Happy Memorial Day!

Welcome to another issue of Communication Matters! In every issue, we will review topics that will help you grow your business faster with cutting-edge communication skills.

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In this issue:

7 Steps to Greater Direct Mail Success

Emailing C-Level and IT Executives

Creativity Corner: Strategies to Encourage Creativity

 

7 Steps To Greater Direct Mail Success

We find direct mail an incredibly powerful communication tool to increase sales. Communicating with your chosen, well-defined target market on a regular basis through phone combined with direct mail can bring about faster company and solution recognition, thus reducing sales time. Here are a few things that can be done to increase effectiveness, response, and conversion rates.

 

1. Start With a High Quality Mailing List
Up to sixty percent of a direct mail campaign’s success revolves around your list. If you are mailing to an existing customer base, generating that list from internal databases is fairly simple. But, targeting new prospects can be a challenge without the correct tools. The more targeted your list, the greater your campaign effectiveness.

2. Have A Clearly Defined Objective
Too often, businesses send out direct mail with no clear-cut goal. Your goal could be to generate new sales or announce a new product or service. Once your goal established, then you can start on the creative side. A strong goal will yield the best results.


3. Develop Your Break-Even Point
Direct mail success is gauged by percentage of response. For years, a 1 percent response has been considered a success. An effective campaign will earn you business, rather than cost you money. At the minimum, you will want the mailer to give you an equal return to your expenses.

4. Present A Compelling Offer
Keep your offer simple and easy to see. Reinforce and detail your offer’s benefits. If possible, give your customers multiple ways to respond. The more response avenues you provide, the greater your response will be.

5. Thank Customers For Their Response
When a customer responds to a direct mail piece, don't forget to say “thank you.” There are numerous things you can do to reward their response.

6. Use the “The Rule of Four” to Communicate with your new target
Many clients mail out one communication piece and expect their new target recipient to respond right away. We have found that it takes four different contacts through direct mail and telephone to have a customer respond to a new company. Your prospect needs to be told why they need your product or service before they will pay attention to your communications.

7. Measure. Measure. Measure.
Each contact method, whether it is telephone calling or direct mail needs to be measured for effectiveness. In order to know if a campaign is successful, you must measure response. The importance of this cannot be stressed enough. It is easy to create a trackable method to deduce each contact’s effectiveness.


Mason Works, LLC has been helping companies launch new products and services for years. We can help you determine the best target market and communicate effectively with them. Please call 303-527-2978 if we can support you.

Emailing C-Level and IT Executives

Recently I ran across an article by Karen Gedney where Jeanniey Mullen, emailing marketing director at OgilvyOne Worldwide, discussed findings on B2B E-Mailing. At Ogilvy, B2B e-mail is often viewed from three unique perspectives:


· Strategic, top-down approach. E-mail is part of an overall marketing plan for achieving corporate objectives.
· Tactical, bottom-up approach. Testing is conducted on critical e-mail messages to determine the best subject lines, use of personalization, times of day to broadcast, and so on, based on audience.
· Technology-based approach. Focus is on the technology used to execute the campaign. Unlike in B2C, lead generation is a primary B2B marketing objective. It requires different technology uses to bring the prospect through an often-long cycle of lead qualifying and nurturing. It's important to be familiar with the client's back-end systems to determine how leads will be handled.


Mullen emphasizes you first must conduct testing for the best times to email based on your own audiences, products, and brand. What works for her clients may not work for you.

· IT professionals: Many IT folks work late into the night or come in early in the morning. The best time to catch them is 8-11 p.m. and 5-7 a.m. However, don't send e-mail in the middle of the night. That's when messages are most likely to be caught by spam blockers.
· C-level executives: Get past vigilant administrative assistants and gatekeepers by e-mailing top executives on Saturdays and Sundays, when they're more likely to check e-mail on their own. On weekends, you'll have a greater chance of catching some quality time with this highly desirable audience. Mullen doesn't recommend using this tactic for the first message to this group, though.

 

Creativity Corner: Strategies to Encourage Creativity

Welcome to another month of Creativity Corner. Today we will discuss ways to Encourage Creativity. In our Communication Matters past issues, we have covered Brainstorming, Mindmapping, Forced Relationships, Guided Fantasies, Holistic Thinking, and Synectics as tools to develop creative solutions for communication. Here we will describe another method for developing new solutions.

Here are 7 ways to enhance your creativity:

    1. Use Creative Games, Puzzles, and Humor
    2. Challenge the Rules
    3. Change your Routine
    4. Allow Failure
    5. Expect to be Creative
    6. Support, Acknowledge, and Reward Creativity
    7. Keep a Journal

We hope that this tool helps your business create better solutions. Here's to creative and more successful outcomes!

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We hope that you have enjoyed our May 2005 newsletter and will gain many useful ideas from our experience to accelerate your business! Please contact us if you do not want to receive future mailings. For more information, email kathy@mason-works.com or go to our website, www.mason-works.com. The Mason Works Acceleration team looks forward to helping you grow your business faster and more cost effectively.

Best wishes!
Kathy

Kathy Mason, President

Mason Works, LLC.

303-527-2978