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Direct marketing is often called a game of dollars - getting the basics down and understanding where to put in the time, money and effort where it will do the most good and return the results you need. Success is often a matter of a fraction of a percent response, which can represent thousands of dollars in sales.

Properly aligned priorities and careful execution will yield profit, misplaced effort and sloppiness in execution can cost you. If you keep the basic priority for effort at List, Offer, Copy, Design, your direct mail has the best chance for success. This long-held tenet of direct mail success is just as valid today as it was in the 50s, despite all the technological advances, postal regulations, automation schemes, computer models and more that have been introduced since then. The following shows you the basics and why they are still important.

The List’s the Thing
The best product in the world, described in flowing, persuasive prose in a beautiful package will not sell if it is presented to the wrong audience, period. The list of recipients is the key to moving units, triggering responses, filling seats, and making money. Put the greatest effort into choosing, culling, maintaining, updating, specifying, selecting, aggregating, deduping, merge/purging your list, and your response rate will reflect it.

Clean accurate data is the bedrock of a successful program, driving not only your initial mailing, but dictating your remail schedule, your test results, your fulfillment order, your list rental program, and more. Without clean data, you may as well toss 30% of your materials in the trash, that’s certainly where they will end up anyway.

Selection is the basic starting point - the more you know about the product or service, the better you can select the list. Your testing program will direct your list selection to a great degree, but if you’re just starting out and have no test data, that’s the place to start. Test lists are small segments of much larger lists that on their surface seem to fit the customer profile you’ve developed as part of product development. Small segments of many lists that fit the profile will give you the response data needed to narrow down the list of lists to those that actually fit the customer profile adequately to mail in volume.

Testing
If you are only testing lists, mail the same piece, with the same offer, copy, design, timing and other elements fixed, to the small segments and the list data should be the only variable. Read this response data approximately 3 weeks after drop date, and you’ll know which lists really work and which ones don’t. Once that data is in, review your segment descriptions, and match them back up to your response data, see if there is a common theme among the respondents that may not have been anticipated.

Lists that don’t pull well at all, the lower 25%, can be safely dropped for the moment. Lists in the middle 50% should be examined carefully, and the selection criteria aligned more closely with those in the top 25%. The top 25% can be mailed in volume. That top 25% represent the set of characteristics that you want to emulate for future mailings, providing the offer and copy don’t change.

For non-profits, this universe from which to select your tests is usually pretty strongly defined, composed of either members, potential members or some peripheral group in or around your industry. Publications, member lists from affiliated or peripheral organizations, meeting or tradeshow attendees, customer lists from affiliate members all offer fresher data to test than your house prospect list, and there are many options beyond those to investigate. If your program is brand new and you’re starting from scratch, try anything that seems reasonable - your assumptions are not as valid as actual test data (see related article on research data).

Once you’ve assembled a set of data-validated characteristics from your list test, have some reliable selection criteria, and a realistic universe from which to draw the continuing working lists, the search is on to locate new lists that match those criteria as closely as possible. Get creative when sleuthing out where those might come from.

If money is tight (when isn’t it?) you can offer to swap lists with other interested parties. You can negotiate partial swaps, ask for a net name arrangements with larger list sources are viable once you’ve formed a relationship with them, and there are a number of other approaches to procuring lists at less than full rate. All they can do is say “No.”

You’ve cobbled together a set of lists you feel will work based on your test data, now it’s time to make it efficient to mail. The Merge/Purge process is the one that not only allows you to mail only one piece per name, but the results of the purge according to priorities you set tells you where your “good” sources of lists are, how much cross-over there is between list sources, who really supplies the majority of your “new” names, and a lot of other useful data. Be sure you work closely with your data processing house to achieve the merge/purge results you want.

Clean It Up
Now that you have a reliable, efficient collection of the right number of names based on your test data, it’s time to do some cleaning. Good data is not only the right names, but involves address hygiene, salutation and gender correction, updated mailing addresses, zip-plus-four appending and other list cleaning chores, most of which can be done electronically through data processing software.

All this is done to be sure your carefully designed, well-written piece reaches its destination. Your mail house will likely offer a number of list hygiene options, or know of a data processing company that can perform these functions, at a per/thousand rate. Take advantage of as many as you feel you need to get your data squeaky clean. At the very least, address standardization, genderization, NCOA (National Change of Address) update, zip+4, and postal presort should be applied, to help boost your postal discount and save some money.

The Offer
You’ve got good data, good names in sufficient quantity, and clean, accurate addresses, it’s time to focus on what you’re selling. The offer is the heart of the direct mail piece. A carefully crafted offer can make or break a mail piece’s response rate, but not the whole program. The phrasing and framing of that offer needs careful consideration.

It should be compelling, not easily obtained elsewhere, priced well, relevant to the recipient, easy to understand and fulfill quickly, not overly complicated, and engage the audience. A tall order for a few sentences, but that’s where the magic happens. Offers should be tested just as rigorously as lists. There are likely fewer variables with offer tests - there are only so many ways to price a product or service profitably - but how it is framed or presented has almost endless variation.

Confusion leads to “no response” from the audience, so keep it straight and simple as possible. Test price only, test premiums, test combinations or bundles of products, test FREE samples offers, test “’til forbid” offers (Record clubs raised this to high art in the 80s with “Buy one, get 12 more for a penny for the rest of the year unless you cancel” types of offers), test as many as you think reasonable to whittle that offer down to its most crystalline, efficient, effective best.

“Copy” Does Not Involve Toner
Now you know who the product is suited to, under what circumstances they will purchase it (or attend it, or select it, or vote for it, whatever the desired response is). Now it’s time to figure out what aspect of the product really lights up the boards, what angle to approach the audience regarding the product, and what benefits and features will make it move off the shelf.

Copy should be a persuasive description of the benefits to the buyer of the product or service, priced so that it almost appears too good to be true, seemingly so enticing that the buyer can’t seem to do without it. Copy, be it long, short, poetic or workmanlike, is the grease that lets the direct mail engine turn smoothly right to a response - it drives the reader to the desired action, either buy, register, attend, mail back, enter, provide information, or dial.

Copy should be tested if you’re promoting a new product, rebranding an existing product, have minimal data or purchasing history for the audience, or are trying a totally new package. Copy length might also drive a format test, just for the sheer space needed for some of the long copy, a letter package might be required to contain it, as opposed to the more popular postcard, with its limited real estate but bold colors and low cost.

Talk To Me!
Copy should speak directly to the recipient - sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how often when reviewing packages, the copy only contains the directive tense “you” in the last line, if that. Speak to the reader and they will put themselves in the listening position and process your copy as if you were speaking to them. Make sure all your copy answers the questions for the reader, “What’s in it for me?”, and it will sell. Copy that is benefit-laden, sings smoothly to the reader, offers undeniable benefit after compelling benefit and puts a couple of “early closers” in there is very likely to pull well - all the ingredients are there. All other things being equal, good tight copy will out-pull sloppy, flaccid prose every time.

A word about length - there are no real “rules” about copy - except if it works, use it. Copy should be long enough to tell the tale to the reader, and not a word longer. If it takes you two pages to wax poetic about the latest sewage eradication technique using industrial solvents, so be it. If you test it against stronger, shorter copy and it loses - dump it! It’s that simple.

Copy is a subjective element, much like design, where everyone has an opinion, and in most cases each is just as valid as the next. If your package has been tested extensively enough that you can test a single word choice to make a definitive call, you’ve got other things to worry about - don’t waste time arguing, put something in the mail!

Design - Last But Not Least
Lastly, the design of the package, and its importance to the response rate, should be discussed. Design gets more time spent compared to the effect on response than any other element. Sometimes this is for the reason mentioned above about copy - it’s subjective and everybody has a way they envision the piece looking. The only hard and fast rule about design for direct marketing is that it function properly. Is the postcard insides printed right side up? Does the response device fit easily into the reply envelope? It has to function.

It also should be producible by machinery currently available in mail production facilities. There are as many formats as there are imaginative marketers out there, and any or all of them could work under the right circumstances - the only way to truly know which one is best is to . . . you guessed it, test! Test a letter versus a self-mailer, versus a magalog, versus a postcard, versus a card in a deck, versus a dimensional, versus a doormat (no longer postal legal). Test odd shapes, test multiple pieces versus just one.

Since we mentioned in the beginning that direct mail is a numbers game, here’s where good design can earn its stripes. Mail the most expensive package and test each element, removing each and remailing until the response drops. The fewest pieces that doesn’t negatively affect response is the winner - you want to test the Cadillac initially, and scale back ’til you’re mailing the VW beetle in mass quantities. Good design shouldn’t be noticeable, it should just work to convey the message the copy is proposing.

Now you have your priorities aligned with success - list, offer, copy, design. Focus on your direct mail in priority order, and your packages will be lean, tight, effective and profitable. That’s what we’re all shootin’ for! Enjoy!

David Poulos, Chief Consultant at Granite Partners has been offering marketing guidance to firms for over 25 years. Specialties include non-profit marketing and full-scale strategic marketing campaigns. He can be reached at http://www.granite-part.com, or 410-472-4570.

It is human nature to try and improve upon the conditions around us, and as humans we are hardwired to be curious and to strive to improve our lot in life in ways large and small. For organizations, there have been many theories expounded over the years about quality improvement, continuous improvement, conscious improvement and a slew of others - clearly getting better at what you do as an organization is a key component to success.

If you think of your outreach marketing program as the volume control for the information reaching prospective members or customers, it would be a simple impulse to turn up that switch when you needed more members, or wanted to launch a new program - improving your communication quality, focusing the message, boosting the frequency and breadth of the media carrying it to increase sales or membership in one simple motion.

Unfortunately it’s not really that simple. However, there are lots of small things you can do to increase the effectiveness of your outreach marketing - some of them as easy and inexpensive as turning up that volume control. Some may seem obvious, but in aggregate, they should boost response, increase participation, build membership and loyalty, and increase retention in your organization.

1) Get To Know Your Audience
Primary research among membership-based organizations is more rare than most would care to admit, and good research into your members’ preferences, needs and desires can really provide you with a good, solid foundation for basing creative and strategic decisions going forward. The more you know about your members and prospective members, the more your marketing messages will resonate, the more likely your offers will be found relevant to their lives, and the more value they will find in the programs designed for their benefit. Phone research, in the form of in-depth interviews with members, either individuals or representatives of organizations, can provide eye-opening insights that can drive your strategic marketing efforts in a new and more effective direction. There are several highly reputable research organizations and consultants that can help guide you through the process to be sure you get accurate, actionable results.

TO DO: From your in-house database, select 20 members, and 20 prospects, with a good selection of large and small (trade only), or for professional societies, a good mix of member types. Call the list using a short 1-page, 5-question script devised to elicit in-depth responses, not one word answers. Use questions that rank priorities as often as feasible, so you have some quantitative data as well as general, anecdotal information. Note the differences between members and prospects - that gap is where to focus your efforts.

2) Refine and Use Your “House” List for Direct Mail
Your member database is the heart of your organization. Is it healthy? Is there plaque build-up of bad information, outdated addresses, prospects that have no relevance to your offers, or need of your services? Is it unwieldy to use, complex to navigate, cumbersome to work with? Is it structured the way your organization works so that it mirrors your efforts, or does it fight you every step of the way? Do you find that it takes an inordinate amount of time and effort to extract what should be simple requests for subsets or quick lists like committees or sub-groups? If the answer is “Yes” to any of these questions, it’s time to evaluate your database software, structure and use in light of how your organization uses and needs access to data.

If you can’t easily extract and manipulate your own in-house data, it will be extremely difficult to compare it to prospect data so you can make intelligent selections for focused, targeted, personalized mailings. Bad data does more damage than good data used ineffectively, especially in membership-based organizations where every member needs to be treated like gold, let alone executive committees, board members, special-interest groups that need some extra attention.

TO DO: Select a random list of 40 members from your database, however your normal procedures allow you to do that. If it takes longer than about an hour, you need to develop new processes at a minimum, and at worst you need to revamp your entire database, starting with new software and converting the data, after you clean it up and verify each piece. One quick way to do this is with a database dump postcard. Craft a postcard that explains what you’re trying to do - clean your data. Ask the members to update the info on the label on the front in spaces on the back if need be and mail it back to you. The first 200 that return the card will receive a small gift as a “Thank You”. You should receive less than 2% bad addresses. If not, time to do a major overhaul of your data.

3) Re-Evaluate Your Benefits and Offers - Are They Still Relevant?
The question running through any prospect’s mind when they think about membership is “What’s in it for me?” If the benefits of membership are not delineated in crystal clear fashion in your prospecting and membership materials, you’ve lost before it ever gets opened.

Presenting a compelling reason to join and stay a member has everything to do with knowing the audience and crafting benefits statements that resonate with that audience. They should be strongly worded, clearly written and explained, and demonstrated as a benefit that solves a known and widely understood “problem” within the homogenous group.

If you’re the Paint and Stain Manufacturers Association, and your biggest issue of concern for members is EPA regulatory compliance, one of your benefits should be something like “Close monitoring and strong, regular member input on all regulatory and legislative issues that could negatively impact manufacturers of all types of paints and stains.” While that activity ultimately benefits non-members as well, the key is “member input” - they get direct access to legislators, through correspondence and website access, etc. Direct benefit - strong statement.

TO DO: Using the data gathered in item Number One, trot out your membership selling brochure and verify that the benefits of membership there still match up with the recently gathered data surrounding member needs and desires. If they don’t, it might be time to re-evaluate the use of that piece of collateral.

4) Review Your Media List - And Use It To Raise Your Profile
Trade media should be the marketer’s best friend. Good relationships with publishers and editors of various magazines, newsletters, websites, and blogs that serve your industry, including your own publications, is essential to crafting a cohesive view of your organization and branding the organization accurately and effectively. Strong relationships with those key individuals allow you to:

* Craft and release your statements at leisure
* Gives you early warning of other’s perceptions of the organization from a neutral source
* Can tip you off to impending PR crisis
* Gives you heads up when there are going to be controversial stories written that involve your organization
* Allows them to readily contact you to get your point of view before it’s published

. . . in short, it keeps the media fair and reasonable, and allows you better access to your audience, which consists of both members and prospects.

TO DO: Review your media list, and call the Managing Editor, and the Publisher, of the top 10 publications, websites or blogs covering your industry. Ask some simple questions about how your organization is performing based on what they’ve heard from their advertisers and readers.

Let them know that you’ve got some exciting new initiatives coming in the near future and you’d like to get their take on them before you launch them, since you value their opinion so highly. Not only will this reconnect you to them with the call itself, but give them something to gossip about and talk to the others about, speculating about your next move. Suddenly, you may notice that your next press release will get a lot more attention than it might have otherwise.

5) Show How Exciting Your Meeting Is, Not How Great The City Is
Meetings as a function have changed and evolved significantly, especially in the last few years, as travel has been curtailed for budgetary and security reasons. Your meeting marketing must show compelling reasons for your members to:

* work their way out of the office for a few days
* go through the trauma that is today’s airport security
* get set up for three days of meeting, greeting and eating
* reverse the travel home,
* foot the entire bill themselves for the airfare, hotel, meals, seminars and the rest.

That needs to be some pretty convincing marketing. The meeting must look like they’ll be at a grave disadvantage if they miss it, by presenting unequivocal benefits for attendees, tangible benefits that you can clearly see the advantage in receiving. That fact that it’s in Cleveland, or Orlando, or Seattle, or wherever, is of minimal benefit, unless you live near the convention hotel in those cities. For the other 90+ percent of your members, it poses no compelling reason to attend.

As hotels become more homogenous and hotel brands are imposed more rigidly on individual locations and select properties, there is even less to differentiate the location for the meeting attendee - when one looks much like another, there’s not even any benefit to the hotel choice, let alone city destination. At the end of the day, attendees will have seen a ball room or two, a generic restaurant, possibly the parking garage and their generic room. If not their hometown, it may as well be anywhere - unless you make it a special, memorable experience.

Make your meeting memorable with solid content, outstanding speakers that really know your industry and are exciting to listen to, and after hours activities that really showcase the destination, its history and culture. Focusing on the destination in your marketing materials is a crutch, is not effective, and can easily be avoided with some creativity, some teamwork with your meetings department and committee interaction in the planning stages.

TO DO: Pull out the collateral and registration materials used to promote the last five meetings you hosted for members - examine them under the cold light of day, and see if you used any of the destination crutches to create “excitement”. Examine the program as a hard-working, time-starved, cash-strapped member might, and see if you’d attend this meeting if it were up to you to pay for it. Show them to your neighbor, and ask them “if the meeting were intended for their industry, would they pay to attend?” If not, time to re-examine your meetings goals and the approach you use to market them.

The above tips touch on many different aspects of non-profit and organizational marketing programs, but they are by no means complete or inclusive. They should at least be recognizable within your organization in some form, and will hopefully get the wheels spinning as you relate each to how you currently market the organization, and how some of them might fit into your current plan.

Some are free or inexpensive to implement, other require a greater investment in time, money and energy but pay off significant dividends in the longer term in increased member participation, boosted meeting attendance, bigger member rolls, more active committees, greater visibility for your organization and increased operational efficiency going forward. Anything you can do to increase visibility, build awareness, encourage members to join, participate and stay members is worth investigating.

David Poulos, Chief Consultant at Granite Partners has been offering marketing guidance to firms for over 25 years. Specialties include non-profit marketing and full-scale strategic marketing campaigns. He can be reached at http://www.granite-part.com, or 410-472-4570.

It is human nature to try and improve upon the conditions around us. For organizations, there have been many theories expounded over the years about quality improvement, continuous improvement, conscious improvement and a slew of others - clearly getting better at what you do as an organization is a key component to success.

If you think of your outreach marketing program as the volume control for the information, it would be a simple impulse to turn up that switch when you needed more members, or wanted to launch a new program - one simple motion.

Unfortunately it’s not really that simple. However, there are lots of small things you can do to increase the effectiveness of your outreach marketing - some of them as easy and inexpensive as turning up that volume control.

Some may seem obvious, but in aggregate, they should boost response, increase participation, build membership and loyalty, and increase retention in your organization.

6) Benefits, Benefits, Benefits!
“What’s in it for me” is the phrase that you can use to evaluate all your activities geared toward communicating with members and prospects. The full range of communications vehicles can all benefit from this exercise. If it’s not clear what the member gets in return for their participation, in cold hard prose, then write the piece so it is clear. If they have to work to understand your value proposition for their business, their career or their personal development, you’ve lost them before you start.

If you begin with the mindset that recipients read to find something in it for them, you’ll be highlighting benefits rather than outlining features. Your organization offers great benefits to its members, or it wouldn’t exist - tighten the copy to focus on benefits - it forces you to crystallize the value proposition and is extremely persuasive.

TO DO: Dig out the last broad membership promotion you created, and see if you can extract 5 tangible, relevant benefits - if you can’t find five, it’s time to rework your outreach recruitment efforts to focus on the needs of your audience.

7) Crank Up the Creativity - Reach Out in a New Way
Promotions, especially direct mail collateral pieces, are most effective when they take the recipient by surprise. In other words - Get Creative! Because of the cyclic nature of most non-profit marketing, the temptation is to update materials or recycle concepts from prior years. This can save you some time, but it can be deadly to take a previously-used piece of creative material and simply change the dates and the city. Don’t fall into that trap.

Change formats, use an unusual paper stock, bring out the bright colors, if you normally use type, try an original illustration, if you’ve used illustration, try photography.

The new concept behind the execution is even more critical. Stick out of the mailbox with a dimensional mailing of unusual proportion or odd shape. Try a contest, a multi-part mailing, a premium, bundle several offers into one themed piece. If you’ve done it before, eject it from the start and see what you can come up with that still resonates with the audience.

Mail still pulls response beautifully if executed well, and something truly new and exciting is still extremely effective. It’s hard to deliver a sample of a product with an e-mail! Use the advantage that mail offers you and get personal with the audience. With today’s digital production techniques, there’s no reason that each collateral piece can’t be virtually unique to the recipient - that alone makes it different and engaging. The trick is to get the audience’s attention.

TO DO: Try this exercise - Gather your creative staff around a flip chart. The goal is to create an ad for your next meeting to run in your house member publication in an hour. Get your staff together and brainstorm 5 concepts, each extending the original concept one degree further out than the last. Start with headlines, images, copy points, whatever works for you. The only rule is, you can’t have used the idea before anywhere in the organization previously. By the time you get to the fifth concept, you should be breaking some new ground.

Deliver The Message In a Way They’d Like To Receive It
Someone famous said “The medium is the message” - never has that been more true than now, in the age of multi-media, electronic, digital, satellite, cell phone, PDA, blackberry, text message driven society. A good message sent via the wrong medium will almost certainly fall on deaf ears and blind eyes. On the other hand, a good match of medium and message can multiply the impact.

The good news is, after doing your research, updating your database, and creating groundbreaking creative, you can deliver this new marketing communications miracle in the way that the recipient would like to receive it, simply by asking them.

For you, permission-based delivery:
* Makes your job of reaching them easier
* Makes the task of delivery more efficient and effective
* Cements your relationship to the recipient
* Improves the chance that the recipient will take action
* Broadens your potential audience through the use of alternative media

For the recipient, it
* Delivers the message where, when and how they want to see it
* Give them the freedom of choice
* Gives them control of their relationship with you
* Lets them respond in a way that is easy for them on their schedule

All these benefits can be yours for the taking, if you just ask for the information.

How do you get this information, and how do you keep it all straight? The answer is in the structure of your recipient database. If you’ve noted that a certain subset of your house list seems to respond well to e-mail rather than mail, be sure that this group receives the promotion via e-mail almost exclusively - save the postage.

If you’ve noted that a fax to a certain group, or about a certain issue seems to pull well, flag them for faxing as a matter of routine - save the postage and printing. If you’ve noticed that a certain type of offer works best only when mailed, create a whole series of mailers on that topic and mail away. The trick is to reach people in a way that works for THEM.

TO DO: Gather up the registration cards, order blanks, response coupons, and other ordering devices you routinely use throughout the years to prompt and record an order. Lay them out and review each, and see if there’s room for a simple multiple choice question: “How would you like to receive information about this (organization, product, activity, issue)? Mail, Fax, E-mail, Phone, text message, other.” Armed with this information on your members and prospects, your response rate for all of them is bound to rise if you just use it.

9) Cross Promote Whenever Possible - Strength in Numbers
When does 1+1+1 = 5? When each of those “1″s cross-promotes to the others. Chances are your organization has several different departments, each promoting their product, program, event or benefit. Chances are also good that several of those outgoing promotions are going to the same individual, either member or prospect.

If your database is so equipped, from number 2, and all the departments share that database, then you can flag them as multiples, and at least bundle them into a common envelope and save on materials and postage. If it happens a lot, you’ll save a bit of money, but eventually everyone will get everything going out in one envelope, and your targeting goes out the window.

Cross promotion is the answer. A piece of collateral promoting the latest book might also mention that there’s a newsletter on a similar topic available to members only, and it might mention that there’s a seminar session at the annual meeting on that topic for top executive members only. On the other hand, seminar attendees receiving a meeting promotion could also have a book list inserted, with the relevant titles highlighted, based on the sessions they’ve attended in the past.

The key is to find a common thread or common denominator to help cross over the recipient to take advantage of more than one service or product you offer. Each time one piece sent to a subgroup of members or prospects mentions another service they might find appealing, it acts as a multiplier, at no cost, for the effectiveness of the program. But how do you carry that out?

Once again, it’s the database to the rescue. It should show you all the activity of the members, and also what each prospect has received, at least for the previous year, hopefully farther back than that. All that information is waiting to be put to use, like money in the bank. It’s up to you to use it.

TO DO: Pull together a year’s worth of promotions from the past year from all the various departments, and search each one for mentions of other services, products or events by other departments. Try to find 5 instances where cross promotion could be inserted in any one of them, promoting 5 related benefits, even if it’s just a web address for the other product or service. If you can’t find all 5, this technique could be used more regularly to boost participation and save money within your organization.

10) Leave No Stone Unturned - Use Alternative Media and Bring Big Results
Marketing an organization, especially a member-based one, is a full-time 24/7/365 effort, but that doesn’t mean you have to work that long or that hard - you can let technology do some of the work for you. Used properly and appropriately, technology, including traditional phones, cell phones, PDAs, Blackberry devices and other computer based message equipment can be doing the job when you’re home enjoying your own time.

The goal is to be “top-of-mind” for members for the benefits you offer - you have to be the number one brand for those particular products or services so that whenever they think of those things or need those things, they think of you as the best, the quickest, the highest quality, indeed the ONLY place to get those things, and if they stop being a member, they lose all that access. In order to do that, you need to be a ubiquitous presence in their working lives. One way to do that is by using a variety of media to reach them.

Say a fax arrives in their office promoting a meeting, then several days later, a brochure with full registration information arrives in the mail. The member calls the organization for an unrelated service, and during the brief period he’s on “Hold” he hears a promotion for the meeting’s keynote speaker, in his own voice, offering 3 tips for how to get more out of their meeting attendance.

Three days before the meeting, an e-mail arrives, with links to the meeting webpage, containing a pre-populated registration form on which they simply complete the payment info and hit “submit”.

Two days before the meeting, the recipient’s cell phone receives a text message with last minute hotel rates at the meeting hotel and a 800 number, and a local number for the local golf course to arrange for a tee time.

That member has been hit with six different media, all promoting different aspects of the same meeting, with cohesive messaging, coherent branding, personalized information and they’ve gotten the message at different times, for different reasons, on different devices, in different environments. Computer technology can make this all possible, and in many cases, automatic to the point of being hands-off.

TO DO: Investigate your organization’s capability to use all possible media for outgoing messages, including e-mail, pop-ups, live web links and PURLS (Personalized, Uniform Resource Locator), broadcast e-mail, broadcast Fax, broadcast text messages, on-hold recordings, automated voice mail, IP-based registration or automated orderform pages with unique log-in, and any other technology that can deliver a message. Once this inventory has been completed, see if there is a way to drive them all from your in-house database. Once the technology is hooked up and interacting, the sky’s the limit for using various combinations to reach members and prospects in unique ways.

David Poulos, Chief Consultant at Granite Partners has been offering marketing guidance to firms for over 25 years. Specialties include non-profit marketing and full-scale strategic marketing campaigns. He can be reached at http://www.granite-part.com, or 410-472-4570.

Want to know one of the biggest mistakes you’re making right now in your marketing? To be honest, it’s a very small mistake, but it’s costing you big money.

I’ve written copy for over 153 different industries. That’s why I can safely say that the chances are very high that you’re making this mistake right now. And it doesn’t matter what you’re selling.

Maybe it’s a product. Maybe it’s a service. The strategy I’m about to give you now will put thousands of dollars in your pocket for sure. And quite possibly tens of thousands.

Don’t you hate it when you tell prospects about what it is you do and sell, yet most of them don’t buy? Most conversion rates are around 1% - if you’re lucky. Which 99% of people say “no” to what you’re offering.

You know your product or service is good. You know it works. Yet, when you tell people about it in your marketing, most click off or turn the page. Aren’t you frustrated about why this happens?

One thing you need to realize is the power of words. Words can truly change your state in an instant. They can change how you feel, what you do, and where you go. Just a few words can make all this happen in a split second.

For instance, if I was to say these words to you, “Terrorists have just attacked.” Just 4 words only. Yet those 4 words cause an instant emotional reaction in you, true?

Powerful.

It’s your words which are making your prospects look elsewhere. It’s not your product, your personality, your looks, voice, education or anything else.

When it comes to your marketing, it’s your words which control how your prospect reacts. The words you are using in your marketing right now are telling the majority of your prospects to look elsewhere.

Think of your prospects like birds sitting on a fence. It doesn’t take much to scare them and make them fly away. Well what scares your prospects away is the words.

Right now your marketing is missing 2 words in particular. Just 2 words. And adding these 2 words immediately to your marketing will increase your sales.

Like to know what they are?

Write these 2 words down: “which means.”

Now here’s what I want you to do with them. I want you to take 15 minutes out from your day; go to one of your marketing messages; look for the section where you talk about your “features.” Maybe it’s a section of bullet points. Or a few paragraphs where you talk about what it is you sell.

Features are “WHAT IT IS.”

However what the customer is really looking for are benefits - “WHAT IT DOES.”

And guess what pulls out the benefits in your features? Those 2 little words, “which means.” Writing “which means” after any feature forces you to write down the benefits of your product or service.

And like magic your marketing comes alive. It suddenly talks to your prospect. Tells them what they really want to know. Go and look at some of your marketing right now. Then do what I’ve just suggested. You won’t believe what it will do for your sales.

Brett McFall is Australia’s most experienced direct response copywriter having written over 10,000 sales messages for 153 different industries. To get instant access to free marketing reports, plus products and LIVE training, visit: http://www.brettmcfall.com

One of the first things I do with clients is determine their relationship with the post office. Why? Because in order to be an effective marketing organization, they will need to get pretty cozy with them. I admonish you to shake off the image of our mail system as being anything other than a highly reliable and valuable strategic business partner. After all, they help to deliver your message to a targeted group of prospects in an inexpensive way. And these prospects will buy depending upon the right message. Think of your mail carrier as a kind of sales director and the letters as sales sentinels without the downside of having to pay benefits.

Direct mail has been and remains the marketing champ for efficiency. It is still the most cost-effective tool for creating and maintaining interest as well as gaining valuable information to re-use in other marketing media. In terms of return, you need to determine how much a sale is worth to you over the lifetime of the client. Let’s say for widgets, that it’s $3000 over 5 years. In one year, by writing say, six letters to them to create the dialogue, you’ve spent 75 cents times 6 which is about $5. $5 in acquisition costs compared to $3000 in value of the client. can you beat that? Even if you factor in all the mailers in that campaign with no one else buying, you’re still probably ahead.

Whether you’ve never used mail to market your business or you’ve tried and done poorly, I encourage you to pick it up again, plan, modify and learn until it works for you. Direct mail is a tactic that you need to be patient with. It might not bring results in the first couple of tries, but as long as you’ve identified a good list and your message is sound, it will pay off. And after you’ve seen good results from it, you’ll work this method into your marketing efforts permanently.

Get to know the costs: the supplies, the printing, the postage, the delivery times, and the specific results. Try different copy to different groups on your list. Tinker with it, try different things. Call a few prospects on the list for feedback. This is how you remove the guesswork out of your marketing efforts!

Once you get calls or inquiries from the mailers, you can use that message in your advertising and the results should be similar.

Again, be patient with direct mail. Expect to send out six different pieces to someone before you get a response. And send out different types of copy to them each time, such as newsletters, postcards, or press releases. Include yourself in some of the mailings to get an idea of what and how they’re receiving. The bottom line is that you act similarly to them…that is, you’re probably not going to call until you see the name and the offer several times. Be steadfast, and after some time, you’ll be sold on the mail as well.

Scott Campbell owns Impact Marketing, Inc out of Atlanta, GA. He installs a marketing system, called the “Ultimate Marketing System”, into small businesses and practices in the Atlanta, GA area.

Learn more about Impact Marketing and its solutions here at http://www.impactyourcompany.com.

Brochures are among the most utilized marketing vehicles in use today. From very small businesses to the largest publicly-traded companies, all use brochures to communicate with their customers and prospects about the products and services they offer. But despite how common the brochure is, not many employ the proper brochure copywriting strategy to take best advantage of the medium. Here are some of the things you can do to ensure that doesn’t happen to you:

1. Lead with a cover headline that directly empathizes with your customer’s needs
This can be done a variety of ways. You could ask a question. You can make a promise. You can literally identify the problem. Whatever you choose to do, the right brochure copywriting strategy is one that steers clear of the “marketing speak” trap and speaks to your market directly in a language that it easily understands and appreciates. Secondly, the headline should create curiosity to continue reading the brochure, but this should be a natural effect of a truly empathetic headline.

2. Introduce your company and offerings with an emphasis on customer benefits
A brochure usually includes some kind of introduction, but contrary to popular practice, this isn’t the place to wax about how long the company has been in business, how many employees you employ or how great they are. No, this is the place where your brochure copywriting should position your company and its offerings as the answer to a problem your market has. It should directly correlate to the headline you led with, and should be written in plainspoken language, not flowery or laced with innuendo.

3. Include customer testimonials
Sometimes, the best brochure copywriting isn’t written by you or your copywriter. It’s done by your customers in their own words. Assuming your company has satisfied customers, what they have to say about their experience with you is often more credible than anything you can say about yourself.

4. Close the brochure with a compelling call-to-action with an offer to “share the risk”
Once you connect with your readers in a way that resonates with who they are and their needs, perhaps the only thing standing between you and the new business is a natural apprehension to “taking the risk.” However, if your brochure copywriting includes a call-to-action (or asks for the order) in a way that you offer to share the risk, you have a very good chance at getting over this hurdle. Just remember, try to make the offer as relevant to the needs of your customer as possible. If the value of your company’s offerings aren’t price-related, don’t make a price-related offer. Offer something related to the key reasons someone would want to do business with you-just make the deal a little sweeter.

Adam Barone is a freelance copywriter from the Boston area. Visit him at http://www.adambarone.com. (c)Adam Barone 2006. All rights reserved. Reprint rights granted as long as the article is published in its entirety, including links.

Direct mail is a lot like blackjack. To win a blackjack you need to be aware of the odds at all times and play so that you are maximizing your chances to win while minimizing your risks. The same is true with direct mail. Direct mail is “played” so that you maximize your chances of winning and reducing your chances of throwing money out the window.

Each right move helps you increase your response rates and your return on investment. Mistakes, on the other hand will cost you responses and cost you money. Here’s a few common mistakes and some proven direct mail and marketing tips that will help you maximize your success.

1. Marketing to too many low probability prospects. The list that you mail to is the number one factor that will determine how successful you are at direct mail. You should spend more time trying to select the right list than any other component of your direct mail campaign. This one component can mean more to your success than any other.

Look for lists that have a logical connection to your product or service. If you are raising funds for a charity you would want to select a list of people who have donated to a similar cause in the past.

2. Failure to differentiate. Have you ever noticed how many companies say the same thing in their marketing and advertisements. Open up a phone book and look at how many companies sound alike. They use phrases like “Quality Work, Affordable Rates, and Prompt Service.”

It’s all meaningless dribble to the people who are reading it. We’ve heard it all before from similar companies. If you say the same thing that everyone else does you say nothing. No one pays attention to the same white noise.

3. Your message is not credible. People make claims but fail to show the reader how they can deliver on those claims. They do not offer supporting evidence that tells the reader why they can do what they say can do.

For example, if I said I can service any retail location in the US in under 24 hours I would need to support that claim. In this case, I would say we can support this claim because we have over 2,400 offices through out the US. This connects the claim to some sort of reason why.

4. Failure to link your product to a benefit. People will only buy your product or service for what it can do for them. You need to provide them with both emotional and logical benefits that build their interest. Make sure that you connect the features of your product to something that provides a benefit to your prospect.

An example of this is, if I was selling a cell phone I would indicate that it has a vibrate function. That way, you can avoid the embarrassing feeling of having your cell phone go off in the middle of church while you are waiting for an important phone call. In this case, and the case of all good marketing, the feature ties to a benefit.

5. Over reliance on graphics. Graphics can be a wonderful way to support your direct mail message but, they need to be used correctly. Ultimately, no matter how well done a picture is, it will not sell for you. Your copy is what will do the selling.

Use graphics to support your copy. For example, if you have a chiropractic clinic your headline might read “Plagued By Back Problems?” and your picture might support this headline by showing someone wincing in pain as they hold their back.

6. Envelopes that won’t get opened. If your envelope broadcasts the fact that what is inside is advertising then you have reduced your chances of that mail being opened. The more you can make your mail look like a personal letter the better your success will be in getting the envelope opened.

One thing you might want to consider is handwriting the address. This can be time consuming but, if the number of pieces you are sending is small this can be a great idea. The other thing you should consider is using a normal white woven envelope as opposed to a high quality paper one with your logo on it. A normal looking white woven envelope will look more personal and have a greater chance of getting opened.

I hope you find these tips useful in putting together a direct mail campaign that produces results. Stick to the basics and remember that your direct mail is a salesperson in print.

Wayne Landt is a marketing consultant and copywriter. He has over 14 years improving marketing and sales results in a variety of industries. For a FREE marketing or advertising assessment. Visit or call 773) 588-1381.

It’s tough for any business to do without direct mailing these days. You might mail prospective customers using the Internet or maybe you prefer to rely on the postal system. Maybe you use a combination of both. Whatever your preference, the writing on the wall for any business is clear: you need direct mail. Used effectively, this is your trigger to sales.

How do you go about it? You need lists. Maybe you already have one. Use it as a first phase to tell your customers about what you have for them that’s new. If you don’t have anything new, set about correcting that. Whatever it is - a promotion, free offer, discount, - use direct mail to make sure your customer knows about it. Your product, your company name, must be top of mind for him. This will only happen with reminders.

Are emails effective for direct mail? Not always. Thanks to the huge amount of spam mail pouring into people’s email boxes every day, chances are your promotion email might also get relegated into the junk folder. Yes, it’s a cheap method of mailing but is it effective? The problem is, you never know for sure. It could get deleted without reading or it could get read right through.

Mailing works better. Once you have a customer’s postal address, you can cross-check to see if there is a spurt in sales soon after you mailed to that particular area. Or you could work the other way around. If you find that one area has more people buying, send more mail there with offers and special schemes. You cannot do this with just an email address.

If you do have a response form that has to be sent or given back, don’t tire the customer out, or worse still bore him with long forms to fill out. Just his name, address, phone number and email address should do. Information gathering should be quick, easy and pleasant, not seen as a chore. You can always fill in another form if you need more information. Here, too, do it bit by bit so it does not seem like some kind of cross-questioning which puts most people off. It sometimes even intimidates them. Don’t ever ask for anything too personal.

Like we said, inform your customers about new promotions or offers or products through direct mail. Don’t waste his time if there is nothing to say. It might just rebound on you if you waste his time on what he considers unimportant and uninteresting.

If you are doing a cold mailing exercise to companies, do remember to put a name on it - not something impersonal as ‘Supervisor’ or ‘Manager’. Find out from the web or from a directory what the relevant person’s name is and address the mail accordingly. If you have huge mailings, a business directory could be just the thing you need. Get one that has all the companies you deal with listed. Having it all in one place is time-saving even though business directories can cost a bit. This would probably take you ages if you were to compile it from the Internet. Unless of course you get lucky and an online directory that suits your line of business happens to be listed!

More information on direct mail

direct mail

http://www.directmailmarketingus.com

Imagine that you’re someone who has just purchased a product or service after reading a well-written and persuasive sales letter. You pay the price of the product or service and eagerly await the product’s arrival or to speak with a representative about using the service.

Finally, the product arrives, or you’re used up your service hours and you have not reaped any of the benefits touted in the flashy sales letter. Even worse, the product you purchased was broken or not satisfactory when it arrived and now it’s going to be a hassle to replace it or get a refund. If this were you, how would you feel?

Potential customers are often wary about purchasing a product or service based only on a sales letter because there are no implied guarantees. The product can be damaged upon arrival, the service can provide little help, or the product or service is just not worth the price the customer might pay. There is one trick you can use to reduce these fears on the part of the potential customer. Use a guarantee in your sales letters that allows customers to shed the risk they would normally assume when making such a purchase.

A guarantee can be in several forms. You can guarantee free replacement if a product is defective, additional free services if a client is unsatisfied with the service you have provided, or even offer to refund the entire purchase price of the product or service if the customer is not completely satisfied. When you offer a guarantee, you are creating goodwill and confidence in your product or service. Many potential customers think, “Why would they guarantee their product or service if it didn’t work as well as advertised?”

When you offer a guarantee in your sales letters, make sure the guarantee is risk-free. This means that you should not attach any strings to the guarantee. Some companies require that a product be returned unopened or in its original packaging in order to receive a full refund. If you’ve had the product for a month or two, and you’ve already thrown out the packaging, this can present a problem. Then you’re stuck with a shoddy product and an emptier wallet. Making your guarantee risk-free means that you don’t require customers to meet any conditions in order to receive the refund, replacement, or free services.

This is a marketing tactic that can create quite a lot of goodwill from customers. People are more likely to buy from businesses that stand behind their products and services than from businesses that are hard to deal with and inflexible if a product is damaged or a service has not benefited the customer. By offering a risk-free guarantee, you are telling your customers that you care about their experience with your company. You are also giving customers an easy way to solve problems, rather than making them go through a difficult process. This can even create repeat business from satisfied customers.

Once you’ve mastered the art of using risk-free guarantees in your sales letters, you may see an increase in the number of inquiries generated by a particular sales letter or even in the number of sales that result from a direct mail campaign. If you see results, it only makes sense to keep this tip in the front of your mind as you develop sales letters in the future.

Kevin is the publisher and editor of besuccessfulnews.com, a site that provides information and articles on how to succeed in your own home or small business.

Real Estate Post Card Marketing is an underutilized real estate marketing strategy known by many, but used by few. The test? How many agents do you know market real estate with postcards. Not many - that’s what I thought!

Yet, those that do maintain high visibility with their prospects. From useful tips to delicious recipes, customized real estate marketing post cards can leave positive and lasting impressions about you and your services at affordable prices.

I like marketing real estate with post cards for several reasons:

1. They’re inexpensive - you can cast a wide net and reach a lot of people for a little of nothing. And as you know, or will soon learn, repeat contact with prospects is key to identity branding. You want buyers and sellers to think of you when they’re ready to make a real estate transaction; which you can accomplish easier when you have repeated contacts with them. A series of real estate marketing post cards will do that for you.

2. They’re easy to set into motion - it takes little time to reach hundreds to thousands of prospects via real estate post card marketing.

Here’s a great way to use them. Chose a neighborhood to farm; condos, high end homes, country estates, move up homes, or whatever.

Then, mail post cards to the homeowners on a routinely scheduled basis. Perhaps it’s once a month, with special emphasis on holidays. Or maybe it’s every other month.

However frequent it is it your post cards should be interesting enough that your prospects look forward to receiving them, but not so often that they are annoying.

Fortunately, you don’t have to spend time or energy designing and printing your own post cards. There are several companies that produce impressive Real Estate Postcards; ready for addressing and mailing. They’re cute, charming and near deadly effective.

Even if you’re a do it yourself type and like the idea of owning a software program to design your own you can’t go wrong with ready made ones.

As a real estate agent you need to generate leads; buyers for listings and sellers wanting to list their properties. You should also be taking advantage of every opportunity to brand yourself. With real estate post card marketing you can:

use your real estate marketing post cards like an extension of your Business Cards. You could include your real-world address, phone number, and website address if you’re comfortable with that. The key is to include information that makes it easy for someone to get in touch with you.

use your real estate marketing post cards to Announce New Listings. For example, announce your $2 million dollar listing to a $750,000.00 neighborhood. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be your listing, and you can still implement this idea.

Here’s what I mean! Select 4-5 one million dollar homes you’d like to sell, which can be any body’s listings in any agency. Get to know them like they’re your own listings.

Then, select a neighborhood, or neighborhoods, of 200-500 homes where the values are $500,000.00, or so. More or less is okay, but the idea is to seleect homes that are several hundred thousand dollars or more less in value. The idea won’t work if there’s only a $20,000.00 difference.

Select a a series of real estate post cards to send to the owners in the targeted neighborhood(s). A series of letters will work, but you can make a bigger and more lasting impression with postcards. Check out some Real Estate Postcards and you’ll see what I mean. The post cards should appeal to their desire to “move up” into larger and/or more expensive homes.

Send a post card once a month.

Then, get ready for some business. You’ll get potential buyers interested in what you’ve got to sell that will also be prospects for new listings. Can you see getting sales this way? How about listings?

When you use this strategy you’ll begin to create relationships with people that’ll translate to sales and listing, and reap the benefits of your efforts over and over.

A real estate post card marketing campaign will enable you to frequently and inexpensively market Real Estate Postcards to the masses, and as you know the more frequent your contacts with prospects the better your results will be.

Lanard Perry is the author of “Farming Expired Listings…;” a real estate listing system that shows Realtors how to average 1 or more listings a week. Visit his websites at http://www.farmingexpiredlistings.com and http://www.real-estate-marketing-talk.com for more business building ideas.