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04 Oct 2010
Business

Secret to Building a Stronger Business

Just the title got our attention. BNET posted an article with this title that made us want to pass along the key ideas.

Ultimately success and effectiveness comes down to people, and more specifically: you. As chief executive, you impact every aspect of your business.  Even when you delegate, your personality and decisions influence everything. It stands to reason that leaders who are psychologically in tune — meaning resilient, agile, and aware — are not only more effective, they also bring an unmatchable competitive advantage to their businesses.

How can you make that happen?

Many leaders — even those who run businesses with people-centric cultures — tend to prefer a straight-ahead, hit-the-ground-running, just-make-it-go approach to managing people. The alternative is an inside-out — rather than outside-in — view of managing people. When an employee makes a mistake or a bad decision, your first question should be “Why did he do that?” not “What can we do about it?” If you want to motivate someone, you better understand first what motivates her.

What to Do:

Strengthening your business by investing in “psychological capital,” doesn’t happen overnight. But here are two key pointers to get you started:

1.    Understand that we all naturally assert the tendency to try to keep things the same, notwithstanding good intentions and recognized imperatives to make things different.

First step: Identify the issue — say, become a better listener, feel more confident at board meetings, get your SVP to micro-manage less, understand why morale is low.

Next: Start thinking about what the issue is made of, not how to change it.  Talk about your ideas with a spouse or trusted colleague, confidante, or consultant.

Remember, dismantling and reconfiguring entrenched systems requires time, thoughtful attention, and heavy lifting.

2.    Change isn’t about finding easily opened doors. Whatever your desired outcome, what’s most crucial to getting there is identifying and unraveling the tangle of ingredients, understanding how and why they got there, and then putting something new in motion.

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22 Sep 2010
Advertising • Buying Behavior • Direct Mail

Wow Numbers Mean Direct Mail Success

As a follow up to our post about “WOW” numbers:

According to the USPS Household Diary Study, 79% of all households read or scan the advertising mail sent to their home.

ATG’s Cross-Channel Commerce: The Consumer View report found that 78% of consumers are using multiple channels to research, shop, and ultimately complete purchases. Consumers browse and research online, then make the purchase in the store–39% went to the store to touch/feel the products; 36% visited the store to compare brands; 22% visited the store because they needed the product immediately

76% of Internet users said they were directly influenced by direct mail; 67% were influenced by TV; and 58% of email users were influenced according to Exact Target’s Channel Preference Study. Additionally, 75% of 25-34 year-olds have made a purchase as a result of direct mail and 62% of 18-24 year olds purchased due to direct mail.

R2integrated, an integrated marketing and technology company found that 65% of companies had not increased revenue or profited using social media.

Public Television stations have reversed their decline in acquiring new donors through direct mail campaigns. DMW Direct analyzed 700 campaigns representing 34 million pieces mailed and found that $295.32 was raised per thousand pieces mailed in 2009, up 16.3% from 2008 and the average gift was $42.10 up from $41.64.

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07 Sep 2010
Advertising • Direct Mail

Tips for Using Direct Mail to Boost Website Traffic

Marketing Profs published a great article about generation more online traffic using direct mail.

Online and offline media work well together. An integrated approach can work wonders.

We told you about how 76 % of internet users were directly influenced to buy an item or service thanks to direct mail Better still, direct mail remains the one medium that gives you direct and reliable access to nearly everyone in your target market.

Tips to drive Web traffic with direct mail

  • Make a compelling offer. Give people a powerful reason to visit your site—a compelling and valuable offer, such as a free trial, seminar, white paper, savings coupons, or sample. It must be something they want, not just something you want them to see.
  • Use an easy-to-type address. Unlike email, where you can include a clickable link to your landing page, in direct mail you can only print a URL. Your prospect must type it into a browser. The shorter and easier it is to spell, then, the easier it will be for people to visit your page. If you create a separate domain for the promotion, try for a short easy URL.
  • Build a special landing page. Generally, it’s not a good idea to drive traffic to your homepage. There are too many choices on those pages and too many ways for prospects to get lost. By creating a unique landing page and driving people to that page, you can control the message, track response, and collect information for follow-up and future direct marketing efforts.
  • Consider a personalized URL (pURL). A pURL gets extra attention and creates curiosity. They are easy to type and allow for tight integration of the direct mail piece and landing page for tracking.
  • Personalized copy. Just as a pURL gets attention, personalized teasers, headlines, subheads, and body copy attract attention and encourage reading. Use personalization with restraint—to avoid the appearance of an over-the-top sweepstakes mailing.
  • Issue a clear call-to-action. People are more likely to respond when you specifically tell them what to do.
  • Push response with a deadline. As in most direct marketing situations, people are more apt to respond immediately when they know they have a limited time for doing so. With whatever offer you make, state a deadline near the call-to-action.
  • Test various formats. Because of printing and postage costs, many people use postcards to drive Web traffic. But you can also test self-mailers, flyers, and envelope packages. The amount of pre-sell required should dictate the format. The simpler and more valuable your offer, the less pre-sell you need. Only testing can show you for sure.
  • Capture contact information. A one-time visit offers limited value. Good direct marketing practice dictates that you use a first visit to begin a dialog. And to do that, you must at least ask for the visitor’s email address and maybe first name (to personalize future communications). Depending on the value of the offer, you might also be able to get full name, mailing address, and other information to build your own database.
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19 Jul 2010
Advertising • Business

The “WOW!” Number

A recent Harvard Business Review Blog asked, “What Surprising Number Will Change Your Business?”

Numbers are the universal language of business. We use them to win approval for product introductions, to attract investors for our startup ideas, to make the case for expanding into new markets or entering new categories. In other words, numbers, when used well, tell a compelling story.

Marketing and advertising is about big ideas. But it is also very much about numbers: budgets, ratings, impressions, ROI. Which brings us to the search for the “Wow!” Number, and why one piece of data may be worth a thousand words.

Here are a few such numbers.

  • 70% of teens who abuse prescription drugs get them from home.
  • 80% of women plan to exclusively breastfeed; only 20% actually do.
  • Many are in front of whiteboards 4 hours a day, but only use them for 4 minutes.
  • 80% of people age 45+ consider changing careers; only 6% actually do.

Why do these numbers tell a story? Because they’re simple and easy to understand. Because they’re human and easily relatable. Because they surprise us, and/or capture the gap between intentions and actions.

And how do you get to such numbers? Juxtapose: “Put related numbers together to create new information.” Try different contexts: “What’s the social angle? The green angle? Put it in terms of time, or length, or volume.” Turn them over: “2% one way might not be as interesting as 98% the other way.”

However you choose to rethink your approach to numbers, it’s an important way to address a huge missed opportunity. Business isn’t just a battle of products and services. It’s a battle of ideas about priorities, opportunities, values, and value. Ultimately, those competing ideas get reduced to competing numbers. So, if you can arrive at numbers that matter, you’ve got a better chance at winning the battle of ideas.

We have told you some surprising numbers about mail in the last few months:

More than 70% of Gen Yers (born 1977-1994) and Gen Xers (born 1965-1976) sort their mail immediately

76% of internet users were directly influenced to buy an item or service thanks to direct mail

78% of email recipients do not open the message, so that means that 94.1% of email recipients are not clicking through to landing page

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10 May 2010
Business • Marketing Strategy

Mission Statement in One Sentence?

BNET posted an article about clarifying your corporate mission based on a post from a Harvard Business Review blog.

The idea began with a story about Clare Booth Luce, the playwright, journalist, and Republican Member of Congress. In 1962, Luce met with President Kennedy, who was, at the time, pursuing an ambitious agenda domestically and overseas. She worried about his diffuse priorities. “A great man,” she advised him, “is one sentence.” President Lincoln’s sentence was obvious: “He preserved the union and freed the slaves.” So was FDR’s: “He lifted us out of a great depression and helped us win a world war.” What, Luce challenged the young, impatient president, was to be his sentence?

Here are some examples of simple clear corporate sentences:

Google: “We organize the word’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

NASA: “To understand and protect our home planet, to explore the Universe and search for life, and to inspire the next generation of explorers.”

National Geographic Society: “Increase and diffuse geographic knowledge while promoting the conservation of the world’s cultural, historical and natural resources.”

Virgin Atlantic: “To grow a profitable airline where people love to fly and where people love to work.”

Toyota North America, pledges: “To attract and attain customers with high-valued products and services and the most satisfying ownership experience in America.”

This statement says nothing about what the company actually sells — cars and trucks — but puts customer satisfaction at the heart of everything it does. Time will tell if this pulls Toyota through its current troubles.

The ideas are simple, is it enough to be pretty good at everything? You have to be the most of something: the most elegant, the most colorful, the most responsive, the most focused. This is a potent thought, should you test your own company’s mission against it?

Dean’s Mailing & List Services: To help organizations save every tenth of a cent on marketing costs with our experience and expertise because we care about people.

How would you express your company’s mission, values and aspirations — in one sentence? Talk to us, we are great at asking the right questions that lead to answers and new solutions.

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14 Jan 2010
Buying Behavior • Direct Mail

New Statistics About Mail

In a recent article in Target Marketing Magazine titled To Mail or Not to Mail author Pat Friesen cited some surprising statistics.

“Fifty-six percent of Americans surveyed by InnoMedia say receiving mail is a pleasure.”

“Sixty-seven percent of Americans feel traditional mail is more personal than Internet communications, according to research from the U.S. Postal Service.”

“Among Gen Yers (born 1977-1994) and Gen Xers (born 1965-1976), more than 70 percent sort their mail immediately reports the USPS.”

Young consumers invest time with their direct mail knowing it is advertising. They are motivated to receive information to help make buying decisions.

“Studies show direct mail is favorably received by young consumers because it’s tangible-they keep and browse through catalogs; it’s private-there’s an advantage to NOT being able to forward it to everyone in someone else’s address book; and it’s secure-58 percent still prefer receiving and paying bills by mail.”

“There are people who are more comfortable receiving and responding to direct mail than e-mail, even when they have e-mail addresses. For example, marketers of products and services for older seniors (75+), continue to use direct mail to generate leads and sales. These seniors are motivated readers that open and keep direct mail. NOTE: Don’t assume that because you have e-mail addresses for any age group, e-mail is the preferred medium for hearing from you.”

“Mail is more private than e-mail according to 66 percent of those participating in a recent U.S. Postal Service study. They said the Internet is not a substitute for mail. Sixty-eight percent also said mail is more secure.”

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