Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Shakespearean Canker Blossom

3 ways to create urgency in the direct mail

To increase your response rates of direct mail, to encourage potential customers to act now rather than later.

1 - One way is to put a deadline on their offer. As a general rule, set the deadline at least 6 weeks of the date on which you send the mailing. For any mailing that comes out in September or later, a good deadline is December 21.

Columnist David Yale recommended to emphasize that the deadline is "final" adding the phrase "Too late" for example: "This limited time offer expires on December 21, 2010. After that date is too late."

For Email Marketing you can say that the offer is valid only if the recipient answers "today" or "this week."

2 - If you do not feel comfortable putting a deadline on your mail piece specify a time frame within which the reader has to answer, for example, "to respond within the next 10 days."

3 - Or at least make it clear that it is a limited time offer. The editor Milt Pierce suggested this phrase:

"I urge you to act quickly. This offer is valid only for a limited time. And once it expires may not be repeated again. "

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Ideas Initiation Tests

In direct marketing, the key is to "prove"

Their prices, are too low or too high?

The only way to know is doing some kind of testing and get some solid answers.

I think there are many companies that simply have no interest in finding out if their products or services could be sold at a better price. These companies put a figure which seems reasonable, cross their fingers and go out to sell.

is a pity . With a bit of testing may find some very pleasant surprises.

Some of the significant variables addition to the price you might want to test are:

- Your offer . As said Bob Stone, one of the "gurus" in the direct marketing business, "the proposals you make to customers can mean the difference between success and failure. Depending on the offer, there may be differences in response 25, 50 and even 100 percent. "

- Your list . Better than sending your offer to everyone on a list is to have a few names on several lists and test an offer identical to each list. Once you have obtained the results, use the winning list.

- Your choice of media. How does you what the most appropriate publications to advertise your product or service if you did some tests? Do not forget to also experiment with different sizes of orders, to see what the most effective. socialmedia.biz