Electronic Direct Mail For Stone, Part I

   Electronic direct mail is not a completely separate discipline from conventional direct mail. Many of the sales dynamics for both forms are similar; the main difference in electronic versus printed direct mail is the length of copy that prospects are willing to read.
   Evidence indicates people are more likely to read and respond to long copy in printed direct mail, but not electronic direct mail. People seem more willing to scan printed pages than they are to scroll down a long e-mail message. If you have a lot to say, you might put part of your message in your e-mail and the rest on a Web page the recipient can click to for more information.
   Here are some advantages of using electronic direct mail over traditional paper direct mail:
   It’s faster. According to a recent survey, 75 percent of nationally distributed third-class bulk rate mail reaches its destination in two weeks. Electronic direct mail can reach its target in seconds. You can make a campaign, receive results and make money in days, even hours after sending,
   Response is immediate. You start getting responses the day you send your message, and you will receive 90 percent of your responses in about four days. You know your results sooner, so you can measure it and manage your next campaign with confidence.
   E-mail is a global medium. Electronic direct mail is not limited by geographical boundaries (currencies, time zones, postal systems and regulations).
   It is less complicated to produce. The typical electronic direct mail is a typed e-mail message you create right on your computer screen. You can add your products’ pictures, along with the link to your Website. If you release a new color of granite, you can add the picture and increase awareness – as well as generate leads – by offering free samples.
   It costs less to send. The costs to send a direct-mail message on paper– including printing, postage, mailing-list rental, and production – is typically 60¢ to 80¢ each. By comparison, you can send your electronic direct mailing for only a few cents per prospective customer.
   It works as well as or better than regular direct mail in many instances. E-mail increases response rates by making the purchase easy, fast and at a time and place of the prospective customer’s choice. You might have customers for stone products only in North America or in Europe; once you send your message, they can review and respond to it whenever and wherever they want.
   Electronic direct mail can offer the standard benefits of paper direct mail, including acquiring new customers, selling products, generating leads, announcing new offerings, promoting special offers and upgrades, creating affinity programs and creating customer relationships. However, you can use the online communication to offer more to a customer, including the ability to offer over-the-Net seminars or online discussions, conduct market surveys, publish and distribute newsletters and instantly direct prospects to a Website for more information.
   For electronic direct-mail success, there are six steps: Planning, Determining Your Offer, List Selection, Creative, Testing and Rollout. We’ll deal with the first three now.
  
PLANNING
   You need to answer the following questions at the beginning:
   • What is the positioning of your product? Is it a stone carrier unit, marble slab, granite slab, stone-care-seminar program or a guide to selecting stone products for specific projects?
   • Who is your target? Do you need to reach businesses such as architects, designers, contractors, construction companies, retail stores – or consumers such as new homeowners or previous customers?
   • What is your competitive position? How different is your product from your competitors?
   • What are your sales objectives? Be specific, as far as profit margin, amount of sales in dollars and number of sales.
   • What do you want to achieve with this direct-mail campaign? Getting new customers, selling new products to existing customers, introducing a new product?
   • Does this potential audience have access to the Internet?
   • Does this potential market like to communicate via the Internet, or are they reluctant and infrequent users?
   You need to answer these questions and write down your plan as well as your objectives. In addition, it’s important to plan how fulfillment, delivery, customer service and other activities will be affected by the electronic direct mail campaign.
  
DETERMINING YOUR OFFER
   What are you going to give them, and what are they going to give you in return?
   Sometimes the offer is a straight sale: You’re going to give them the product with its associated benefits, and they are going to give you money. It’s also possible to structure more-compelling offers that sound like an exceptional value.
   Whatever you offer, you should emphasize that in your e-mail copy. Let’s review some of them.
   Payment with order. This is not a motivating offer by itself, but it’s simple, straightforward and easy to understand. It’s often used with a money-back guarantee and sometimes with other incentives, such as a credit-card-payment option or a premium (or freebie). You can offer a stone-care-product set, for example, along with a free stone-care booklet. You can back this offer with a money-back guarantee.
   Bill me later. You get some of the promotional power of a free trial offer, but with a stronger sense of obligation. This appeals to the modern consumer who has been trained to postpone payment until the last possible moment. This offer can double response over a straight cash-upfront offer.
   Installments. This offer takes a larger price and divides it into a set number of smaller monthly payments, usually with no interest. This makes a high price less painful. It’s most effective when you highlight the installment amount and de-emphasize the total price.
   Positive option. Customer must take some action in order for an item to be shipped.
   Response to this offer is low, but overall customer quality is often better. This offer can help you find loyal customers for years.
   Reservation option. You offer to reserve or set aside an item that will soon be announced to the general public and which may sell out. You also may give a special price or a premium as a reward for responding by a certain date. Urgency is the main point of this offer. You can offer a new released granite slab at a special price level and you can increase urgency by declaring a certain date to respond.
   Free shipping. People are used to paying extra for shipping and consider it a necessary evil. But you can offer it free as an unexpected and inexpensive incentive. You can offer your marble tiles with free shipping. You can offer your stone carrier unit with a free shipping option. Giving a certain date for the availability of the offer can increase the response rate.
   Rush shipping service. You promise to ship an item overnight or within a shorter than normal shipping time. You can offer this for free or for a small additional charge to cover the extra cost of FedEx, UPS or other shipping service.
   Free keeper gift. This encourages prospects to make the decision to try your product or service. You offer a gift, and they can keep it even if they change their minds later.
   Free gift with payment. This encourages prompt payment, increases cash flow and helps reduce no-pays. You can offer a gift for every paid order or for orders of a minimum value. You can offer one gift or multiple gifts. If they enroll in your seminar program and pay for it, you can give away gift cards.
   Choice of free gifts. Here, you offer a choice between two or more gifts. Though this seems very appealing, it often does not work as well as offering a single gift, because the choice may create indecision and inertia.
   Stepped free gifts. You reward customers based on the size of their orders. The more they order, the more gifts they get or the higher the gift quality. If you are a wholesaler of stone products, you can offer stone-care products for the retailers of your products. The more they order the more you can give away stone-care products.
   Two-step gift. The customer gets a small gift for a first step and a bigger gift for the next step. For example, you can offer a freebie for trying your product, then another more valuable freebie for actually buying it.
   Cumulative incentives. This is a reward for customer loyalty, such as points for buying stone products and stone care products for resale as well as stone-related seminars. This works best when the customer can see the value increasing. For example, you can provide a running total of points earned on each billing statement or order form.
  
LIST SELECTION
   Your house file is the best list that you can ever have. However, the target market you’ve identified in your plan will determine your e-mail lists.
   Some list providers offer many e-mail lists with varying demographic or interest areas. Some providers own only one list, but they should be able to tell you the characteristics or interests of their recipients.
   Never mail to a compiled list of Internet addresses. Only mail to opt-in lists of Internet users who have agreed to receive unsolicited promotional e-mails. Online prospects who have opted in and voluntarily given their e-mail addresses are ten times more likely to respond than people whose e-mail addresses were appended to their files in an existing lists via an e-address appending service.
   Electronic direct mail can generate a high response when the list is well-matched with the product or offer. It is important to use opt-in lists from stone- and stone-care-related websites.

   This article continues with Electronic Direct Mail for Stone, Part II.

     Hasan Kursad Devecioglu is a direct-marketing consultant at Marvelous Marketing Consultants Co., which is a New York-based direct-marketing company. He is the author of Marketing Imported Natural Stone Products in the U.S. Marketplace, and is also the president of Marvelous Marble Corp., a natural-stone importing company. He was the presenter of “7 Ways to Profitable Direct Marketing in the U.S. Stone Industry” at MARBLE 2005 in Izmir, Turkey.
   He can be reached at kursadd@yahoo.com; to learn more about the author and his book, go to www.directmarketingturkiye.com.