Seven Steps to Successful Direct Mail, Part I
Let’s take a close look at the steps needed to prepare a successful direct mail package for stone business professionals:
Step 1: Collect information about your customers and analyze it
According to research, 40 percent of a successful direct-mail package involves your customer analysis and list selection; 40 percent is the offer itself, and 20 percent is graphics and creativity.
Therefore, it all starts with your customer. You need to collect as much information as possible about your customers.
You can get information from them at each contact point: phone, fax, person-to-person and from your internal accounting and sales records. You might collect the following information:
• Name
• Address
• Phone Number
• email address
• Type of customer (architect, retailer, home owner, etc.)
• Buying frequency
• Recency (what is the last time they purchased from you)
• Average money they spend
• Type of jobs they have
• Type of customer they deal with (if it is a business),
• End user’s or corporate contact person’s:
• Marital status,
• Zip code
• Income
• Birthday,
• Anniversary, and other important dates.
It’s essential to record all the information on a database; you can use Microsoft Excel or Access, or you can also purchase customer relationship management (CRM) software such as ACT®. Once you have enough information, the next step is to break down your customers into meaningful groups.
My favorite is grouping customers as gold, average and not profitable. When you group your customers, you’ll be able to see their characteristics. If you are a wholesaler of stone tiles and slabs, you’ll be able to see what type of retailers or contractors are buying from you, their geographic locations, what type of materials they buy in what thickness/finish/size, etc.
There is also a technique called MVC; write, on a blank page, the characteristics of your Most Valuable Customer (MVC) or your ideal customers.
I think it’s very helpful to give you a clear idea of your target customer. If the MVC characteristics are clear in your mind, then every time you profile a potential new customer you can immediately determine how close they are to your ideal customer, and how much time to spend with that potential customer.
Step two is a search in your database to see which (and how many) of your current and potential customers match the MVC profile. What percent are MVC or close to MVC? Where can I find more customers like that? Why don’t I have more like that? Am I wasting my time with customers who are far from the MVC profile?
Once you profile your customers, you need to find other prospect customers that have the same purchasing characteristics so that you can offer your products and services to them as well, which leads to ….
Step 2: Find a list of prospective customers
If you would like to find prospective customers just like your best accounts, you can contact a list broker. If you’re renting lists, the minimum is ususally 5,000 names, which is a statistically valid number for you to test your offer and list.
When you need to rent customer lists, you should ask the list broker:
• How current is the list?
• What is the universe of the list (how many names in the list totally)?
• What is the continuation factor of the list? What percent of the previous renters came back to rent more names from this list?
Always remember that you rent the list; you don’t own it. You can own the customer names if they respond to your direct- mail offer. Since there are seed names (decoy names, planted by list managers to check mailers activities with the rented list) in each customer list for control purposes, the list broker can find out if you are using the entire list without permission.
You can find a list broker at www.the-dma.org, or simply see the “Mailing Lists” section in the Yellow Pages.