Direct mail is one of the oldest forms of traditional business marketing. Back in the late 1800’s Sears built their business around sending our huge catalogs with every product that they offered. Every year, the Sears Catalog would make it into most people’s mailboxes and they would order anything and everything they needed.

Now the Sears Catalog no longer exists but the sheer quantity of direct mail has quickly replaced that one huge book. People are constantly bombarded with direct mail every day - many of it in slick new mailing pieces, and all of it designed to get people to open it and respond!

The Trade-Off Between Cost and Information

With so much material competing after so little attention span, it really is tough to get the person’s attention. There’s always a trade-off between how much information you can provide to the recipient and how much you have to spend. I would love to be able to send 20 page reports to all of our recipients but the cost of something like that, in both postage and printing makes it prohibitive.

But if I send a one page letter or a postcard, it’s very difficult to get my message across to differentiate myself from my competitors.

The 2 Possible Responses for Direct Mail

There are 2 possibilities of what can happen when someone receives your direct mail:

• 99% of the Time - They throw it away.
• 1% of the Time - They call you up. 1% isn’t a bad response rate. There are definitely higher numbers to achieve but that’s a start.

The Third Option - Increase Your Direct Mail Response Online

But now there is a 3rd option. One that takes away from the bad option (people who throw it away) and move them closer to the good option (people who call you up).

Here’s what it is. . .

Give them an option to go to your website and request more information or just to read something. If you have a special report with useful information, that person who isn’t ready to call you up, won’t necessarily throw the direct mailing away. They’ll go online, get the information, and they might call you down the road.

Collect their Contact Information

You can always give the information away for free and just hope that they call you. But you can also improve your marketing efforts by requiring them to enter their information to get the report or special discount. This way, you can now actively market to a person who has identified themselves as a qualified prospect.

You won’t convert everyone to a future client but if you continue to market to them, I guarantee that you’ll get a much higher response rate than the 1% you did in your first round of direct mailing.

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