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Archive for the ‘Business to Business’ Category

Focused Target Plus Strong Offer Equals Response

May 28th, 2010

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 perfect example of a direct marketing campaign that BB Direct recently deployed to its customer and prospect email list.  Under normal circumstances, our email campaigns generate predictable click-thru rates.  Whether the campaign is a notice of something important and informative or an offer that’s relevant and attractive to our customers, BB Direct will typically see between a 2% to 5% click through rate.

One of most recent email campaigns (you may have seen it) was a notice about a deadline for applying for a substantial discount in postage during the summer months thru the USPS.  This is a postal discount campaign the US Postal Service is running to step up Standard Rate usage during the summer months.  We detailed the criteria for this program in our blog and deployed an email to everyone we knew.  The results were significantly better than anything we’ve ever done.  We saw an 11% open rate for this campaign and a whopping 10% click-thru rate of the total number of delivered emails.

What is so significant about these numbers was the fact that we’ve have good historical response rate data over the past 2 years to this exact same audience.  This campaign outshined everything we’ve ever done in the past.  Why?  Simply because of all the message/offers we’ve ever put in front of this audience, this offer had a greater appeal to more people than any other.  It stands to reason, all mailers, whether postal or otherwise, should seriously question the offer and message they are sending.  If you’re going to make an offer, make it strong enough to grab the attention of your prospects.  They are listening and will respond.

Need help?  Give us a call at 866-501-6273 or visit us at www.bbdirect.com.

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Need A Good Mailing List? Read This First!

April 19th, 2010

Know your customer
The absolute best way to understand your best prospects is to understand your current best customers.  You as a business owner can describe in detail what your customer looks like based on his or her attributes and need for your product or service.  But the key here is to be able to describe your customer in terms that are relevant to a mailing list broker.  If a mailing list broker is unable to build a criteria set that describes your best customer, then no matter how well you’ll be able to describe this person, you won’t be able to find more just like it.  As an example, let’s say you’re in the business of selling high-end office furniture.  You may describe your best customer as one who desires to have the most cutting edge modern attractive desk-system on the market.  Your customer may buy your office furniture products because they want to impress their clientele.  Your office furniture is a direct reflection of what your customers want their clientele to think of them…modern, classy, cutting edge.  Though this is a very clear description of what why your clients might buy your products over the competitor, the description is better suited for the direct mail marketers’ creative team that will assemble a congruent message and offer to your direct mail prospects.  A better description would sound something more that this.  “My customers are businesses such as law offices, CPA’s, Real Estate investment trusts, and a personal banker whose business employee’s greater than 50 employees’.  These customers businesses that are both new and established, but the decision maker is usually the owner located at the headquarter location.”  Notice the identifiers that describe this business clientele are consistent with the filters available from a business mailing lists database.

Provide your mailing list broker with an accurate description of your product or offer. The broker may have suggestions as to the type of list that would best suite your needs.  Most mailing list brokers can offer suggestions based on the available selects of the databases they typically use.  If you’re unsure of the filters (selects) available on a particular database, your mailing list broker should be able to offer you a data card that describes in detail these selects as well as the pricing for these selects.  In summary, a well informed list broker has a greater chance of helping his direct mail marketer.

Response vs compiled mailing list
Response mailing lists are comprised of individuals who have responded to an offer either through the mail, phone, and television or through other means of mass communication.
Compiled mailing lists are a compilation of information from public records and sources such as the phone book, courthouse records, bankruptcy filings, mortgage deed records and more.

The more you understand the differences with the various available mailing lists, the better you’ll be able to use them to your advantage.  The primary reason for understanding the difference between these two mailing lists is because the compiled mailing list will naturally contain more records per a given geography.  Should your market territory be finite, the available compiled mailing list data will be larger in number than the response file type mailing lists.  Likewise, if your market territory has no boundaries, your ideal mailing list is one in which those individuals have already responded favorably to an interest or offer such as yours.  Though the mailing list data usually costs more, response files are typically considered more responsive.

Database analysis
The more you know about your internal mailing list of customers, the better you’ll be able to communicate to them.  A database analysis is a process where by you provide your customer names and addresses be evaluated.  The process is completely automated and relatively secure.  What is done is your internal customer mailing list is passed against a large universe mailing list.  This universe mailing list contains all the deliverable addresses within the U.S.  This mailing list database contains not only the name and the address, but also any demographic and psychographic information available on the records.  Wherever there is a match of the two mailing list databases, all the relative elements of information is temporary appended to your database.  The processor then looks for patterns within the appended data for what kinds of mailing list conclusions can be made.  This profile “snap-shot” is then compared with the “profile” of the resident consumers within the same market territory of your mailing list.  Ultimately, we are looking for a comparison of what your customers “look like” relative to the people in the same relative area that are not your customers.  We are also looking for how your customers “look differently” from the surrounding population.  The more we can tell about your customers the better.  Ultimately, we want to find other people within the area that are not customers but look identical to them.  The theory is that if we were to mail to those people who look most similar to your existing customers, the better changes are that they will become customers themselves.

Mail piece versioning
Understand your customers’ needs and desires and speak to them in a manner that is specific or special them.  Not all people are the same.  Imagine walking to your own mail box tomorrow afternoon.  You reach in and find a postcard inviting you to a new restaurant in your area.  We’ve all received these types of postcards with some that appeal to us more than others.  What would this post include that would truly grab your attention?  The answer to this question is most likely different for you than it is for your neighbor.  For a young family, the piece might include a picture of a happy family enjoying a dinner out together.  The copy highlights the importance of getting the family out together and how this new restaurant caters to family dinning.  For a middle aged successful single female professional, the same mail piece may be a turn-off and would be quickly tossed in the trash.  But should the postcard include a photo of a group of other like aged singles enjoying dinner together with an emphasis on entrée’s that peak the interest of the most sophisticated palate, this mail piece might entice the single female to the very same restaurant as the young family.

With today’s variable print technology, each mail piece can be different in accordance to the recipient of the piece itself.  The customization can be as different as the graphic designer is willing to make it.  And generally speaking, the more your mail piece is versioned to the targeted audience, the better your direct mail response will be.  The ideal mailing list for such variable print mailings a “segmentation” type mailing list.  Segmentation mailing lists classify people into naturally occurring subsets of the population.  A restaurant’s market territory might include a 10 mile radius and within this territory, there might be 12 primary segments of the population.  Mailing the same general mail piece and offer to all 12 segments is less effective than mailing 12 versions of the same mail piece.

Response measurement
It cannot be stressed enough to design a response measurement mechanism in your direct mail campaign.  Without measuring how many responders or orders have been achieved as a direct result from your direct mail investment, you will never know how effective this investment is as it compares to other advertisement mediums.  Direct mail measurement can be measured several different ways, i.e., responders, buyers, foot-traffic into the store location, actual gross revenue directly attributed to the campaign, gross profit directly attributed to the campaign, and the potential lifetime value of the responders/buyers/donors of a campaign.  Whatever the method of measurement, quantifying your response will help both in justifying a second test campaign to ultimately investing more or less into direct mail marketing.

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The Dun & Bradstreet Business Database

February 3rd, 2009

Dun & Bradstreet, better known as D&B, is the premier business database compiler of choice for BB Direct.  Though there are several business to business database compilers, D&B uses strict guidelines for which business enterprise is ultimately added to the database.  This is important to remember when you are considering a direct mail marketing campaign to businesses.  So many businesses today come and go before they become profitable.  So many others are really just, “Doing Business As”, businesses of another company.  And still, so many businesses relocate and become difficult to track the age and size of the business enterprise.

One of the unique characteristics of the Dun and Bradstreet business database is that every business record has been assigned a Dun’s number.  This is kind of like a persons social security number for a business.  If your business has not yet been assigned a Dun’s number, your business has not yet been added to the database.  The Dun’s number allows for better accountability with relocation of businesses.

Linkage
The D&B database does a great job with linking businesses with other businesses.  If your business is owned by another, this would constitute a link.  The top business is considered the Ultimate company within the organization.

Like most business to business databases, you’ll find similiar selectability to include the size of business in terms of both estimated sales revenue and number of employee’s, contact names with titles, numbre of years in business, ethnic origin of the owner, both the primary and secondary Standard Index Code to identify the type of business catagory, etc.  BB Direct is proud to offer Dun & Bradstreet as our first choice database for compiled business to business data.  The reliability and consistency for accuracy is second to none.  We recommend D&B for most of the requests we receive from our clients.

If you would like to learn more about the D&B Database, it’s compilation methodology, and direct mail application stategies using business to business mailing lists, visit us at BB Direct or call us toll-free at (866) 501-6273.  You can also order this mailing list data directly from our online count & order system by visiting BB Direct Leads.com.

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Business to Business Direct Mail 101

December 10th, 2008

Decision makers at businesses evaluate a multitude of offers from direct mail, internet, cold calls, and print space within their respective industry journals and magazines.  They are bombarded by messages on relevant subject matter pertaining to everything a business could need and more.  Over time, business decision makers become aware of the brands that circulate within their peripheral.  The same monthly magazine containing relevant articles are filled with print advertising that continually reinforces their branded logos they saw 7 to 30 days prior.  The messages start to become repetitive and the advertisement is given less and less attention.  The direct mail they receive is also repetitive.  A direct mail piece that’s gimmicky stands to be noticed quicker and tossed in the trash just as fast, where as a direct mail piece that contains informative helpful information is more apt to be considered.  With so little time spent on viewing a post card or flyer, the direct mail marketer can only say so much before the direct mail recipient becomes uninterested, and tosses the mail piece.

So with those 4 to 6 seconds of attention, what does the direct mail marketer say?  Traditionally, the direct mail piece contains the basic necessary information each time….who, what, where, and why.  But before long, getting these points out is the burden of the direct mail marketer.  Before long, you’ve not offered much more than contact info and unless the direct mail recipient is looking for your phone number at that moment, they may just toss it in the trash.

The key to making direct mail work for this business decision maker audience is to focus on the “why”.  Why would a direct mail recipient consider your mail piece over and over again as they receive it?  What would you offer that would continually grad their attention and cause them to call?  The “why” is the offer that the direct mail marketer makes that stands out from the rest.  Staples and Office Max do a good job keeping their offers relevant by including a discount card of $15 Off on your next $50 or $100 purchase.  This works because inevitably, the business decision maker will be needing office supplies at some point.  The offer is strong, contains an expiration date that calls for action, and is in the shape of a credit card that tucks neatly into your wallet.

When it comes to business to business direct mail marketing, it’s important to consider mailing again and again over time to the same audience but with a different “why” each time.  The goal of the direct mail marketer is to both reinforce the brand, as well as generate response.  The direct mail marketer does this by including consistent layout and logo art, consistent creative work and paper quality, and consistent offer location.  The offer must be absolutely relevant to the direct mail recipient.  A weak offer says only one thing to the direct mail recipient and that is that this business making you this offer doesn’t really understand your needs.  Perhaps they’ll miss out on the product or service quality also???

Business decision makers are much more logical than emotional.  They buy office furniture because they need it, not because they want it.  They purchase toner for the printer because if they don’t, the printer will not perform its function.  They spend only what they have to because the job of this business decision maker is to spend only what they need and invest the rest.  If it’s a business related product or service you’re selling, be sure you understand your clients trigger point on what they “need” to run their business.

When evaluating your direct mail piece message, consider what’s in it for them first.  Imagine yourself in their shoes and ask yourself, what could you possibility offer them that would certainly keep their attention and what would be relevant to your business.  Keep in mind that the more relevant your offer is, the more qualified your sales leads will become.

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