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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.

Direct mail marketing has become more and more popular over the past couple of years. Companies have been searching for direct marketing solutions that help to grow their business for the cheapest amount of money possible. Direct mail marketing has stepped to the forefront in this arena, which is obvious by all of the direct marketing solutions firms that are being formed every year.

A simple internet search will give you results for thousands of direct mail marketing firms. After checking out some of the sites you will realize that while most of them are generally the same, their prices and quality of information can vary greatly.

By this point you are probably wondering what some of the benefits and features of direct mail marketing are. Some people may even be wondering what direct mail marketing consists of. Direct mail marketing means basically what it says. It is a way for companies to market their products and services to potential clients through mail sent directly to them.

You may be wondering where the company secures the names of potential clients. Most companies that are advertising themselves as direct marketing solutions firms have mailing lists that they will sell to you. Depending on the quality of the list, and the number of names the price will vary. You can buy a list for your direct mail marketing efforts that target only people in your field of interest. In other words if you own or work for an accounting firm, you can buy a list that is specialized to get you in touch with accounting professionals, or someone who may need accounting assistance.

Some other lists that direct mail marketing companies can provide include: lists broken down by profession (doctors, etc.), zip code, state, new homeowners in an area, library, and even lists for particular ethnic groups. In other words, if you are looking for a particular list for your direct mail marketing efforts you will more than likely be able to find it in one place or the next.

But mailing lists are not the only direct marketing solutions available. Another direct marketing technique that is used on a consistent basis is telemarketing. Telemarketing has lost some of its steam over the past few years because of all the fuss over the “do-not-call” lists that are available. This has forced many companies to go the direct mail marketing route because they do not want to deal with possible lawsuits brought forth by calling the wrong people, etc. Though telemarketing is not as popular as it once was, it can still be very effective. It costs less than direct mail marketing, and you can reach thousands of people in a very short amount of time.

If you are looking for a direct marketing solutions firm be sure to check out all of their services and prices before signing on. Remember, all of them offer the same services but you will be most interested in obtaining quality work for your money.

Kevin Dark is an online marketer. Find more about direct mail marketing at his new project.

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