Answer:  The response you can expect from a direct mail campaign varies from 0% up to 4% or even 5% response.  This depends on many factors to include the list, the offer, the creative, as well as the competitors and their promotions going on at the same time.  But don’t expect 10% response.  This would be very atypical and unrealistic.

Most mailers will estimate a 1% response.  If you are finding it difficult to break-even with a 1% response, you should reconsider using direct mail as a viable medium.  Mailers who are successful with direct mail are those which promote and sell “large ticket items”, such as furniture, cars, mortgages, etc.  Other successful mailers are those which sell their products to the same customers repetitively, which, over time; prove direct mail as a successful medium of advertisement.  An example of an unsuccessful direct mail product would be a book.  Authors sometimes attempt to sell their book using direct mail.  However, the profit per response is so low, the breakeven point is in the double digits.  Double digit response rates are extremely rare.  Don’t use direct mail marketing to sell your book.

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Answer: The best way to order mailing lists online is to use www.bbdirectleads.com.  BBDirectleads.com is something of a mailing list vending machine crossed with the intelligence of a Travelocity.com.  It’s functionality is easy enough for the first time direct mailer and powerful enough to handle the integrated marketing demands of the daily list broker requirements.  Best of all, the database it houses are kept current and up-to-date so you always get the most accurate data available.

Another great benefit to BBDirectLeads.com is that it comes with great customer support.  If you’re not entirely sure of what to do next, support personnel are a phone call away.  Plus they have dozens of short, helpful video tutorials to watch and learn how to use some of the more complex functions on the site.

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The commercial application of using email to market your products and services, Email marketing continues to be a valuable tool in reaching potentially new customers, as well as maintaining communication with existing customers.  So long as a business has a web presence, using email to connect with people and steer them to a website remains a viable marketing consideration.

Ordering an email list is similar to ordering a postal mailing list.   Start by calling BB Direct and talk with a friendly email list expert.  They can run a count, take your order, or discuss the process is great detail from start to finish.

Select Your Geography
Whether you’re marketing focus is a radius around your multi-chain restaurant, or the entire state of California, your market territory needs to be defined before you’re able to determine the quantity of opt-in emails available in that particular market.

Select Your Criteria
Describe your “best” customer or responder in terms of demographic or behavioral interests, i.e., women, age 25 to 55, who enjoy an active outdoor life-style.  The more descriptive your request is, the better our email database expert can help you when ordering an email list.

Placing Your Order
Under most circumstances, placing in order is pretty straight forward.  Most all providers require prepayment for your campaign, along with the actual HTML creative artwork, the From Line information, and the Subject Line information.

We’ll also want 3 to 5 test emails.  These test emails are used to broadcast your HTML email to make sure the artwork looks as you expect.  Once the test broadcast is approved, the campaign date and time can be scheduled and released.  It’s that simple.

If you’d like more information on how to order your next email list, give BB Direct a call at 866-501-6273.  We’ll be happy to help you make it a success.

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Many businesses today have tested numerous targeted mailing lists with varied degrees of success.  For lack of better insight, business owners “shoot from the hip” when planning their campaign, are ill advised by an inexperienced direct mailer, and make too many assumptions about how it all works.  All too often, little effort put into the audience selection, or worse, first-time mailers are misguided by well intended but inexperienced direct mail marketing service providers.  Many first-time misguided mailers end up never using this extremely successful medium because of their first and only test campaign.  So let’s get back to the basics on direct mail marketing.  Below are the most important points with direct mail, whether you’re a first-timer or experience professional.

Is Direct Mail Right For You?

The kinds of businesses that should be using direct mail for their sales leads pipeline are those which offer high-ticket products and services.  The fact is, the higher the price for your product or service, the lower your response percentage needs to be in order to earn enough to cover your marketing campaign investment.  And this calculation is a pretty simple calculation when you review the costs associated with direct mail.  So, do the math, determine your break-even point for your campaign before you invest in the mailing list, printing, creative, etc.  If your breakeven point is greater than 1%, your business and offerings are likely not well suited for the direct marketing medium.  However, if your breakeven point is 1% or lower, continue reading and carefully plan your campaign.

Mailing List Selection

For those businesses where direct mail is a good marketing option, you can still fail miserably if your mailing list isn’t an accurate representation of your target audience.  How much trust are you placing in your mailing list provider?  Does your mailing list provider have experience in your industry?  Do they understand your offer?  Are they fully aware of how there is compiled or where the records come from?  Before investing in a mailing list, be sure you do your homework on how the data is collected, how often is it updated, and what “updating” means to your provider.  You may find that the name of the database only sounds like what you are wanting to target, but, after closer inspection, it doesn’t meet the standards you require.  After all, it’s you that’s footing the bill.

What Is Your Offer?

The offer is what you are proposing to the recipient of your direct mail piece.  Take a step back for a moment and consider how you evaluate your own mail box.  You arrive home from work, open the box, and review what’s inside.  The time and attention you give to those pieces are only a moment.  We call that the “mail moment”.  It’s a fact that the vast majority of people will not consider your mail piece for reasons outside of your control.  You may be hitting the right audience with a fantastic mail piece and offer, but the recipient is simply distracted from the day, sifting thru the offers and only interested in the bills they must pay.  For your mail to grab their attention, the offer must immediately resonate with the recipient.  The product or service must be needed or wanted, and the offer must be attractive enough to hold the attention.  Take time reviewing what’s in your mailbox over a period of time and ask yourself what stands out and why.  Don’t over analyze the mail pieces, instead, just ask yourself which ones stands out among the others and why.

Creative

Tied into the offer the creative has to do the resonation.  Ask yourself what all those people who you are mailing have in common.  What do they look like?  How do they live?  The creative is the “language” of the message.  If you’re promoting a 7 day cruise, consider whether the recipients you’re mailing all have children or what their age range is.  How versatile can you be with multiple creative mail pieces to include varied photos of people enjoying the fun and the sun?  Families with children should see those attractions and services that fit the family.  Likewise, the romantic couples without children should see attractions that fit their taste.  And the seniors should see that the ship has the amenities that would most suit their enjoyment.

Measurement

No campaign should go unmeasured.  If you don’t measure, you can’t possibly know if it’s work or how well it’s worked.  Many businesses have multiple campaigns going on at any given time.  Knowing which dollars are getting the greatest return is the key to success.  And if at all possible, test at least two things on every campaign.  You can get test two or more completely different creative’s, two or more mailing lists, and two or more offers.  Whatever the case, when the campaign is complete, you want to confidently learn what has worked better than the others so as to tweak the next campaign for greater ROI.

If you’d like to learn more about how you can improve your direct mail response, or have general questions about direct mail marketing, give BB Direct a call at 866-501-6273, or email us at info@bbdirect.com.

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As with many businesses models, your growth will come from new client acquisition.  But adding new customers is especially difficult if your existing customers buy only once.  Retaining your customers while you add new clientele into the fold is imperative to growing your business.

And customer retention is all about first understanding your clientele.  What challenges with list acquisition are they currently experiencing?  How did they find you and why are they leaving their current list provider?  And where can your company make service changes that serve the unique needs of your clientele?

Specialization

Certainly, it’s easier to specialize in one area of expertise than it is be all to everyone.  Look at all your clientele and where you do best.  Do you have more success with certain types of customers, or are you troubled with other types of customers?  Of so, consider investing in one area of specialization or another.  Hire experienced sales associates and a support group that has both knowledge and relationships in a give industry.  Marketing isn’t about selling what you’ve got as much as it’s about looking at the market and delivering products and services that fill a need.

Product specialization will naturally come about from a focus on one industry or another as most offerings target the same audience.  Product knowledge helps with both ensuring that the customer is talking to a professional, but also helps with annual volume cost discounts, which ultimately helps your ultimate bottom line.

If you’re already in an industry and would like to discuss how to reduce your overall cost base, give BB Direct a call at 866-501-6273.

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A complaint filed by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethnics in Washington (CREW) says that Newt Gingrich, Republican presidential candidate, has unlawfully sold his mailing list for $42,000.  Whether Newt was unlawful or not, is it possible for a mailing list of this kind to be worth the amount paid?

Before we jump to conclusions, let’s look at how mailing lists are valued.  Certainly, if the list will be used for direct mail purposes, and said direct mail campaign performs as expected, the answer is yes.  But, has the list been proven to respond?  How many records are on his mailing list?  Is it for one-time use or can the mailer use it more than once?  How clean is the list?  Here’s how BB Direct would value the mailing list before adding it to our mailer’s recommendations.

1.       Who’s on the list?
Let’s make the assumption that Newt has a mailing list of contributors to his campaign.  Are these political donors all responders from a previous direct mail campaign or from a variety of campaigns?  Furthermore, are they all from direct mail responders or is a portion of Mr. Gingrich’s mailing list from friends, associates, and golfing buddies?  This matters because to get the most out of the mailers direct mail campaign investment, they will want the language and offer of the campaign to best resonate with the recipient.

2.       How large is the list?
A typical political donor file goes for anywhere between $80/M and $150/M (M=1,000 records) for a one-time use.  Let’s assume that Newt’s salesmanship is better than most and he’s able to get the highest price for this kind of database ($150/M).  If that’s the case, the Gingrich mailing list is 280,000 people long ($42,000/$150).

3.       Is the mailing list worth $42,000?
First, let’s look at what Newt disclosed so far to the Federal Election Commission.  According to their website, Newt has received $2,910,879.  Though we cannot assume that every donor gave the same exact amount, let’s use what we have for valuation purposes.  So, $2,910,879/280,000 donors = $10.40.  Now, likely, there are many donors who ponied-up a bit more, but for those who gave more, many more gave much less.  Should anyone mail this total number of 280,000 people, the numbers simply do not add up.  I mean, let’s put some made up numbers to it.  With a standard direct mail cost of $1.42/per piece, a direct mail campaign to this audience would run $297,600.  Now, let’s assume the mailer get greater than average response of 3%.  The total number of responders would equal 8,400.  So, to break even on their direct mail investment, they would need to generate at least $35.43 dollars in profit from each and every responder just to break even.  So the mailer would have to generate more than 3 times what Newt was able to generate from these very same people.  Brian Berg, President and CEO of BB Direct, concludes, “Newt Gingrich’s mailing list is definitely not worth $42,000.  I’m more likely to assume that Newt put his best salesman foot forward and convinced the buyer that they can do 3 times better than he has done”.

BB Direct recommends that all mailers evaluate their break-even point on this type of investment prior to launching.  To find your direct mail campaign break-even point, click here.

BB Direct is a provider of targeted mailing lists, list enhancement services and database hygiene processes.  If you’d like more information on how mailing lists are valuated, please visit us at www.bbdirect.com.

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There are essentially two ways to use email marketing; broadcasting your email message to a known audience of existing customers, members, warm prospects, and broadcasting your email message to an audience which has no prior affiliation with you and your business.

Existing Customers

The first type of email is when you want to reach your existing customers. This group of people have done business with your company or organization, they recognize your brand, they likely use your product or service. Like postal direct mail marketing, this type of email broadcast is typically far more successful in terms of response.

New Prospects

The second type of email is when are attempting to grow your existing customer database using email. You broadcast to the most likely audience of non-customers, in hopes of getting an introductory opportunity for them to learn more about you, your company, or your product and service. In this example, your response is dependent on a number of factors.

Factors For Success

Targeted Email List – With email marketing, the targeted list must be both targeted and deliverable. The email must point to the most likely responder audience, but also must broadcast out of a “white hat” listed server. If not, the email will likely end in the trash.

Relevant Offer – No matter how well you’ve discounted your product or service, it’s got to be right for the audience. No sense in inviting parents with children to a single club outing.

Brand Recognition – It’s been proven time and time again, the more popular your brand, the more likely your message will be read and considered. Therefore, if your targeted audience isn’t familiar with your brand, it’s important that the email include the most recognizable name, product or service in order to get opened.

Before you invest in any direct marketing, you’ll likely benefit from a no cost evaluation from one of our experienced email marketing experts. Give BB Direct a call before your next project at 866-501-6273.

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Targeting the right audience is just as crucial to a direct mail marketing campaign as avoiding those who are simply not going to respond to your offer.  What if your typical mailing list audience just read a profoundly influential or inspiring book such as Steve Jobs biography?  And in doing so, they experienced a paradigm shift in the way they think about technology, art, business philosophy, and ultimately, their interest in your product or service.  Can reading the right book affect the way you once responded to direct mail?  What about a movie, a lecture, and sermon, or late night conversation?  The answer is, of course, yes.

Considering how fast information flows through our online gadgetry, or streams past us while we search on the web, or how often new ‘better’ products replace the old, it’s no wonder why the majority of mailing lists no longer perform the way they once did.  Information, people, places, and events shape our perception, which affect our interest and potential for responding to a direct mail offer.  Consider the news and its impact of technological change; products are services are becoming more and more….temporary.  For this, it is vitally important you take the necessary time to evaluate the mailing list you are about to mail.  It typically pays to upgrade your mailing list order to the 90 Day Hot Line segment of responders.  It’s essential that you pass your in-house list against the National Change of Address.  And when you test mail to gauge a response level before a continuation, be sure you don’t way too long between the two direct mail drops.

Consider an automobile direct mail campaign selling the new 2012 vehicle of choice.  Would you postpone that direct mail campaign for another year and expect the same response?  The answer is no.  New vehicles come out each and every year.  The same goes with electronic technology.  There’s a new cell phone or cell phone activation place every month.  And a cell phone app made available every few minutes.  And just as fast as we experience events within our own personal lives, so does the value of a particular mailing list.

Now think through your product and service as it relates to the ultimate value it brings to the market place.  Then consider how well it’s positioned alongside your competition.  Chances are your direct mail campaign is designed to announce your unique selling proposition.  This is a great reason for investing in direct mail.  But the value your product is bringing to the market is only half the direct mail campaign battle.  The other half is creating a mailing list that will best respond to your offer.  If you could mail to the people who recently read Steve Jobs biography, you’d capture an audience who’s in the “technology and inspiring entrepreneur moment”.  Are these the kind of people you want to talk to?  What about using this reader list to suppress from your campaign?  Would this give you lift in response?  Depending on the offer, the answer is likely yes.

At BB Direct, we help direct mailers consider the possibilities of who they are mailing and especially who they are not.  Maximizing your response requires both a timely offer and an updated and well-crafted mailing list.  If you’d like help with your next mailing list creation, give us a call at 866-501-6273 or visit us at www.bbdirect.com.

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