Direct Mail Prospecting: Double Your Response Rates

Many people say that direct mail prospecting doesn’t work, which may be true if there is no strategy behind the action. Sending a flyer out to different masses will yield different results than sending a thoughtful item and message to a carefully chosen group. With online activity consistently increasing there is an opportunity to stand out with direct mail since few people are doing it anymore.

Direct mail prospecting is one of the easiest marketing techniques to implement and is without question one of the most effective.

It is not very hard to understand why the direct mail sequence works. Think about how you buy things.

It happens very often that you may have laid a brochure or catalogue intending to make a purchase. But things come up and you promise yourself that you will get it to later. Finally you buy when another catalog or brochure shows up in the mail to remind you, perhaps weeks or a month later. Aside from acting as a reminder a direct mail also works in a series of other mails:

• It allows you to further educate the customer. In direct prospecting you get a chance to include supporting material such as testimonials, case studies, videos, a personalized message, free sample of your product and more.
• You can test various offers. As people respond differently to different offers. For instance, one client may not care about paying the full at the time of purchase but loves free shipping. On the other hand, the other person may need to budget the purchase over six months.
• A direct mail boosts your odds of hitting the client at the right time. Aside from having an urgent need clients are ready to buy only when they are ready to buy. When you send more letters you increase your odds of acquiring a new client.

 

Tips to making your Direct Mail Prospecting a success

Focus on highly targeted, high probability prospect

Before deciding to send an item or collateral via direct mail, it is important to figure out exactly who you will be sending it to. Instead of sending a mailing list to 10,000 people you want to be very very focused. Cherry-pick the prospects that you are going to mail. It is important to consider what kind of pain they are in and what kind of message they will resonate with. And if your company has a buyer persona determined, then it makes it easier to run different direct mail campaigns specific to each buyer persona. Find a very targeted group of prospects that are highly profitable prospects for you. Tailor your messages specifically to them

Maximise creativity

You might have received something in your mail- and even if you didn’t buy anything- you remember who sent it because of how creative it was. Sending a creative yet memorable direct mail is a gesture that is memorable and increases the chances of internal discussion.

Tracking

Direct mail requires accurate tracking. Tracking all respondent touch points including website visits, inbound phone calls and internet form submissions. Lead conversions to sales are critical because lead quality varies dramatically by offer, mailing list source and channel.

Balance

Direct mail requires balance between all direct response success predictors. These include selling in-demand products, good offers, channel integration, excellent creative execution and thoughtful targeting. Poor quality in any of these areas will make the difference between success and failure. So test all these variables or take the help of an expert, with as much diversity as possible to uncover a control position that yields an acceptable profit.

Persistent testing

Direct mail marketing requires more than a single test to proceed. Test, test and test again until the winning combination reveals itself.

Let the sales consulting firms handle your sales process

Of course relying on your talents and resources is a good way to work but it’s not a good game to rely on intuition and creativity. Sales is a structured set of tactical steps. Implementing the sales process with the help of sales consulting firms can streamline the completion of any task, simple or complex. A defined process can also help to make your employees more efficient, consistent and accurate both in their roles and their interactions with the customers. The benefits of processes in business also apply to your sales department as well.

A sales the process that compliments your business, sales representatives, customers and products or services will allow you to boost conversions, close more deals and ensure all your reps are providing customers with positive and consistent experiences no matter who they are talking to. 

Reasons why you need sales consulting firm for a better sales process, before it’s too late

When times are good and customers are rolling in, it’s easy to stop paying attention to your sales process. Or even get by without that. But taking time to invest in your system will not only help your profits today, but it will also help put your company through possible future downturns. Here are the essential reasons to give a change to your sales process, before it’s too late:

●      If you want to scale growth and remain vital and relevant, you will need to have a sales strategy consulting firm to help you make a well-defined process. Without a sales process that is well defined, clearly communicated to your employees that creates consistency- both in the sales process and the entire experience. Other than that, having a well-defined process of specific chain-effect steps gives you a more accurate understanding of what things are and aren’t working in your sales process. Defining what triggers cause prospects to move from one stage to the next makes it easy for you to identify the right actions and get rid of the bottlenecks and those activities that yield no result.

●      A sales process lays out each step for how your staff should manage leads from the initial outreach to the sale itself and future follow up. When your sales team doesn’t have a system to follow, the members could all be doing things differently, possibly wasting time, misrepresenting your brand and letting deals slip through their fingers. By clearly having a sales strategy and explaining what they should do throughout the entire process of making a sale, you may see more consistent results from every employee.

●      A standardized sales process makes training sales reps fast, simple and nearly foolproof, by showing salespeople what they need to do in certain situations. Having a sales strategy takes some of the training burdens off the sales manager. When the entire sales team is following the same road map, any member of the old guard can pass on their knowledge to the new hires when they first start off.

●      Not all leads are equal in value. A sales rep could end up spending a considerable amount of time chasing down a prospect who always says maybe when that effort can be better spent on finding new quality leads. Your sales process will outline how many contacts a salesperson should spend on an undecided prospect before they move on. A sales consulting firm will review your existing clients to see how much revenue each one generates relative to their overhead. And chances are they will find some projects less worthwhile than others and some may not be profitable at all when considering the time spent in managing their accounts.

●      As a part of business process improvement methodology, you should be able to collect information from your customers during the sales process. You can have this by having the sales consulting firm track their results using customer relationship management, or CRM software. By refining what types of customers are buying from you and how much, you can fine-tune your target profile rather than relying on a hunch.