birthday. Mildly panicked, you grab your cell phone to order flowers. What number will you dial? If you are like most, you will dial 1-800-FLOWERS. Most people do not have the local florist on speed dial but everyone can recall 1-800-FLOWERS.

A toll free vanity number combined with strong branding statements can help your company stand apart in a competitive marketplace. Sit N’Sleep Mattress maximized their memorable slogan, “We’ll beat any advertised price or your mattress is freeeee” with a 1-800-FREEEEE vanity number.

Toll free vanity numbers optimize advertising efforts by providing an easy to recall number for customers to follow up which facilitates direct response. There are three types of response times in advertising:

1)Immediate. Customers hear the advertising message, want what is being offered and buy it.

2)Delayed. With delayed response, the customer hears the message but is too busy to take immediate action. They want what is being offered and plan to take action later.
3)Long Term. You hear or see the marketing message and you are interested but may not take action for a week, month or even a year later.

Vanity numbers provide an effective follow up solution for all response types. Customers will remember how to reach you whether they need your services today or long after they have heard or seen your advertising message.

The immediate customer can effortlessly move from hearing to buying with a vanity number. The delayed response customer does not have to hunt for pen and paper or stop their activities to write down a phone number. A customer in need of flowers will remember 1-800-FLOWERS even if responding hours lat (more…)

Part 2

Most people become discouraged and get hung up in the response rate. The response rate is irrelevant people. What relevant is how much money did you spend, and how much did you get back? It doesn’t make any difference what the response rate is… it really doesn’t matter how many calls you get.

Of course it matters if you get none! But the easier it is to define your list… the easier the list is to get… the more calls you get but the less of those calls are productive. Does that make sense to you?

You mail to people in zip codes and you are going to get flooded with calls. You mail to people with foreclosures you are going to get a handful of calls (but they are good calls). I would rather have three calls from people in foreclosure than I would thirty calls from Zip Code mailers. Then there is the whole big old line of list in the middle, divorces, bankruptcies, out of town owners, expired listings. All of these lists are worthy of your attention and all of them work.

Will all of them work with every mailing? No!

You have to play the marketing game and what I have the hardest time getting people to understand this it doesn’t matter if you got a hundred calls and you only bought one house. It doesn’t matter. To get a hundred calls it is the cost of a hundred letters. People get hung up… “Well I got a hundred calls and they are all junk.” No. There has got to be some in there that weren’t junk. That is all you are trying to do. If it takes 100 calls to get one deal that makes you 30, 40, 50 grand, who cares? In the end, if you are making a profit, does it matter if you spent a small percentage to make the sale? Think about it in those terms. And think about it this way-if you have more than one property, you will be making more than one sale!

Hopefully you agree. Now say you have had good success with a (more…)

Many people talk about benefits of direct marketing but the one most popular way of delivering direct messages - e-mail - has become ineffective due to the activities of spammers. The response rates of direct marketing campaigns conducted via e-mail has plummeted during recent years even reaching round 0% in some cases. What is to be done? We cannot discharge the idea of direct marketing as a whole because it is proven to be rewarding.

How about trying a new media to carry out your direct marketing campaign? What about the good old telephone? I am not talking about cold calling, i.e. making unsolicited calls to persons who, truth to be said, do not long to hear from you. Consider voice broadcasting as your next step towards direct marketing success.

What Is Voice Broadcast?

Voice broadcast is a pre-recorded message that is transmitted via a phone line to multiple recipients. A simple voice broadcast campaign centre can be set up in your home or office using a straightforward computer that is equipped with a voice modem. Then you need a phone line and a copy of auto dialer software. Since auto dialers have become available, entrepreneurs do not need to pick up a phone to address each of their customers. Imagine, if you needed to call a thousand people to announce a discount or to promote a new product. Now you do not have to invest millions into a calling centre - in fact, you can be your own contact centre keeping existing customers posted and attracting new customers.

What Numbers To Call?

The key to successful voice broadcasting is to develop a database of prospective customers or to turn to a provider who already has his own database of individuals or companies opted in (or at least not minding) to receive information that is relevant to their interests. In fact, a good database of cu (more…)