Direct Mail Marketing - Powerful Tips For Small Business

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Direct mail marketing remains one of the most powerful and effective ways for any small business to get new business and to sell more products and services to existing customers and clients, too.

The problem is business owners go about it in entirely the wrong way. A successful direct mail marketing campaign is not just simply a case of sending some random letter or postcard through the post and expecting it to result in a flood of sales.

Successful direct mail marketing, like all other forms of effective and profitable small business marketing is predicated on following the rules of the game, rules laid down over the past 150 years or so.

They're not rules as in laws you have to follow "or else", but instead are guidelines which have been found empirically to give better results (i.e. higher Return on Investment, or ROI).

Unfortunately, the people responsible for producing most of the direct mail marketing campaigns small businesses send out are not actually qualified for the job. Because it tends to be left in the hands of graphic designers, and unless they've been specially trained in direct marketing principles, they 'll create something that looks fantastic ... but in terms of ROI is a disaster.

Worse still, it's pointless arguing with them: despite reams of evidence to the contrary, I still hear graphic designers telling my clients what I've produced for them has too much text and no one will read it (which is why the 22-page sales letter I recently sent out for a client went to 30,000 + people and brought in an ROI of 150,000 GBP or more, I expect). So here some simple rules for direct mail. I promise, follow these and you're going to get better responses:

Rule # 1: Be up close and personal

Most direct mail marketing LOOKS like marketing. You get it in a stock envelope with a label or printed address on it, and as often as not it has the company name and logo on it, to. This is a really bad idea..

Why? Because it's obvious even to my dog this is a marketing piece -- and it follows you're going to try and sell me something, which immediately puts me on the defensive.

Instead, I suggest you use a plain, white envelope, the kind you'd use for a personal letter. Then use a real stamp (as in, one from the Post Office), and hand-write the address, or at least use a realistic looking handwriting font printed straight onto the envelope-- NO LABELS.

If you must have a return address on it, simply use the address in the top left corner -- no company name, no logo.

This is immediately going to mean more people will actually open your direct mail marketing pieces. Of course, once they've opened it, they've got to read it and then respond.

Rule # 2: Be friendly

But ... if you read most direct mail marketing pieces, they're dull, boring and full of wind. They don't seem to be there for any particular reason other than "brand awareness". Forget that right now. Your "brand awareness" will be a by-product of your success, not the other way around.

So write your direct mail piece from one person to another, in informal, friendly terms. And then, make sure you're writing about one thing, and one thing only.

Identify, highlight and promise to solve ONE problem in the headline; tell them you can solve it and how they can get the solution in the copy; and then in the call to action tell them clearly and unambiguously what they need to do to get it, why they need to do this (and why they need to do it NOW rather than later), and what 'll happen if they don't. Simple.

These tips alone will make a huge difference to your results, I guarantee.

Jon McCulloch is perhaps Europe's top direct mail marketer. Visit his website now and take just 3 of his 52 FREE small business promotion tips he's giving away now, and actually put them to work for you and you'll be amazed by the results. They've all produced significantly improved results for small businesses just like yours in the past two years.

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