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| Maximizing Your Marketing Investment |
| - See What Impacts Your Response Rate |
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The TRACK Group focuses on execution of your direct marketing promotion AND increasing your response rate to maximize your marketing investment.
This articles covers four factors that impact your marketing investment (and response rate). Your ultimate goals determine true success. Define success for your investment. Are you building brand awareness or are you looking for direct responses? |
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| Four Variables That Impact Response Rate: |
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The trick is to focus on all four together. If you ignore one or more, your results are minimized. Together, they will increase your response.
Simply put: Offer the right product (offer) to the right people (target) in a catchy way (creative) and GET RESULTS! |
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| Target Market: The Marketing List |
The first step is to clearly define and understand your target prospect. You want to get into their head and understand as much as you can about their motivations, interests, and desires. How do they look at the world? What problems do they face today?
A well targeted list - you can have an incredible offer, exciting design, and if it is mailed to people who have no interest in your product, you will get poor results. We can help you select an appropriate list and think about targeting your mailing to maximize response rates. We also can place your message directly into many of the country's finest magazines and newspapers.
Timing - from the perspective of your target, is there a good or bad time to hear from you? If you are promoting an event, are you giving enough notice? Are you thinking about holiday or common vacation times of year when your prospect may be distracted?
Failure to select an appropriate list, is one of the biggest reasons for low response rates. It's like selling ice to Eskimos - not the best prospect! |
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| Your Offer & Call to Action |
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Before you start the creative process think about your offer. Do this from the perspective of your target, not your organization. What offer can you provide that will appeal to your target and grab their attention and motivate them to respond?
Think like a prospect - it pays to take time to get in the head of your prospect. What concerns do they have? What motivates them? What can you do that will make their life better/less stressful/more enjoyable/more secure - you name it.
Offer clear benefits - to the target prospect - it must be 100% obvious why a prospect would benefit from your offer. Ideally, the benefit should be unique and stronger than the offerings of your competitors. Ask yourself, "If I was a target prospect, would I respond to this offer?" and "am I providing real value to the target prospect?".
Call to action - are you clearly asking for action from your prospect? This is not the time to be subtle - ask for action. If it is a one step sales process, ask for the order. If it is step one of a multiple step sales process, ask your target to take the next step.
Ease of response - provide multiple ways for the target to respond. Offer an 800#, a fax #, an email address, a postage paid reply card, a web site - any method that is appropriate to your prospect and provides an easy way for them to respond to you.
We encourage our clients to make the offer as strong as possible to increase the response rate. Making a weak offer is guaranteed to lower response rates. |
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| Creative: Copy, Design, and Layout |
Assuming you have selected an appropriate target list and you're prepared to make an offer that is worthy of their attention and response, you need to sell the sizzle!
Compelling design & photography - that grabs attention of prospect - the first trick is to insure that among the 1000's of messages people see each day, your promotion is seen. This is one of the strengths of an exciting, full color, glossy post card. They float to the top of a mail pile and are the most frequently read mail. We can create custom exciting photography that will be unique, compelling, and effective at grabbing attention.
Clear, concise, well worded message - whatever vehicle you decide to use (letter in envelope, return post card, large post card, etc.) the message should be clear and easy to read. Use headlines, sub-headlines, and bullets to help the prospect see your benefits and easily absorb your message.
Magic words - look for opportunities to use magic words including Guaranteed , Free , New , Sale , and You . They appeal to people and will increase your prospect's interest in what you are saying. A strong headline is important - you only get one chance to make a first impression and grab your prospect's attention.
Keep it Simple and Accurate - keep your mailing simple. This includes keeping copy to a minimum and offering a select few benefits. We pay close attention to the details and try to avoid any errors. No one likes to see spelling errors and a wrong phone # can bring results down to nothing. We check all dates, phone #'s, spelling, mailing requirements in an effort to insure we have no errors.
The creative can make or break a promotion. The trick is that it can't work miracles. The target list and offer must be strong enough in combination with the creative to perform well.
We offer postcard promotions and postcard promotion inserts to effectively target your specific prospect demographic. |
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| The Complete Promotion - Keep Your New Clients |
Ultimately, there is a bigger picture than simply the promotion. It is part of a larger marketing commitment including. looking at the product from a cost/value perspective, reviewing how you market it, looking at frequency, and linking to your other marketing efforts. Additionally, you'll want to focus on keeping your new clients to maximize your marketing investment!
Refine as you learn - once you do your first test promotion, we can help you analyze the results and fine tune your promotion to be more effective each time. This includes testing multiple offerings, various mailing lists, and various designs. We can help you analyze who responded and then find others that are like them. This includes mapping your results and defining demographically who responded based on their address (for consumer mailings) or based on SIC code (for business mailings).
We can do this analysis at geographic levels much smaller than ZIP codes, and help you reduce postage expenses and increase responses by selectively targeting your promotional efforts.
Sales cycle (multiple steps) - With low dollar products, a one step sales process makes sense. When your product is complex or costs more than $25, it often makes sense to gather prospect interest and follow-up with a sales call or more detailed literature. We can help you with 2 nd step literature such as sales brochures as well as handling in bound telemarketing.
Repetition - Repetition - Repetition - it is natural to want to mail a promotion a single time and wait for the responses to flow in. The reality is that people are bombarded with sales messages every day and it will often take multiple mailings to break through to the prospect. Think about how often you see certain ads or receive certain catalogs in the mail - this is no accident and in fact increased repetition will have a positive impact on your overall response rate.
Tie to your other marketing efforts - a Postcard Promotion can stand on it's own (often with multiple mailings), but many times we complement the other marketing efforts you are conducting. This can include advertising, out bound telemarketing, web promotion (we offer web promo cards), inserts in magazines (post cards work well for this), any many other ideas. It never makes sense to put all your eggs in one basket - and marketing is no different. If immediate results are critical, don't focus too narrow. |
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Response Rate |
We're often asked: "What response rate should I expect?" We've seen response rates range from less than 1% to over 10%. Given the many variables that impact response rate, there is no one answer that will apply to all promotions. You must test various options and fine tune your promotion as you learn what works with your target market.
We like using financial analysis - (e.g. "Close 5 new orders that generate $2,000 in new business and the promotion is a success" or "get 20 new prospects we can try to convert to clients this year"). For additional perspective on your marketing investment see related article.
To discuss your marketing needs, please call Track Marketing Group today at (877) 355-6673 or (703) 941-7766 or complete our survey. |
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