Direct Mail Postcard Rules
Joe Niewierski
It’s a fact that your customers are your best leads. This means
that the most likely people to purchase your products and/or
services are the ones who have paid for them before. It’s also
a fact that it costs far less money to keep a customer than it
does to go out and get a new one. These are the two reasons
that using direct mail postcards to keep in touch with your
customer database is a must. There are a few rules to follow
when marketing to contacts in your company database.
Rule #1: Collect all of their information.
It sounds like a no-brainer but you would be surprised. The
more information that you have on your customers the more
likely it is that you will be able to get in touch with them to
let them know about specials or to remind them it’s time for
their next service. Also, don’t neglect to ask for your
customers' email addresses, everybody has one
and most will give it up pretty easily.
Rule #2: Don’t treat your customers like prospects.
Make sure when you collect the information in your database you
differentiate between people who have placed an order in the
past and people who have not. Customers want to feel like you
are paying attention to them and when they have placed a few
orders with you and are still getting your "10% for First Time
Buyers" postcards they tend to feel unappreciated. Bottom line,
if they don’t qualify for an offer you are sending out, don’t
send it to them.
Rule #3: Don’t let your designs get stagnant.
When you are mailing to databases of people that you have never
spoken to before it is OK to send them the same postcard
multiple times. It helps to increase recognition and will
eventually increase your response rate. Dealing with customers
and prospects that you have already spoken to (meaning they
already know most or all of the details of your business) you
need to mix things up a bit. Your mailings should be attention
getting and informative. If you have started offering a new
service recently, a postcard designed to let your database know
about it would be a smart move. The main point is to keep your
company in the front of their mind and to keep them reading
your postcards.
If the promo that you send to your database gets too repetitive
your customers will lose interest and at that point you are just
wasting your money on postage because your postcards won’t get
the attention that you want.
One of your main goals should be to educate your customers
about how your product or service works and this will in turn
help them to get more use out of your entire line of products
and services. Many times it is as simple as sending out
mailings that make your customers aware of all that you can do
for them.
Take, for example, a California based software company called
Forté Systems. Not only do they use direct mail postcards to
acquire new business, they know how to use them to effectively
market to their current customer database as well. To fully
understand how you will need a little background information.
Forté Systems is one of the current leading companies in
Medical Practice Management and Billing Software. This means
that their software will essentially run an entire medical
office. The software can be purchased in any one of four
levels, depending on budget and number of doctors working for
the practice.
Once a medical practice becomes a customer of Forté Systems the
marketing strategy is changed to reflect the rules above. They
are no longer trying to convince the doctor to become a
customer, they are now educating them on how better they can be
served by Forté Systems’ products. Now the customer receives
direct mail pieces concerning:
• Updates on software upgrades (example 1)
• Notices when they are running specials (example 2)
• & information about Other Forté Systems products such as
software training tutorials on CD (example 3)
This enables them to continue to service their customers at the
highest level and also helps to strengthen the customers loyalty
to Forté Systems. Sometimes you lose customers because they
either forgot who they dealt with last time they made a
purchase or they received some kind of promo from one of your
competitors and decided to check it out. If the customer is
constantly updated about what is available from your company
they will not have to spend their valuable time doing research
and will be less likely to "shop around." This will help to
control the normal attrition of your database to other
companies.
The pieces are all designed with the Forté Systems logo
prominently displayed on the front and back - the same general
feel and most importantly the same color scheme. Picking a
company color or group of colors and sticking with it will help
to increase recognition and readership of your promo. Simply
put, your customers will get to the point that they read what
you send them. They need to know it is from your company before
they read it because if it doesn’t look like what they are used
to you sending it may go in the trash without a second look.
Being great at what you do is not always enough to keep the
customers that you have earned. With all of the competition out
there today you need to be constantly reminding your customers
that you are the best at what you do. Direct mail postcards are
the best way to give them that reminder.
Always remember to keep mailings that you send to your database
informative, attractive and most of all current. Personalize
everything that you can and make sure that what you are sending
to a past client actually pertains to them or their company.
Anything less and your customer may start to drift, and the
only people that are going to be happy when that happens are
your competitors.
About The Author: Joe Niewierski, VP Marketing at
PostcardMania, became a published writer after graduating with
a BA in Advertising from USF. Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania
in 1998; her only assets a computer and a phone. By 2004 the
company did $9 million in sales and employed over 60 persons.
For more free marketing advice, visit
http://www.postcardmania.com
<<--------- End of Free Reprint Article --------->>
Find More Free Articles
See Also:
All Free Articles About Advertising
All Free Articles About Marketing
Index of All Free Reprint Articles
