22 Dec 2010
Direct Mail

Do It Yourself?

CBS Money Watch posted an article about some instances when it might be less expensive to pay a professional. Their list included: changing the oil in a car, formal printing jobs, selling valuable personal items and taxes. There is even a website called diyornot.com that helps to calculate if it is worth the money savings to attempt a home improvement project by yourself.

To expand on the explanation of asking a professional to print invitations, posters or other materials, the Money Watch team discussed the costs of ink cartridges, time and frustration.

Mailing is very similar to printing. Using a professional mailer can definitely save you time and frustration. A professional mailer can also update your mailing list by checking for changes of address and identify undeliverable addresses that may only need a small correction.

Mailings can qualify for the discounted presorted rates with quantities as small as 200 items. The postage savings will start to save you money and pay for the services of a professional at surprisingly low quantities.

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20 Dec 2010
Direct Mail

An “Edu-Mail-Cation”?

We recently received an email from a customer that read “Thanks for my edu-mail-cation!”

It is a great play on words and such a part of what we do that we thought it would be fun to share it.

Are you wondering what some of the newest acronyms mean? Or if some new technology is really going to help you or save you money? Have you always wondered if there was more than one way to define your customers? Give us a call or send us an email, we would be honored to share what we know.

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15 Dec 2010
Advertising

Understanding Marketing History

One of our favorite quotes is “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.

In a discussion with the members of LinkedIn’s Direct Mail Group, author Dave Lewis, reviewed the history of broadcast faxes as an advertising medium and made some interesting comparisons with e-mail. He concluded that e-mail works great for people who really know each other. As a marketing medium, it seems to be losing effectiveness because of its greatest advantage – low cost. The low cost is leading to more and more volume which is leading to increased filtering and blocked messages.

E-mail as an Advertising Medium

He concluded his thoughts by saying, “meanwhile your six or seven pieces of direct mail will be waiting patiently for you at home, like the family dog. You can take your shoes off, flip through the mail, and see if there are any intriguing offers from one of the folks smart enough to invest some money in getting your attention.”

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13 Dec 2010
Business • Saving Money

Information Workers Are Resourceful

The Harvard Business Review’s Daily Stat reported that more than one-third of U.S. information workers use technologies their companies have not sanctioned, according to Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler of Forrester Research, authors of Empowered. These people are researching and finding solutions to solve problems and make their jobs easier and faster.

According to Wikipedia a knowledge worker is valued for his or her “ability to act and communicate with knowledge within a specific subject area. They will often advance the overall understanding of that subject through focused analysis, design and/or development. They use research skills to define problems and to identify alternatives. Fueled by their expertise and insight, they work to solve those problems, in an effort to influence company decisions, priorities and strategies.”

We hope you consider us as one of your resources for marketing and direct mail.

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10 Dec 2010
Advertising • Marketing Strategy

High End Consumers Don’t Like Splashy Logos

Low- and high-end fashion products tend to have less conspicuous brand markers than midprice goods, according to a paper published in The Journal of Consumer Research. 87% of sunglasses priced $100 to $200 carry a brand name or logo, the same is true for only 28% in the over-$600 price range, according to research by Jonah Berger of Penn and others.

Maybe this information will help you as you craft your direct mail and other marketing messages.

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08 Dec 2010
Business • Economic News

Why Corporate Headquarters Are So Desired

The ability of any city to attract or retain the headquarters of an average-size company is worth $3 million to $10 million per year in public contributions to local nonprofits, in a recent post from the Harvard Business Review. The effect seems to be due to the number of wealthy individuals present in the region rather than to the company’s direct contributions. A new headquarters yields, on average, some 275 additional individuals with income over $100,000.

This supports a statement from Local First Arizona about how a much larger percentage of money spent with a locally owned business will stay in the local economy.

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06 Dec 2010
List • Marketing Strategy

Generate Sales Fast

If you’re looking for a reliable way to bring in revenue, the best place to start is by contacting your best customers.

Start by Segmenting Your Customer List

Your best customers are the most likely to purchase. Try dividing by sales or average order size. Analyzing your customers will identify strategic breaking points between groups. When you sort your customers’ sales activity, from highest to lowest and cumulate sales and calculate percentage of total sales, you may be surprised. The top customers will reliably respond to your offers.

Let Customers Know You Miss Them

We Miss You

“We Miss You” offers

Just because someone cancelled last year, or you have not heard from them in a while, doesn’t mean the sale is gone forever. Mail a “We want you back” offer. It will produce more sales than cold prospecting letters.

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01 Dec 2010
Advertising • Marketing Strategy

Great Marketing Power in Hands of Few

Following up on our post about Marketing Power and the suggestion that 80% to 90% of people believe reviews posted by customers.

Forrester Research’s Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler, authors of Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business have found that just 16% of users of blogs, review sites and social networking sites generate 80% of the messages posted about products and services.

They also found that 62% of all messages about products and services are posted via Facebook alone.

That is amazing to think that so few people have so much power to shape opinions about your products and services. It is also not too far from the classic 80 – 20 rule of 80% of business coming from 20% of customers and 80% of complaints coming from 20% of people.

What can we do to help you court these sought after “super customers”?

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29 Nov 2010
Advertising

More WOW! Numbers

“55 Percent of Survey Respondents Cannot Effectively Measure Marketing ROI of Mobile, Social Media and Video,” this is the recent context of press release from Omniture. Omniture perceives this as an opportunity.

We reported on the results from a different study from R2integrated that found that 65% of companies had not increased revenue or profited using social media.

Is this really opportunity, or this an opportunity to reevaluate the great hope that new media would be the key to increased revenue?

Let us help you explore if a direct mailing campaign will help you grow your revenue.

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23 Nov 2010
Advertising • Business

Slow Company?

A post that appeared on BNET offered some examples of how companies are gaining success by being slow. Slow goes against so much tradition and experience but the article offered two examples of companies that seem to be successful because they do things slowly. Perhaps a slower more deliberate approach is more appropriate for the issues faced by most businesses today because the challenges are deep and complex, not especially susceptible to quick fixes.

The leaders of five major magazine companies have come together to sponsor a campaign called, “Magazines, The Power of Print“. In one ad, they asked, “Will the Internet kill magazines? Did instant coffee kill coffee?” in another ad they stated, “We surf the Internet. We swim in magazines.” Then they share two very interesting statistics, WOW numbers, during the 12 year life of Google, magazine readership actually increased 11 percent. In the coffee ad, they state “even the 18 to 34 year old segment continues to grow… typical young adults now read more magazine issues per month than their parents.”

Numbers and statistics continue to support the facts that a quick fix and reliance on one media for marketing communication may not be the answer. Direct mail makes sense now more than ever before, because it is able to target exactly and it gives reliable feedback to continue to improve.

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