Like any direct mail marketing effort, email makes an impression.  For most successful digital marketing campaigns, it’s not the sheer number of impressions you make but it’s the message relevancy.  Just as important is it to targeting the right audience is communicating the right message.  Your message should tell a story, not a repeat the image or sound bite over and over.  This relationship building between how many times you can broadcast your message before it is ignored is sometimes referred to as the signal-to-noise ratio.  The most effective repetition tells the prospects something of meaningful value, i.e., why they might consider your product or service, how your business differentiates itself from your competitor, and considerations one should make when shopping from businesses like yours.

Telling your story
The balance between brand and response has been argued; should you spend 60% of your budget on brand and 40% on response?  How important is brand building to the smaller business with a limited budget for testing various advertisement mediums and offers?  Regardless of what this ratio might be, a multiple email deployment can accomplish both brand building and response.  It’s done by telling a story about your product or service with multiple varied email create of relevant, timely and offers of value.

Let’s take a closer look at how a multiple deployment email broadcast and tell your story.

Deployment One – “Attention Getter”
First consider that whatever you tell your prospects, you will ultimately want to do it within the 4 messages.  The first email is the “Attention Getter”.  It sets the stage of the story and frames the duration of the campaign.
•    Test multiple subject lines
•    Make your logo, offer, and benefit statement within the view pane
•    Make sure your message is relevant with your audience

Deployment Two – Legitimize your presence
Your second email should be a congruent continuation of your message and offer.  This one is geared toward reassuring that the first email is legitimate.

Deployment Three – Emphasize the Call-to-Action
Your third email again continues with congruency, however, reminds them not as much about the offer as about the deadline of the campaign offering.  This third deployment should create a sense of urgency.

Deployment Four – Extended Offering
Your fourth email should speak to those who have already shown interest but not yet responded.  These are the click-throughs who have also shown interest in your offer but have not yet signed on, given you more attention, or purchased.  The message to be said here is one that says, “Ok, so we have what you want, we offer what you’re interested in, and the deadline has come and gone.  Since the response was so overwhelming, we’ve decided to extend the promotion until this week so act now.”

With email, you have the opportunity to say something.  You don’t have much time to say it so what you say should be a carefully thought out part of a bigger story.  It may offer something that is of value to your customer, even though your customer isn’t in the moment to respond.  Should they not respond, hopefully your message served as a reminder that you are in business.  What they see and remember from your email message is simple images, your logo, and maybe the offer.  What they may or may not take away is that you may or may not be professional.  You may or may not offer something they would ever be interested in.  You may or may not communicate the same ole thing you did last month.  Should you not bring anything of immediate value to your recipient, its better wait and send something of value.  Making a “bad” impression is worse than no message at all.

So think about the story you might want to tell.  Consider again the very small amount of time you have for the email recipient to “take in” your message.  And ask yourself, “how do I tell a story in nice bite sized chucks”?

Consider your sales pitch when designing your email deployment.  What do you say first?  How do you frame what you truly want to communicate?  And how do you close?

For more help with your next email deployment, consider calling BB Direct.  That’s what we’re here for…

Gone are the days of high cost email data acquisition.  With email aggregators in full force, the sheer quantity and targetability of email deployment has sky rocketed while the cost for effective deployment has plummeted.  What’s more, the effectiveness of email advertisement continues to improve.

Email Deployment Example
Let’s take a look at a typical scenario with a direct email campaign.  A medium sized retail specialty store wants to reach out to the local community.  Unlike others forms of marketing, an email broadcast can reach people on the cheap and collect names of potential customers from each which to further communicate your messages.  It wasn’t too long ago when email data wasn’t selectable by geography.  Now we have the ability to make push millions of impressions to both a targeted geographic market, as well as a targeted demographic or behavioral interest category.

Multiple Deployment Program – 3 Plus 1 Package
BB Direct offers many a multiple email deployment package to include broadcasting to the same audience 3 times, then once more to those who previously clicked through to a site.

The first deployment tests the same email HTML with 4 different subject lines.  This signals the mailer to mail again with the top two best subject lines for the second deployment.  The third deployment tests the best of the top two for the deployment.

The third deployment is a modified email HTML.  It’s sent to all previous click-thru’s as a last attempt at visitor conversion.  BB Direct offers the above campaign test for $3,500 for up to 250,000 targeted email impressions.  That’s 750,000 impressions plus another revisit deployment for maximum exposure.

All campaigns come with open click-thru reporting to better understand how the campaign is performing over time.  If you’d like to learn more how BB Direct can help you with your next email campaign, please email us at info@bbdirect.com or call us toll-free at 866-501-6273.

For those direct mail marketers, or those who offer services to support this industry, you may benefit from a variety of new online sites specifically designed to serve those businesses in need of an “acquisition” mailing list.  BBDirectLeads.com (now located at www.mailinglistorders.com) provides users with immediate access to a host of quality compiled mailing lists.  Not only can you view the available selects from each of the databases on the site, but you can run counts to determine how many names and address are available within a given market.  Should you want to purchase the right to mail to those individuals, you can have that data available to you within minutes with just a click of a button.  Ordering mailing list data has never been easier, but what’s more, doing the work online saves money for everyone, and especially for you.

The types of files available on BB Direct Leads.com are compiled Consumer Database, Property Mortgage Database, Business to Business Database, Resident Occupant Database, New Mover Database (both weekly and monthly), as well as a database of Bankruptcy filings.  This system is an online vending machine of sorts in which you can see everything available with no need for consultants to call, talk to, makes requests, leave a voicemail with, and wait for them to call you back.

Can’t quite figure out how to use the system?  No problem, BB Direct’s video tutorial library makes it easy for you to watch how to perform various functions in a snap.  The video is available online, supported by YouTube, and what’s great it they’re free.  No need to register, just click on the video link and begin watching.  All the video’s are between 2 and 5 minutes in length so you’re time is never wasted.  At BB Direct, we appreciate the value of your time.

And like all good websites, the entire site is supported by people.  Real people who understand direct mail and mailing list data.  They are located in the states and speak English.  When you call (866) -501-6273, you get a human, not a series of telephone prompts.  They are available for you and want to help.

The next time you have a need to purchase a mailing list, try BB Direct’s self-serve data vending machine.  You’ll be glad you did.

If there’s one question nagging on every business owner it’s, “How do I find more buyers?”  For most business owners, marketing professionals, and sales representatives, the answer is elusive, if not down right difficult.

For many, it’s easy to find more shoppers, but how do you find more buyers?  Add a free hot dog and some chips and you’ll get walk-in traffic on any weekend.  Offer a webinar with a value added proposition, you’ll get people signing up left and right.  But the buyers are really who you want to attract.  The buyers are those everyone can’t seem to find enough of.  The buyers are those who make the business stay in the black.  How do you find more buyers?  The answer is, in looking at your own database of existing buyers.  And not just those who purchased from you recently, but those who are the ideal, best customers.

Take a good look at your existing database of customers
Your existing internal customer database contains the information to truly make smart decisions.  How did you find those buyers to begin with?  What makes them better than others?  How long have they been buying from you?  And who are the most profitable?  The answer lies in first looking over those existing best customers.  You need only the names and addresses of your best customers.  Truly.  With that information, you can turn your internal database into your most valuable asset.  How is this done?  It’s done by profiling your customers.

Internal customer database profiling
Internal customer database profiling involves providing your existing mailing list of “good” customers (that means those you truly want to find more of) for the purposes of analyzing it for patterns.  The process is fairly simple.  Pass your internal database of mailing list records against a database of existing customers, append any and all applicable data variables to your customer mailing list records that match the host database.  In the case of a business to consumer profiling, you might find that your best customers have lower than average income and are on a fixed income because they are 65 or older.  Well, this tells you to focus on that market doesn’t it?  If you’re a business to business type company, you might find that the vast majority of your best customers are those who are in the retail sector of businesses and have a sales volume of less than $1,000,000.

What next?
Given the results of an internal customer profile, you now can search within the same given database for more “like” prospects, i.e., age 65 plus with fixed income, or retail businesses with less that 1 million in sales revenue.  Knowing this can help you with targeting your next mailing list audience, but also can help you version your next mailing list campaign.  What you say to your audience is equally as important as who you say it to.  And if you know who you are talking to, you are vastly more able to communicate the most effective message.

If you need help with profiling your internal customers database, call BB Direct at 866-501-6273.  We’re here to help you take your business marketing to the next level.

This post is one of those that promotes our newest product.  It’s an advertisement, not a blog post.  I don’t normally blog in the fashion but figured the 172 “comments” made in the past 4 weeks that were caught in the blog’s spam filter gives me the right to throw one in myself.  So……here it is.

We now are able to offer an Affiliate Count & Order system for clients promoting mailing lists where their clients want the ability to run their own counts and place their own orders.  The Affiliate site program allows partners to add our count & order system to their web presence.

So what is an affiliate site?
Basically, the count & order system we’re talking about here is, in essence, an online mailing list vending machine.  Your clients visit your site, link to the mailing list site enabling them to produce their own customized mailing list on the fly.  The “anytime available” access allows your clients to focus on creating their mailing list on their schedule.  It also gives your clients the power to learn how mailing lists are created, and to realized their limitations.

Is it right for you?
This is a great questions…when does it make sense to add such a link to your site?  Well, let me tell you that for starters, adding a site such as this doesn’t immediately increase web traffic to your site.  The affiliate site would contain your logo, and give your site visitors the ability to order mailing list products.  But, you should understand that  just because you have this system, doesn’t mean people will flock to your site and start buying.  Sites that benefit most include one or more of the following:

• You you currently offer mailing lists to your customers.

• Most of your website visitors purchase mailing lists or related services such at direct mail or lettershop services.

• You are planning on expanding your services to include and plan to make mailing lists an important component of these new services.

• You are a mailing list broker.

• You currently purchase a high degree of mailing lists for your own mailing needs.

If your business does not include any of the following, but you still feel your business would benefit from incorporating an online mailing list component to your website, please call us to discuss other possible system functionalities that may be of interest.  You can find an example of our affiliate site by clicking here.

I just read an article in my very own local newspaper about a contest promoted by the USPS that is simply ingenious.  Whether we’re a test market for the idea, or a Postal Manager decided it would be good for business, this idea is fantastic.  Basically, it’s a contest to give your mail box a make over, take before and after pictures and submit them for judging.  To read the article, click here.

With the post office struggling for new customers, it only makes sense to draw attention to the mail box, take pride in it’s presence, and of course, everything that get’s stuffed into it.  What if people approached their mail box with more pride?  What if they looked at their mail box with more personal ownership?  What if consumers took notice?  Would this be good for the direct mail marketing business?  Would the contents within the box be more appealing?  Would we take a second or two longer at considering the offers placed with this “beautified” direct marketing receptical?  Something tells me it’s good and people would take a longer look.  And in doing so, something tells me this would increase response for the mailers.

I’ll be looking into this further to find out the “why”, “how”, and “is it working”.  More on this later.  Stay tuned.

The Small Business Association reports that 4 out of 5 businesses go out of business within the first 2 years.  During a recession, the mortality rate of a new business is even greater.  The primary deficiency among smaller, newer businesses is that owners simply lack the experience and planning skills necessary to stay solvent.  For many, the only business management experience they possess is their own within those pain first 2 years.  But marketing lessons can be learned from others mistakes.  If you pay attention to the right competition, you’ll grab market share of those businesses wearing blinders.

Take inventory of the competition within your market
Start by making a list of your competition.  Include all the businesses that provide a product or service to your existing customers and prospects, or those who provide something that would cause your customers or prospects to stop using your product all together.

Examine your competitions position within the market.  Ask yourself, how are they differentiating themselves from you and the others?  Which business(s) dominate the market?  What type of marketing mediums do they use consistently?  What message appears to work better than others?  Ask others what they see and recall?  Document not just the market leaders but those businesses which test various mediums and messages.  Try to remain as objective as possible in your assessment and remember that all the competition face the same challenges in growing their businesses.  It’s safe to assume that if a campaign is short lived, it’s likely not generated enough sales to support itself in the long run.  Over time you’ll be able to learn which marketing campaigns produce a positive ROI and which ones are scrapped.  As dynamic and daunting task as this sounds, it’s far less painful than investing blindly into a bad campaigns that ultimately do not produce.

Divide your competitors into 3 segments
For starters, you may want to consider segmenting your competition into 3 categories.  This will help you know where to focus most of your attention.

Established and Well Branded – These are the businesses which have been around forever, have a loyal following, and strong financial backing.  These businesses have spent a great deal of money and time and growing their business.  Depending on the business you’re in, you may not have the same results in advertisement as they do because their name alone carries more brand recognition and thus drives sales.  What you want to do is pay attention to what they spend their marketing dollars on.  Likely they will not be wasting any of it on the wrong marketing because mature businesses have learned how to market their business years ago.  How does your current marketing compare to theirs?  Are they ever using direct mail to reach their audience?  What about the print space, radio, and television?

Quick Start – These are the businesses which are attracting new customers by doing the right things out of the gate.  They’ve not only got a solid plan to reach their new prospects, they also have a well oiled system to service them.  These are the businesses you want to focus most of your attention on.  If you are under capitalized, focus on parts of their marketing you can afford that will best resonate with your ideal customer.

Under Capitalized – These businesses may be new or old.  They’re in business and float along aimlessly without penetrating any new market share.  They will likely not make it through a recessionary downturn as they’re ill prepared for navigating through hardship.  Because they’re poor planners, they’re also unable to convince the bank to lend them money and will likely leave their vendors holding the bag.  These are also important to watch for two reasons; what not to do, and how you might connect with their few remaining customers before they close their doors.

Separating your competitors in this way will help you see which ones threaten your market share from those which neglect their customers and offer opportunity to grow it.

What have you learned?
One important observation you should make is how the bigger players within your market position themselves amongst the rest.  And those who don’t make an effort to differentiate will likely loose customers randomly to other competitors.  In an ideal market, there would be just as many different kinds of businesses as there are different consumers.  In most markets there are fewer businesses all attempting to satisfy the greatest consumer base.  When the marketing budget can afford it, bigger businesses themselves serve multiple segments to satisfy multiple buyers.

You’ll also find that the smartest businesses using multiple mediums, say television, direct mail, and print space, will attempt to deliver a uniform message along all three channels.  To be efficient, the message is projected in the same geographic market.  This uniformity is important to reinforcing your message.  Careful planning is required to ensure that the investment along all three channels has consistent offers and creative copy.  And that the timing of what they offer works with creating the greatest impact.  Some businesses will attempt to test pricing discounts through a radio commercial and unique feature of product through a newspaper print ad.  The inconsistency is confusing to the consumer and the brand gets lost in the mix to better positioned competitors.

So let’s say you’ve got family and friends all keeping an eye out for you.  They’re clipping the competitions coupons, saving email ads, direct mail, flyers and the like.  They’re also taking notes on telemarketing calls coming in, people stopping by their business or front door, and of oversized bus wraps with giant pictures.  You begin amassing your collection and begin drawing conclusions.  You may see that some “Established and Well Branded” competitors consistently use direct mail and offer lower significant discounted pricing.  You may also find that some of the “Quick Start” competitors are all in the phone book with quarter page adds all boasting high quality products.  And you may also see that several “Under Capitalized” competitors confuse their customers with multiple messages over multiple mediums.

Unless you can truly deliver a discounted cost that will compete with the attention of the “Established and Well Branded”, it’s not wise to place your marketing investment in that area.  Depending on your budget, you many want to mimic some of the “Quick Start” approaches in running a yellow page add of equal size but differentiated positioning.  It’s difficult to get too specific when talking about all industries in general, but the point here is that your competitors can teach you about what to do and more importantly about what not to do.  The longer you watch the competition in this fashion, the more you will learn from them.  And never assume something will work for you just because the competition is doing it.  Everything you do for the first time should be considered a test.  Carefully give it your very best shot and measure the results.  If yellow pages draw $60,000 in new profit per year at a cost of $15,000, it’s likely you will have the same results the next year.  Increasing the size of the ad space doesn’t guarantee a proportional increase in profits.

During a recession, everything changes
Now that you’re established and you’re well on your way to growing your market share, the economy takes a turn for the worse.  You’ve established your position among the other top competitors in your market, but the market as a whole begins to shrink.  This is where you must keep one eye on the competition, and the other on your existing customers.  Again, depending on the industry you’re in and how well you position yourself, holding onto your customers can be a challenge.

Here are some things you should know people behave differently during a down market.

•    Many people change how they value what they buy.
•    People look for value over abundance.
•    People consider time as a factor.
•    People don’t like gimmicks.
•    People are more sober shoppers.
•    People have a better sense of what they want and what they need.
•    People look to escape, even if only for a little while.
•    People relocate.
•    People price compare.
•    People care what others think about their abundance of spending.
•    People read the contracts.
•    People hesitate and take longer to purchase.

Given the above list, you will find many of your competitors making adjustments to their message.  They may change their traditional, long standing marketing medium to cut costs and fine tune offer.  The first marketing they stop is likely one that’s overpriced and not resulting in new business.

Generally speaking, a recession is a terrible time to stop advertising.  Those who do stop signal they are suffering.  These businesses are the ones that will suffer the largest migration of customers.  And this is where you can position yourself to fill the void.

Again, depending on your budget, you want to be sure you’re communicating to your existing customers first.  These consumers are truly your best spent investment.  Guarding them is the key to surviving the economic “storm”.  But if you can afford to reach out to the market for new business, now is the time.  The message must be relevant and strong.  If you’re going to offer a discount, make it one worthy of considering.  If you offer exceptional service, focus on that value as a benefit during this economic day and time.  If your product is more expensive but definitely superior, consider the audience and make sure that audience still values your product as they did before.  If not, consider changing the audience to fit the times.

It’s important to have a healthy life-time value mix of customers.  The larger businesses got to where they are by listening to the market and learning from mistakes.  To use a vegetable garden analogy, your marketing mix should be spend nurturing younger seedlings, harvesting the low hanging fruit, and pulling weeds.  All things being equal, the more balanced the mix, the safer your business will be during a recession.

Over time, as you learn what these bigger, more successful business do right, you’ll also start noticing where the others are making mistakes.  This information is invaluable to the smaller, newer business.  Take notice of those with good fortune and those making mistakes, and invest your precious marketing dollars wisely.

BB Direct has announced they are now able to provide a mailing list of auto insurance holders of specific carriers.  This new database is ideal for competing insurance carriers looking for new business from other providers.  The ideal scenario with campaigning to the competition’s customers is that the mailer not only wins new business, but also gains relative market share.

The database is compiled from self-reported sources such that only individuals who’ve recently disclosed their auto insurance carrier is added to the list.  Many more of those individuals remain unidentified.  To give you an idea of the approximate coverage, State Farm has recently reported they have over 3 million auto policies active within the state of Florida.  The Automobile Insurance Database has just about 50,000 active State Farm insurance holders.  Still, this database sizable enough for any insurance carrier campaigning for the competitions business.

Immediate opportunity
Recently, State Farm was faced with the decision to retreat from the residential property insurance coverage business in the state of Florida.  This decision was a costly, but necessary one as State Farm suffered major losses due to hurricane damage claims throughout the state.  Since many homeowners bundle their home and auto policies with the same carrier, it is likely that identifying the State Farm auto holders is also identifying a State Farm homeowner policy holder.  As these policies expire with State Farm, new carriers will be considered.  What better way to connect with these new potential clients?

Like any industry, insurance direct mail marketing can be successful if the mailer has a well thoughtout mailing list data strategy.  To learn more about how to maximize your response and grow your insurance business, call BB Direct at 866-501-6273 or visit BB Direct online.

When considering the many descriptors of your market territory, many retail businesses owners will consider the closest population from their store location.  This tool is available with most mailing list providers today and if used properly, can be an effective way to identify potential prospects.
A radius is the circumference population defined by distance from the centroid (center).  From your store, you may want to reach out 10 miles in every direction.  The 10 mile band is called the radii band which identifies the furthest most prospects you may want to consider mailing.  With some mapping programs, the radius function grabs all data contained within the radii band, while others cross through a whole carrier route.  In crossing through this carrier route, the mapping software either includes all available records within carrier route, or excludes the band cut routes.
Ideal businesses using radius geography when building their mailing lists are those which serve the locale population such as restaurants and grocery stores.  The radius geography does nothing more than identify the location of the people you are wanting to mail.  Should you want to place further restrictions on these people surrounding your business, you can do so by simply adding the additional select.
The radius centroid is identified by either the physical address (which is usually converted into a latitude/longitude), a carrier route within the zip code, a zip+4, and the center of a zip code itself.  Which is best for your direct mail program depends on how far out you want to radiate.  Typically, if your radius measures less than 5 miles, it’s best to use something smaller than the center of a zip code.  However, if you’re reaching out to 15 miles or more, the center of a zip code will usually be sufficient.
For multiple store locations you sometimes find store market territories overlapping.  This could be cause for concern for some mailing list programs.  BBDirectLeads.com corrects this problem easily by parting these counts together before the order process.
If you would like more information on how to use this tool to build your mailing list, visit us at BBDirect.com or call us at (866) 501-6273.

If you’re planning on using direct mail marketing as a way to promote your business or organization, creating your own mailing list is easier than you might expect.  The internet has made creating your own mailing list easier than ever before.  Plus, the ability to target your ideal audience has become increasingly easy.  What was once a chore to understand the database compilation, available selects (filters), and undating schedule is now available online 24/7.  There is simply more information available at your fingertips.

Define your market territory
This process is fairly easy.  The goal here is to maximize your exposure by synchronizing your direct mail campaign with the other advertising mediums such that all are focused on the same market footprint.  You will also want to consider the location and reach of your competition.  If you’re market territory is shared by your competition, it’s important to differentiate your product and service from the competition.  Keep a watchful eye on what your competition is doing and who they are targeting with their advertising.  Many businesses unable to compete with the more aggressive competition settle for a niche segment of the market.  Knowing your place and who you are going after is a part of understanding your market.

Build your criteria set
The criteria set describes your mailing list by either who you include within your mailing list, just as who you omit from your mailing list.  It may be a demographic such as age or income, or a behavioral filter such as interest in cooking or golf.  The goal with building any mailing list is knowing who your ideal audience is.  One of the easiest ways to pinpoint your ideal audience is to target people who look just like your current customers.  Take a closer look at the people who buy from you.  And try to understand who within those who buy from you are your best and worst customers.  Many customers have found your business from your previous advertising (or lack of it).  It is safe to say that if you continue advertising the same way, all things being equal, you will get more of the same kinds of customers.  So before just doing the same thing, consider reaching out to your best customers.  These may be include your frequent shoppers, your biggest spenders, and those that you enjoy most to market to.

Building your mailing list online is fairly simple.  But take your time to understand the selects (filters) you are using to build your list.  Understanding the different between “exact” and “inferred” will help you better identify your ideal audience and therefore, increase your chances for success.

BB Direct’s online mailing list website can be found at www.bbdirectleads.com.  This tool requires you to simply register yourself before you begin.  There is no charge for using this site until you place your order.  And the site is supported by both an online video tutorial library as well as phone support by experienced consultants.

To learn more about mailing lists, visit www.bbdirect.com or call us at (866) 501-6273.