How to use a data listing for a direct mail campaign
You can start your search for a list broker by looking in your local Yellow Pages. Check out their references carefully before getting involved. You're using your customers as templates for additional prospects. Depending on your product line, you might focus on postal codes, on subscribers to a particular magazine, sometimes on income (Sandton) or the youth (Schools/Technikons).
List brokers have access to many thousands of lists. You'll pay up to ±R1300 per thousand names on a list, depending on the complexity of the list (i.e., if you want not only name and address but other demographic data). Brokers typically have a very thorough understanding of their lists and can give you insights into the best list for your use. The more you know about your current customers, the better use you'll be able to make of your list broker's experience.
You don't buy lists – you rent them, usually for a single-time usage. If you want to send a second mailing later to the same list, that's another charge. If you know you'll be sending a series of mailings to a given list, mention this upfront for a cumulative rate.
You can't simply fold these names into your database of customers. Not only would it be illegal and wrong, but you'd also get caught. Every list is "salted" with "ringers," names that aren't real but simply serve to give away any mailing done to the list. If the list broker's ringer gets a mailing from you for which you haven't paid the usage rights, you're busted. You do your mailing with the broker's list. Once people respond to your mailing, you're free to add them to your own database of customers. Your list grows and grows.
Waging a Direct-Mail Campaign
Once you've outlined your target market, staging a direct-mail campaign has seven key steps:
1. Develop a mailing list. Put your description of the targets on this list in writing, so you know exactly to whom you're mailing. If you're mailing to a larger-sized list (more than 20,000), you'll probably want to provide your letter shop with Cheshire labels: Unglued labels that are affixed to your mailing piece with special glue. These labels require machine application at the mailing house. For smaller quantities, you might just provide self-sticking labels. Your list supplier will provide you with the labels in whatever format you want.
2. Create a mailing piece. You don't just mail out a brochure to your list. That gets too expensive, and your brochures weren't designed for it. You need to create a direct-mail piece with a strong offer that will spur the recipient to action. All direct mail leads to the "call to action": What do you want the recipient to do next? Mail back the business reply card? Call the 0800 number? Fill out the order form and fax it to your number?
You can never be too pushy in direct-mail materials. You can also be clever, cute, whimsical, even overpowering, but only in connection with being pushy. Your goal is to get action. You don't want a direct-mail piece to inform. That's what your brochures are for. You want action!
Designers of direct-mail pieces like to get creative with graphics. Your goal is to get the reader to respond to the offer. Any graphics that don't contribute to that are not worth the design and printing costs. According to most direct-mail gurus:
• Forty percent of a piece's impact comes from sending it to the right list in the first place.
• Forty percent comes from the value of the offer.
• Twenty percent comes from the design or writing of the piece.
3. Code your response vehicle. Whichever way you ask recipients to respond, make sure you code your mailing. All you have to do is assign each mailing a batch number, such as 11042103: 1104 is the month/year of the mailing; 21 is the identifier for the particular list you mailed from, and 03 is the identifier for the particular offer. Coding provides a simple device for revealing just who has responded to which mailing and which offer. It makes individual responses much more valuable since you can easily tabulate the different codes to see what's working the best for you.
4. Test the campaign. Even a modest campaign of a few thousand pieces can run up the budget with mailing and duplication costs. So you should always test mail a portion of your mailing list and check the results. No one can predict the response rate you'll get; there are just too many variables.
What percentage of your mailing makes for a reliable test? Again it varies, but most authorities would tell you to test 10 percent of your list and no fewer than 250 pieces. This will give you enough of a spread across the variables to make the results worth something. Before you do your test, you should decide what response rate will support your going ahead with the planned major mailing. This will depend on your budget. Writers on direct mail duck the issue of response rates because there are so many variables – and because no one really knows how to predict response. Experience suggests that if your rate is less than 2 percent, something is wrong. Either your list is wrong, or your offer is too weak. If you get a response rate above 7 percent for a mass mailing (without giving away the farm), you've done very, very well.
5. Run the campaign. Keep your mailing pace in line with your ability to handle the potential responses. Your test mailing will give you some sense of the rate of customer response. Use that as a gauge for how many pieces you should mail in a given week. Mail only those pieces you can support with your sales effort.
6. Handle customer responses. You can't handle the fulfilment end of a direct-mail campaign without considerable planning. If you're asking respondents to request additional information, what are you going to send them? How soon do you want to mail the information out? What else will you do with the responses? In other words, how will you make maximum use of the names you've spent so much time acquiring?
If you're a company with distributors or sales offices, it's common to pass along the names of prospects so that follow-up can be handled on the local level. The quicker the response the better, since your speed in dispatching information can quite justifiably be viewed as reflective of your commitment to customer service. Why should respondents have to wait for materials?
If you're mailing out products or samples, do you want that handled from your main office? Many mail-order campaigns depend on fulfilment houses, professional organizations that handle the logistics of sending out materials to large quantities of customers. You provide the products and the prospects: They'll take care of the rest.
7. Analyze the results of the campaign. This is perhaps the most important, and underrated, aspect of the campaign. Did the final results match what you expected from the test? What parts of the demographics responded better than expected? Are there subsets of your target audience that you can focus on in future mailings?
Every direct-mail campaign you run should contribute not just to your sales figures but to enhancing your customer database. In very real terms, it represents the future of your business.
By Jack Ferrari