For small businesses planning their first direct mail marketing campaign, I’ve detailed an important point for every business to consider when launching their first mailing.  I write this because far too often we will get requests for a highly targeted list, but the mail quantity is so small (or their direct marketing budget is so small), there response rate will simply not provide enough intelligence to draw any valid conclusions.

Many first time mailers see the direct mail advertising medium as a possible lead generation program for their sales reps.  This is a true and accurate assumption.  It’s also one which, if done properly, can provide measure and predictable response.  However, for some businesses, a properly orchestrated direct mail marketing campai...

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What do your words mean?

Answer this question please.  What differentiates you and/or company from your competition?  Or, why would I want to do business with your company as opposed to your competitor?
It’s a simple question but it’s one that really does not nor should not require a simple answer.  Yet, when I ask this simple question (and I always do), 97% of the time I can always anticipate the same answer.  SERVICE.    Ugh!  That drives me bonkers!!
Think about it for a moment, what does the word service really mean to you and/or your organization?  You live, breath and eat your organization so you have an inner knowledge of it...

As my dad used to say, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.  Think about that when you embark on marketing your product and/or service.  Your reputation is only as good as your “word of mouth” (i.e. branding) and/or delivering as promised.  It’s not always about being the low-cost provider.  The old saying is, “you’ll lose your business the same way you acquired it.”  Someone else out there will always be willing to sell it or do the job for $0.10 less.  It’s the value you can add that makes the difference.  Just think about why you’ve stopped doing business with some companies.

Benefits of Ownership (BoO)
This is the art of persuading folks that they should buy/respond what you’re selling/asking. Notice though, I didn’t necessarily say that they should be buying/responding from you. This is the art of what will that product/service do for them. This really answers the question: Why would someone want to buy/respond to what you sell/ask in the first place? These are folks who may be looking for answer to questions or problems they didn’t even know they have.

Objections of Ownership (OoO)
These are people who have gone down a continuum and for one reason or another and aren’t willing to say yes. i.e. if I were to make this purchase or change the way I do business, I might lose my job, or t...

Social Media Marketing

Jessica Sala/BB Direct – jessicasala@bbdirect.com
Brian Berg/BB Direct – brianberg@bbdirect.com

We all know there are hundreds of ways to incorporate your existing customers into the fold of your social media marketing campaign, but for those who are short on time and, this list is likely your best first steps.

1. Upload your customer emails to LinkedIn and invite them all to join your business ...

Website Visit Increase

Brian Berg/BB Direct – brianberg@bbdirect.com

I recently received 16 visits to our website from one telemarketing call.  Here’s what happened.

First, BB Direct uses Live Person as our chat tool on www.bbdirect.com, our primary corporate website.  With this tool, we’re not only able to chat with visitors on our site, but the service also allows us to view who visits our site, how they found us, how much time they spend on what pages they visit and so on.  The details of who the visitors are are sketchy at best, i.e., ip a...

Social Media Fun

Brian Berg/BB Direct – brianberg@bbdirect.com

Recently we helped out a local 7th grader build a blog to promote her campaign for School President.  With free tools available to everyone, we effectively aligned several Web 2.0 tools to work in favor of “getting the vote”.  It was easy to do, but more so, it’s fun to watch the viral marketing aspect of this launch take hold.

Brooke Seaburg is running for school President of Caloosa Middle School in Cape Coral, FL.  She started out with buttons and stickers but didn’t stop there.  In addition to Facebook, she now has her own mi...

Target Marketing

Many businesses mailing for the time neglect to make a strong and relevant offer.  They invest heavily in the creative design, print, mail and mailing list only to conclude that direct marketing doesn’t work for them.  Outside of targeted mailing list, the campaign strategy likely lacked an offer strong enough to generate measurable response.

Whether it be a postal direct mail or email campaign, your message must be interesting enough to catch the eye of your audience.  Without these key ingredients, you’re likely to conclude that direct marketing doesn’t work.

Real Life Example

Here’s a p...

General Program Information

1. What is the 2010 Standard Mail Summer Sale Program?
The Standard Mail Summer Sale offers eligible companies a 30% postage rebate on Standard
Mail letter and flat volumes that exceed a predetermined threshold. The Sale runs July 1
through September 30, 2010.
This threshold is determined by taking a company’s Standard Mail volume mailed
during the time period from July to September 2009 and adding 5 percent (SPLY +5%).
Only Standard Mail letters and flats in excess of this threshold will qualify for the
rebate.

BB Direct’s database enhancement services now include Email Append and Reverse Email Append services for both Consumer and Business postal files.

The Process?  Simple.

Send your customer database in digital format to include name and postal address record information.  We’ll match your database against our all U.S. email database (300,000,000 consumers), and append your file with email records a match is found.  We then deploy a permission pass campaign on your behalf, remove those that with to opt-out, and send return the remaining appended email address records.