Direct mail, telemarketing and email marketing explained

Direct mail, telemarketing and email marketing can all be useful methods of targeting the kind of customer who is more likely to buy from you.

All of them involve careful preparation, a great deal of consideration towards your audience and knowledge of how to manage customer data efficiently and within the boundaries of the law...

Direct mail

Using the post to contact your customers can often be a creative and cost-effective way of generating new business. But you must use it well to ensure success. You could, for example send one or more mailshots, containing anything from a letter to a number of items to a specific list of prospects. The intention is to generate a response that can be measured.

Advantages of direct mail

It can be a relatively low-cost exercise with specific customers targeted, plus it’s easy to evaluate your successes, or your failures.

Disadvantages of direct mail

The negative perception by recipients that it’s 'junk mail' is becoming more and more common. This method isn’t appropriate to all industries and it often needs expensive professionals to write, design and implement the project to increase the chances of success.

Steps to carrying out a direct mail campaign

Step 1. Clearly define your objectives and your target market. Are they businesses, professionals, females etc? Draw up a profile of those you suspect would buy from you to generate a list.

Step 2. You’ll need a good, up-to-date mailing list. You can generate this yourself, but it can be difficult. Renting a list that complies with data protection and is screened for people who have died, moved away or don’t want unsolicited mail can save a lot of effort.

But ask questions:

• Who has used it before and how often has it been rented?
• Who’s on the list and how much information is there? Can you cut down selections by gender, ethnicity, job title etc?
• How was the list created and when was it last updated?

Step 3. Design your mail shot with the people you’re targeting fully in mind. Be sure to include an easy response method – a reply-paid coupon or a phone number – and consider incentives if you think they would be useful. You may want to include one or more leaflets but make sure you are mindful of postage costs.

Step 4. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are often a time people are receptive to receiving mailings. If you have a large amount of mail shots, it’s worth looking into what discounts you’re entitled to with the post office.

Step 5. After the mailing, make sure you’re ready for any responses. It’s worth estimating a response rate of around 3 for every 100 mailings, although it’s rare to get much more than 1%. Evaluate your campaign in terms of cost per pack, cost per response and cost per sale and make a note of what you learn for future campaigns.

Costs

The costs of a direct mail campaign depends on how much you do yourself and how much agency involvement there is. Prices range from the cost of lists, stationery, print and postage to copywriters, designers, envelope stuffers etc.

 

Telemarketing

This encompasses all telephone-based marketing activity including sales, customer services and market research. It’s useful for following up business-to-business leads, setting up meetings or even closing a deal. Consumers’ inbound calls requesting advice, information or making complaints can be defined as telemarketing.

Advantages of telemarketing

It’s relatively low-cost, particularly compared to on the road sales people, it’s also easy to monitor and can be outsourced for a fee.

Disadvantages of telemarketing

Cold calling has a very negative perception, especially in the consumer sector. It can also be a thankless task if carrying it out yourself.

Steps to carrying out a telemarketing campaign

Inbound:
Provide basic, good customer service and make sure you log and maintain a record of all key phone calls. There is some good software on the market, although paper-based is acceptable, providing it’s readily accessible to all who require it.

Outbound:
Step 1. Prepare thoroughly. Outbound calling is often best used as part of a wider campaign with other promotional methods. Whether it is or not, make sure you create a detailed script with optional responses that don’t sound rehearsed.

Step 2. Stick to key points that will invoke interest from a customer, such as price and availability rather than the history of your company.

Step 3. Agree with the customer’s first reaction, answer with another way of perceiving your product or service and close by agreeing the next steps – ideally them buying your product.

Costs

Staff carrying out the calls will be your biggest expense unless you do it yourself and, naturally, there’s the cost of the phone calls. As with direct mail, you can rent a list of contacts – but only buy a volume that you can handle. Outsourcing is another option – this can be expensive and your briefing process needs to be thorough.

 

Email marketing

This form of contacting customers is becoming increasingly popular and the science is still evolving.

Advantages of email marketing

This is a very cheap method of promotion and its highly-technological nature can make it intriguing to your audience. Viral marketing is a good idea to get customers to recommend a friend and increase your database in return for a reward (discount etc).

Disadvantages of email marketing

Spam, or unsolicited email, is often unwelcome and gaining the permission of a prospect to strike up a dialogue can often prove difficult.

Steps to carrying out an email marketing campaign

Step 1. Consider your audience and how receptive they’ll be to email. What type of email would they like?  A simple offer in text format or a more complicated newsletter (e-zine)?

Step 2. As things take longer to read from a screen, try and keep what you’re telling them to a minimum and don’t be too formal. Include an attractive headline as a subject to encourage recipients to open the email.

Step 3. Always offer the recipient the opportunity to unsubscribe

Step 4. Use mail merge facilities to ensure personalisation of each email and don’t include any other customer names in the 'To' area other than the individual recipient.

Step 5. Ensure you have the resource to cope with any responses and deal with them quickly.

Step 6. Evaluate all responses for future campaigns and make sure you don’t mail people who have unsubscribed.

Costs

If you carry out the entire campaign yourself, the only cost will be your time. You may want to consider using a professional to write the email if you’re not confident and there are the agencies with the expertise to design and implement the project. Renting a list may also be worth your consideration.

Whichever method of promotion you use, it’s often worth trying a combination – e.g. direct mail followed by an outbound call – to get the optimum results.