The majority of clients we get coming to us these days are looking for a simple marketing strategy that’s established and relatively ‘untouched’ by the recession. Not asking much you say!

Actually though, not such a tall order because there are certain things that these same clients are consistently not doing. Importantly these are generally not testing and/or measuring their promotional performances. This is a strategy that’s vital when a company doesn’t have a limitless budget.

It’s probably the most common failing with small businesses that they rush into using strategies for marketing and promoting their products and services without really knowing how successful they are being. It’s not an exacting science in terms of reallyknowing just which marketing method is going to work the best, therefore to limit the risk, it’s necessary to trial headlines, offers and action calls, so some patience is required because that means testing and measuring before the big push.

A good example of this came recently with a client who came to us when they had written their mail-shot and fulfilled it for 10,000 prospects and off it went only to get just 3 responses in total. A good rule of thumb is a 2-3% response rate (our latest general stats from the DMA are 2.61%) though certain industries and/or offers can vary dramatically.

Our strategy in this case is to trial three different service/product offers to three different market sectors each of 1000 prospects because your prospects will definitely let you know what they want and the offer that trials best will be sent to the main database.

By simply testing your offers you will reduce the risk of a poor response and feel much more confident with the main mailing also any follow up mailings will be based upon true research leaving you better prepared next time. This is a more cost-effective strategy giving you more bang for your bucks!

In closing, you really must ensure you ask for your responses too. Creating awareness is important but it’s lost if you don’t let your prospects know what is expected of them because this will be a crucial method of measuring how effective your final campaign is.

If you would like some help with your next direct mail campaigns or a critique of your sales letters, please feel free to contact us.