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.

Mail better, not less

Fear of economic turmoil can kill the momentum of any growing business.  The mental distraction alone can be paralyzing to upper management decision making.  Many find themselves tossed between cutting marketing budgets, anticipating the worse is yet to come, and staring at the competition that’s muddling in the same insecurity.

The fact is that businesses must evaluate their previously set goals, and adjust their marketing strategies to meet or exceed these goals.  Those businesses which put their head in the sand and wait out the cyclical nature of the economy will likely miss the opportunity to dramatically increase market share.  Integrated direct mail advertising should be used not only to guard “higher-value” customers, but to also win new customers from less aggressive competitors.

It’s been shown time and time again that businesses that maintain or exceed their market budget not only increase their profitability, they also create the opportunity to absorb a portion of their competitions customer base.  The direct mail industry is long sought as the recession proof business.  Many businesses utilize the obvious benefits of such a targeted medium in both bull and bear markets.  They do it because of its predictable nature and its pinpoint targeting accuracy.

In short
When businesses stop advertising, their brand awareness diminishes rapidly.  The appeal they’ve once enjoyed is difficult to reignite as the market rebounds.  Meanwhile, those businesses which make a decision to advertise in the face of adversity capture the hope of new customers.

Our goal
BB Direct works with clients in helping them with all the possibilities (and limitations) of direct mail data acquisition.  We can help you evaluate your previous campaigns, help make smart adjustments for future campaigns, and think through the data strategies that are many times the difference between red and black.

Below are our recommendations for increasing profitability and market share.  We hope these points are helpful to your business, no matter which industry you are in.

Re-evaluate your business marketing proposition
It’s important to understand that potential customers (both consumers and businesses) respond differently during recessionary times.  They become more discriminating in their purchase decisions and more responsive to a different type of message.  Advertisers should not assume that the same audience will respond the same to the same message and communication.
This is an important point to remember in that during a recession, new customers may come from difference places than before, prospects that were once non-responsive may become responsive, and customers loyal to your competition may take more notice to your business with the right message and communication.  This is where we want to focus.

To start, let’s look at a few basic questions about your current marketing:

Question 1:  Is your current message congruent across all mediums?
When evaluating the choices for communicating to your audience, be sure to say the same across all mediums.  It’s proven to be more effective to reinforce the same message over and over again, than is it to list different reasons or benefits.  Consider your competition and how they position themselves.  What is their selling point and how do they compare?  If one of the many reasons for buying from you is also your competitions, the prospect must choose who has connected better.  It is likely that your competition that stays focused and on point repeatedly will likely gain the business from you, or visa versa.

Question 2:  Is your current value proposition promoting product or service value?
Stay away from boasting you are the lowest priced provider.   Lowest priced leaders are often times viewed as always being lesser value.  While you must consider pricing your products and services competitively, businesses that focus on price as their primary selling point mislead their customers into believing that your lower price replaces the product and customer service value.  Instead, you want to appeal to the value your clients receive in dealing with your company.

Question 3:  Are you appealing to the emotions of your potential customer?
If so, change your focus on product or service value, not emotion.  Most everyone during an economic recession is experiencing some level of frustration or downright financial hardship.  The process of accepting this new lifestyle is sobering to the most spirited individuals.  Now is not the time to play on the soft spot of your audience.  Stay on course with the product value proposition and make a strong call to action.  Make your message clear and concise.

Don’t bury your head in the sand
Too often, business leaders become paralyzed with the “shock and awe” of how fast their reserve dissipates during a market down turn.  Next quarter projects are down with no plan to reverse the trend.  Sometimes, big change is necessary for navigating your business through rough times.  Sometimes it requires laying-off employees, dropping products lines, cutting back on a variety of perks, and firing unprofitable customers.

One school of thought is to treat your business like an asset.  Here the businesses marketing expense is a function of revenue from the previous year.  If business is down, the marketing budgets are cut.  In doing so, sales revenue usually continues to drop but hopefully, profit will be recouped when the market turns.
The other school of thought is to act.  Business leaders look at the total market potential for their product or service.  They take note of the competition that’s cutting back in certain customer segments and why.  They set goals to absorb these vulnerable customers to boost profit and market share.

School of thought
Your business as an asset
One school of thought is to treat your business as an asset by cutting expenses to increase profits.  Running a business as an expense during a recession is not recommended.  You will likely lose valuable customers to more aggressive competition and have a difficult time gaining them back in the years to come.

Your business as a vehicle
The other school of thought is to treat your business as a vehicle.  This means looking for opportunities and allotting the appropriate expense needed to exploit these new opportunities.  During a recession, you should be looking for opportunities to invest in, gain market share, and increase profits in both the short and the long term.

This second school of thought considers not what marketing dollars are allotted based on the previous year’s profits but in accordance with the need for reaching those new customers.  Scrap segments of your business that are less profitable and redirect your dollars toward fostering these new business relationships.
The first approach works in a growing economy because the assumption is that doing the same begets the same.  During a recession, this logic does not work.  Doing the same begets different.  Buyers purchase less of one product and more of others, they are more discriminating, and their loyalty dissipates.  They make purchases based on a whole new set of conditions and respond differently to the same offer.  This is why the second approach is imperative to keeping the customers you have while at the same time finding new ones.

Strategy – Value proposition across all mediums
To put it simply, avoid gimmicks or emotional appeals in all your advertising mediums.  During a recession and in the midst of all the advertisement “clutter”, businesses should focus on relationships between customers and brand to keep and win business.  It’s far more appealing to communicate the benefits and advantages of your product or service.  With direct mail, use hard hitting copy with simple but convincing language, offers that are hard to pass up, and a strong call to action.  Focus messages of benefits and ROI.  Prospects are looking for as much value as possible in a weak economy and direct mail is an excellent medium to deliver that message.

Strategy – Adjust the recipe but keep cooking
There are several logical reasons for not cutting your advertising budget during a recession but the primary reason is that recouping lost customers after loosing them is more expensive than protecting them.  This holds true when the economy is doing well, but especially when in a down market.  Losing customers to competitors during a recession is a difficult trend to reverse.

The focus should be placed on reaching marketing and communication goals over keeping within budget.  Your budget should be set based on what you are attempting to accomplish, albeit fostering a richer brand/customer relationship, or hunting for prospects that might be lured away from your less aggressive competitors.  The key is to understanding how your previous customers and prospects will change their view during hard times.  Who do you currently serve?  Will those you currently serve change the way they buy?  If so, are there others markets that present themselves?  Direct mail is an important medium to surveying and identifying your current customers, but also in establishing the optimum message.  It’s measurable and predictable, and easily replicated.  It’s quick to answer tough questions. With direct mail, you can fail fast and evolve.

Strategy – Renegotiate media vendor agreements
Some of the best media rates occur in an economic slowdown.  The best strategy may not be to negotiate the lowest possible rates but rather to encourage a cooperative relationship with the media.  Share information on your budget because when the media is creating special offers you are more likely to receive valuable deals.
Pricing should be not on the lowest cost today, but fair cost for the long term.  Prices will increase eventually, and when the time comes, you’ll be enjoying lower rates and a stronger relationship with the media you rely on to deliver your advertising messages.

Strategy – Target low hanging fruit
The low hanging fruit are those prospects that are already buying your product or service, just not from you.  Monitor your competitors and look for opportunities.  Find those cutting back and focusing on that segment of the market to boost market share.

Focus on your metrics. Know which target segments are most responsive, which offers generate the greatest interest, and so on. Spend every ad dollar carefully.  Re-examine your marketing mix to ensure it is the most cost effective.  Be sure you balance your marketing on customer retention and new client acquisition.  It’s more expensive to rebuild your market share than it is to maintain it.

During a recession, priority to goods and services change depending on what goods and services you are offering.  Consumers once loyal to brand begin to question what goods and services they buy rather than from whom.

A recession can help you strengthen the position of your business in your marketplace.  In fact, it may well be the perfect time for increasing your investment in advertising, taking market share from your competitors, and even introducing new products and services.  If you can afford to be aggressive, you’ll find there may be no better time than during a recession to take market share away from competitors who are in a weakened position.

Strategy – Set realistic goals
Lower than average return on marketing investment should be anticipated in many markets.  Advertising should not be regarded as a drain on profits but as a means to achieving objectives.  An adjustment to expectations is necessary before executing any campaign initiatives.  Whether you are introducing new products or services or campaigning to embolden relationships you currently have with profitable customers, your goal should be to set tangible markers for success.

Strategy – Long Term Planning
Maintaining or increasing your advertising may not hurt your bottom line short term and increases your profitability long term.
• A recession provides a prime opportunity for increasing your market share, so monitor your market share, not just your sales volume.
• Balance ad spending between long-term consumer motivation and promotion for short-term sales boosts.
• Implement a media relations strategy that will strengthen your relationship with key media and provide long-term financial benefits.
• Don’t hesitate to introduce well-conceived and properly marketed new products when your competition is weakened.

Before you invest in your direct mail campaign, talk to one of our helpful consultants here at BB Direct.

Disclaimer
This strategy blog post is for those businesses which will endure beyond the natural economic change we are currently facing.  There are many businesses that will not, or cannot bring about the changes necessary to ride through a recessionary period.  I make this point because for many businesses, a minor loss in sales revenue is too great to overcome and they are already on the brink of collapse.  For these businesses, severe changes must be made in order to maintain a going concern.  This strategy blog post is not a prescription to remedy failing businesses, rather a supplemental to those direct marketers who are able to make positive changes to their marketing plans and can afford to test a variety of campaign opportunities.

I’ve been getting asked daily about how the direct mail industry is doing, what’s working, what’s not working, and how this economy is affecting which industries more or less.  Though, on average, BB Direct is about 30% busier today (mid December 2008) than we were one year ago, there are some mail service providers who’ve slowed down considerably.  I believe this is partly because we haven’t put our eggs into one basket, but instead, we’ve aligned ourselves with clients who intelligently market to those segments of the business community that do well no matter how our economy is doing.  Yes, we’ve seen an evaporation of mortgage lender mailing opportunities and a big drop in the auto dealership marketing as of late.  But we’ve also experienced businesses which focus on the fix-income market do more mailing today than they’ve ever done before.

I would ask that anyone willing to share their good, their bad, and their ugly to please do so.  Please comment on what you’re business has been doing.  We are looking for mailers of any kind to share with us what you see in this market, what you forecast for 2009, and what changes you’ve been making to prepare for this difficult time.  What businesses are seeing a dip/drop in response?  Which mailers have disappeared?  And which mailers are going steady or excelling as a direct result of the recession we are experiencing?

Any information you can provide would be helpful.  In the mean time, I’ll be updating this blog with information about what I hear from our mail service provider clients.  I’ll keep be asking these questions of everyone, whether they are buying more or less mailing list data from BB Direct.  If there’s anything that we might all learn together, it will come from you.  So please submit your comment and let us know what you’ve been experiencing.

And as always, thank you in advance!

Seems there’s a lot of finger pointing going on with who’s responsible for the mess on Wall Street and Main Street.  Yesterday I watched on CNN how the over site committee interrogated previous CEO’s of both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.  Given only 5 minutes per chairperson, there was little these gentlemen were able to accomplish other than ask sound bite questions and get sound bite answers.  Not to mention that these former CEO’s are frankly pretty sharp men.  With salaries in excess of $4 million per year, there’s little room for the duller, less fortunate….like some of those doing the interrogating.  Ultimately, the committee members resulted to asking them what must be done.  And in 5 minute sound bites, these former CEO’s each made their suggestions, all of which sounded frankly terrific.  So what exactly do these hearings accomplish anyway?  For me, it was little more than entertainment on a Tuesday evening.

I’ve yet to get a grasp of how bad this economic recession really is and I don’t expect anyone has a firm understanding of how long it will take to recover.  I poll clients daily on who their business is doing and get optimism from but not all.  It appears to me that currently, there are some Direct Mail related businesses more affected than others.  I talked with a marketing firm owner on Friday who said they had put all their focus on the mortgage industry and lost over 85% of their clients in the span of 3 months.  Others who’ve focused on the auto industry have simply disappeared off the face of the earth.  It’s a tragedy to hear these stories and to imagine this could happen to any of us is frightening.

I also hear stories of some guys gearing up for 2009.  They’ve secured contracts for great projects that will result in their highest revenue’s ever.  How is this possible?  The answer I believe is that while some rant on about how bad the economy has smacked them down, others are focusing on new business in area’s that haven’t been affected.  I guess I’m saying that we must strive to stay focused, strive to stay positive, and work to accomplish long-term objectives.  Like our own personal attitude, our businesses are just as nimble as we ourselves can be.  There are business opportunities all around us and there will be business opportunities out there in the future.  And they will remain out there until someone (possibly we) goes out there and pull them in.

Whether  you’re a mailing list provider or a printer, a direct agency or newspaper, or a business using direct mail marketing as a way to grow your business……think positive.  Like life, there’s no such thing as constant growth.  Ask not for a better economy, but ask for more skills to combat the recessionary years.

You can learn more by visiting direct mail in a down economy.

While most industries are tightening their advertising budget during an economic downturn, some business segments prosper and even excel during these times by using direct mail.  While most businesses are bringing in less revenue and tightening their budget, some business industries are earning record profits to recessionary periods.  Marketing and related services like Direct Agencies, Specialized Marketing Firms, Direct Mail Printers, Direct Mail Letter-shops, Mailing List Brokers, and Newspapers can all benefit by focusing on these vertical business segments during recessionary times.  The more direct mail marketers understand these markets, their needs, and the appropriate mailing list audiences to be used, the better they will exceed through the economic cycle.

This site highlights those business segments which sensibly do well in a down market.  If you’re in the direct mail marketing business helping businesses advertise their products and services via direct mail, consider versioning your core service message to speak to these industries.

Most companies attempt to be all things to all people, but by augmenting your website, print collateral, and direct mail marketing promotions, in a way that speaks directly to particular business vertical, you’ll get more positive attention and increase your sales leads.

The industries you will want to consider your most focus and attention on are; budget travel, business to business, gambling casino’s, products and services that offer “peace of mind”, businesses that focus on the budget conscience buyer, real estate investors, mortgage refinance, staple (can’t do without products and services), businesses that export American goods and services, the ultra affluent, and alternatives to upgrading.

In upcoming posts, you’ll find detailed insights into all of these industries, how and why they work well in a down market, and the types of mailing lists available for each of these campaign categories.

Below are the categories and industries that, in effect, weather better than businesses in other industries.  These industry types are not all weather proof but more weather resistant than others.  The categories below give you a feel for the logical reasoning of how businesses are affected by our ever changing economy.

Upgrades Can Wait

Products and Services
*  Auto Parts stores
* Uses car dealerships
* Auto repair service
*  Do-it-yourself home improvement

Considerations
Why buy new when you can repair or trade for used and save thousands.  With the current home values so low, it’s virtually impossible to sell without bring cash to closing.  Homeowners stay put if they can, make repairs if they are need, and remodel to breath new life into their aging home.

Consider a homeowners mailing list and filter those homeowners with home equity.  This is easily done by looking at length of residence as one of your filters.  Also consider a New Homeowners mailing list.  New Homeowners typically get busy with repair jobs and need products for those home repair projects.

Budget Pinch

Products and Services
* Discounted Product providers such as Wal-Mart and Dollar Store
* Furniture Liquidators
* Non-branded household necessities such as Publix brand vs. the more expensive brand
* Consignment stores

Considerations
It’s time to cut the credit cards and attempt to save what little money might be going around.  Painful but necessary, those who can do without, do without. Clipping coupons, and shopping more wisely in the party line in a down market.

Direct mail marketers should consider targeting a variety of demographics that suit the furniture offers in the store.  Most consumer mailing lists will include income, age, homeowner, marital status, child present, and age of child.  These mailing list selects will help to pinpoint the direct mail audience as well as allow you to version your message more appropriately.  With furniture liquidation sales, it’s better to expand your geographic radius to find the ideal shopper than it is to waste money attempting to convince the more local residence that will simply not part for new furniture.

Budget Travel

Considerations
Businesses decisions are generally black and white.  For the most part, businesses will do whatever they can legally do to stay afloat.  If they have to spend their last dime on advertisement, they simply must do it.  With wages needing to be paid, cash-flow must come in or the business simply closes.  And cutting expenses where they can is also a decision of economics.  Most all businesses need office equipment but if they can save a few bucks in hard times, they’ll look to buy used.  They can also use the help of a lease negotiator to help them renegotiate their existing lease or relocate to a more favorable arrangement.  They business mailing lists this market is pretty straight forward, you’ll can filter by SIC code that helps identify the type of businesses you want to direct mail to.  The business mailing list can also be filtered by sales volume, employee size, or reach only mom and pop type businesses.  The business mailing list can include the contact name of the primary decision maker at that mailing address location and a phone number for a follow up call.

Entertainment

As you can imagine, entertainment is one of the first expenses to be cut in a down market.  Consumers throughout the US begin tightening their belts, staying indoors, and enjoying activities that last longer, cost less or nothing at all.  Many families look will rent movies from Blockbuster than go the theater, they’ll make pizza at home rather than go out to the restaurant, and they’ll work to shift any money they can to paying the bills and staying afloat.  There are some times of entertainment that do continue to prosper.  Below are those considered recession-resistant.

Products and Services
* Gambling
* Bowling
* Soft-ball leagues and the like

Considerations
Call it habit forming but the gaming industry performs relatively well compared to other businesses in entertainment industry.  Direct mail marketers should consider self-reported survey driven data that identifies various types of gambles.  Casino resorts can also use their internal customer mailing list to profile.  Profiling their customer mailing list allows the direct mail marketer to better understand what their existing customers look like, and to also find new “like” customers.  Direct mail piece versioning is very useful with casino resorts as they typically offer so much more than just slot machines and table gaming.  Direct mail marketers should consider mailing lists that identify travelers who might fit the profile of other products and services the resort offers…..to then lure them into the casino floor.
Bowling and softball are an example of inexpensive outdoor activities that many participate during hard times.  They are the type of business that continues on whether the economy is booming or busting.

Peace of Mind

During recessionary times, many people are desperate and some take risks to make ends meet.  During these times, a few people buy hand guns, suffer from road rage, drink more, and pick-up drug habits.  The rest of us worry about these dangerous few, install home security, add pad-locks, and keep a watchful eye on the neighbors.  Peace of mind is a rare commodity, but if it can be bought, there are more buyers during recessionary times.

Products and Services
* Home security services
* Pawnshops

Considerations
There seems to be a direct correlation with recession and crime.  When the market goes down, the crime rate goes up.  Home security service providers like ADT see spikes in new business in neighborhoods with reported burglaries.

Consider building a mailing list of homeowners in your market territory that fit the income potential required for this service.  Also consider targeting single women, single mothers, young families, and the elderly.  Version your message appropriately for each of these target groups to increase your response rates.

Real Estate and Mortgage Choices

Products and Services
* Credit repair companies

Considerations
Though the current lending industry is a mess, for those who’ve maintained good credit, credit options are available and usually needed.  The rates are expected to continue to decline leading to ideal refinance options for those who qualify.  Direct mail is a great way to reach this audience because the property mortgage mailing list pinpoints the ideal audience so carefully.  Whether you want to help someone refinance their mortgage or buy investment homes, there’s a mailing list available for you.  Looking to help people repair their credit?  Using direct mail reaches these people because it’s a private matter and direct mail satisfies the sensitivity issue. Talk with your mailing list broker about some of the mailing lists available for this audience.

The Dollar vs. the Euro

Products and Services
* American made goods and services sold
* Stateside travel destination catering to Canada and Europe

Considerations
When the value of the U.S. dollar goes down, the value of other county currency goes up.  This does two things to the buying power of our U.S. dollar.  First, it makes the cost of imports to America go up, and second it makes the cost of American goods sold overseas go down.  So your businesses that cater to overseas buyers, such as Disney World in Orlando looking for European travelers, make an attractive offer.  For responsive individual’s sensitive products “Made in America”, direct mail marketers should consider mailing to a mailing list of Republican voters who are generally more aware of and troubled by those products manufactured overseas.  International mailing lists are also available to reach vacation travelers that may want to take advantage of a more cost effective American destination.

Ultra-Affluent Direct Mail Marketing

Considerations
For most consumers, disposable income disappears in a recession.  But for the ultra-affluent, a recession is a great time to get out of and spend some of that extra money.  Chances are their disposable income buys them more than it ever did.  For the ultra-rich, an economic down turn doesn’t affect their ability to live the best life money can buy.

Consider targeting the ultra-affluent by using direct mail to reach this incredibly wealthy audience.  Available to the direct mail marketer is a mailing list of millionaires, multi-millionaires, and billionaires.  This mailing list is very niche but consider that they’re used to being wined and dined at every turn so to grab their attention, your direct mail piece must be extremely high end.  To truly reach those who truly enjoy the best life money can buy; your direct mail piece must be more like a media kit than a post card.  This audience doesn’t respond to savings but is ever searching for the ultimate new sensation that they’ve not experienced before.