Marketing Information

Google

Bookmark and Share

Direct Mail Offers: Eight Steps to Making them Effective

Google

Bookmark and Share

N Provis Academy: It's An Artist's Business
Affilorama :: The #1 Affiliate Marketing Training Portal
Masterful Business Plan
You Are A Giant - Self-esteem And Confidence Building Ebook
E-commerce Get It Right!
The Super Soap Making Book
You Are A Giant - Self-esteem And Confidence Building Ebook

Every direct mail package you drop in the mail should contain an offer. The offer is the incentive or reward that motivates prospects to respond to your mailing, either with an order or with a request for more information. "Subscribe to Hook, Line and Sinker today and save 45% off the newsstand price" is an example of an offer. To be effective, your offers must pass eight tests.

Test 1. Is your offer specific?
"Visit our website for more information" is not an offer. Your offer must be specific and tangible.

Test 2. Is your offer exclusive?
Are you making your offer only to a select few (and making them feel that they are an exclusive bunch), or are you making your offer to everyone and his dog? For example, is your mailing envelope addressed to "Occupant"?

Test 3. Is your offer valuable?
Will your prospects perceive your offer to be of value to them? Your offer may be inexpensive for you to offer, but it must have high perceived value to your potential customers. For example, a $100 gift card to The Home Depot has high perceived value to your prospects, but is inexpensive for you to offer if it lands you a sale worth $5,000.

Test 4. Is your offer unique?
Is the deal you are offering only available through your business?

Test 5. Is your offer useful?
Your offer can be exclusive but useless (an engraved pet rock). Or unique and useless (a bag of dust from Mars). Make sure your offer helps your prospects save money, save time, do their jobs better or is something else just as helpful.

Test 6. Is your offer relevant?
You could offer a 40% volume discount on laptop computers to both travelling salespeople and to computer retailers. Both groups buy laptops, both groups appreciate a discount, but only one group buys in volume.

Test 7. Is your offer plausible?
Some offers are too good to be true. Others are silly. I received an email from a spammer, offering me one million email addresses in electronic format for only $240. "Order now. Quantities are limited," he said.

Test 8. Is your offer easy to acquire?
The harder you make it for your prospects to obtain your offer, the lower your response rates will be. So make your order forms clear, simple and short, your toll-free phone number obvious on the page, and your conditions of purchase few.

Alan is a business-to-business direct mail copywriter and lead generation consultant. As President of Sharpe Copy Inc. (http://www.sharpecopy.com), Alan specializes in helping businesses generate leads, close sales and retain customers, using cost-effective, compelling direct mail and email marketing. Alan also uses his direct mail advertising services to help charities raise funds and raise awareness of their causes, using fundraising letters.

Google

Bookmark and Share

Instant Home Writing Kit (revised Ed.

MORE RESOURCES:

IMSoup

Internet Marketing Company Conducts a Poll on the Google Penguin Update
San Francisco Chronicle (press release)
Internet Marketing Company (www.internetmarketingcompany.biz) reveals results of the poll, "After the Google Penguin Update, Did You Change Your SEO Approach?" Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) May 17, 2012 Internet Marketing Company, an SEO company that ...
June 2012 #SEO Training Courses and Internet Marketing Classes AnnouncedDigitalJournal.com (press release)
SEO Company Brick Marketing Announces Affordable Small Business SEO SolutionIMSoup

all 30 news articles »


Forbes

Sears Explains Their Success In Content Marketing
Forbes
Earlier this week we profiled digital marketing execs from General Mills and GE on how they're running their organizations like publishers. For our third and final installment in this series on content marketing, we sat down with Julia Fitzgerald, ...
Content marketing has key role for GEWarc

all 4 news articles »


Free marketing seminar in Sacramento looks at social media
Sacramento Bee
based marketing company Constant Contact Inc. will host a free seminar to help small businesses Tuesday in Sacramento. The event, titled "Get Down to Business: Helping You Reach Your Next Great Customer," is part of a nationwide series instructing ...

and more »


HubSpot Launches a Marketing Effectiveness Dashboard
MarketWatch (press release)
All-in-one marketing software company HubSpot, Inc. launched a dashboard web app based on its popular Marketing Grader tool. This new interactive dashboard quickly answers marketer's burning questions at a glance. Are competitors accruing more Facebook ...
HubSpot's New Release: 4 Things You Noticed and 8 You Didn'tBusiness 2 Community

all 16 news articles »


Thought Leaders Dietrich and Livingston Add Integrated Marketing Session to ...
MarketWatch (press release)
BELTSVILLE, Md., May 18, 2012 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- via PRWEB - Vocus, Inc. (NASDAQ:VOCS) , a leading provider of cloud marketing software, today announced thought leaders, bloggers and authors Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston have joined the ...

and more »


Centene Appoints Dave Minifie To New Position As Chief Marketing Officer
MarketWatch (press release)
LOUIS, May 18, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Centene Corporation (NYSE:CNC) today announced the appointment of Dave Minifie to Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for the Company, effective immediately. Mr. Minifie, located in Centene's ...

and more »


Fortune (blog)

Marketing in the Middle Kingdom
Fortune (blog)
Although he writes primarily for an audience of Western marketers seeking to reach Chinese consumers, his book should interest anyone who wants to understand what makes modern China tick. An ad man at the end of the day, Doctoroff repeats his messages ...



BCAMA Vision Marketing Conference 2012 on Wednesday, May 23rd
MarketWatch (press release)
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, May 17, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- BCAMA's annual flagship marketing conference, VISION, will take place on Wednesday, May 23rd at the Westin Bayshore Hotel in Vancouver. Conference attendees will listen to a stellar ...

and more »


IDA's New Dental Marketing Websites: Generate Leads With Custom Images
San Francisco Chronicle (press release)
New dental marketing websites from Internet Dental Alliance offers feature easy ways to add custom images to generate leads. (PRWEB) May 17, 2012 Images are an effective way for dentists to customize their dental marketing websites and.

and more »


Global Marketing: What You Need to Know
Forbes
Global marketing is a topic I am hearing more and more about from Chief Marketing Officers, and so we're tapping Corporate Executive Board's global executive network to sort out rules of the road and best practices. To that end, we recently co-hosted a ...

and more »

Google News

Google

Tweet

Bookmark and Share

home | site map
© 2006