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Targeting for profit

The essence of direct mail is its ability to precisely target it’s recipients.

It’s truly a beautiful system and it recently got a lot more amazing, as

you’ll see shortly.

A lot of people don’t realize this, but a tremendous amount of

information on each of us is being stored, analyzed and sold everyday.

In the last three years have you bought a bunch of electronics? Well

you’re probably on a list somewhere of people that buy electronics.

Do you use credit cards when you go to the health food store to

buy supplements? You’re probably on a list somewhere not only as

someone interested in healthy living but also on a list of people who

use credit cards. Your age, sex, marital status, credit profile, household

size, vehicle make and model, buying habits, birthday, and about a

million other things are on lists everywhere for marketers to purchase

at any time they please.

The reason that people want information like this isn’t to scam you

though, it’s to market products or services that you might like, directly

to you.

Targeted Marketing Example

Let’s pretend you are a somewhat avid wine drinker. On the internet

one day you were searching for reviews of wines that are sold at your

local liquor store. You signed up for an online newsletter belonging to

a wine enthusiast web site.

They sell their list of subscribers to a Wine magazine called “Wine

Conneiouser”. “Wine Conneiouser” sends you a free issue with an

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offer for a 12 month subscription for only $12. You subscribe and

they sell their list off to large databases that track buying behaviors

and lifestyle interests. Soon, you’re getting catalogs with gorgeous

wine racks, wine-of-the-month club promotions, and maybe even

Alcoholics Anonymous letters.

Smart advertising departments will begin to intelligently market to

you because they know you’re interested in their products and aren’t

likely to perceive anything with wine in it as junk mail.

If you, the wine enthusiast, happens to get a postcard in the mail from

a competing local liquor store for 15% off any case of wine, are you

likely to use the coupon? Of course you probably will.

What if you start getting coupons from them every month, would you

likely stop buying wine from your normal place and start going where

the deals are?

Are you seeing how beautiful a good direct marketing campaign can

work? It reaches the right people and keeps getting in front of them

until they break down and buy. Then it keeps continuing to make them

come back as often as possible.

Now what if this liquor store sent it to random people rather than

people who already show interest in wine? And what if they didn’t

even send a coupon, but just something that said “Jim’s Fine Spirits, in

business over 20 years”?

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That’s the difference between a poor campaign and a good one. A

good direct mail campaign:

• Reaches the right people
• Has 100% visibility
• Contains a compelling offer and a call-to-action
• Repeatedly gets in front of them over and over.

A bad campaign may stem from the lack of any of those above bullet

points. If you send out one single mailing to random people, put no

coupon or offer, and hide it in an envelope or squashed in a catalog, I

can guarantee that you won’t be happy with the results. In fact I’d be

surprised if you had any results.

This is why people have bad experiences with direct mail, they don’t

know what the heck they’re doing! That’s why they need someone who

does.

Response rates

This is the part that makes those of us who are experienced in direct

mail shake our heads.

Inexperienced direct marketers and business owners constantly say

things like this below:

“Well, direct mail gets a 2-3% response rate so...”

Statements like this are crazy. There’s no way to base your potential

results on a figure like this. It’s not like we’re just flipping quarters. So

much of our campaigns depend on the average sale price, offer, timing,

scarcity, etc...

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So you’re telling me that if I send out 100 postcards to random people

with a big bold graphic of the brand FERRARI, I should get at least 2

or 3 of them interested in buying a Ferrari right?

Or what if I sent 100 postcards with a coupon for a free car wash,

timed it to land on a sunny spring weekend, and sent it only to new

vehicle owners that lived within a quarter mile radius of the car wash

location? Am I still going to get 2 or 3 responses only?

Response is variable, yet fairly predictable.

Both of the above scenarios are ridiculous and will immediately

disprove any estimated response crap when someone mentions it.

The industry averages for direct mail do tend to hover around 3% as

a whole but that’s only an industry wide statistic. It means almost

nothing in relation to individual campaigns.

Response is affected by so many things that there’s no way to really

predict it until you consider all the variables and run mailings often

enough to test it. It doesn’t have to be risky though because once you

understand how it works, you’ll be able put the right ingredients in to

make it profitable every time.

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Key visual ingredients of a successful postcard

direct mail campaign.

• A good offer
• A clear call to action
• A bold image
• A compelling headline

Key strategic ingredients of a successful postcard

direct mail campaign.

• A precisely targeted list
• A large enough sample to mail (ideally 5,000 minimum)
• Repetitive marketing to the same list.

The List

The list is the most important element. You must have a targeted list

in order to direct market effectively. Your message has to reach the

right people as accurately as possible, which means you have to know

who the right people are and sometimes it can take a bit of creative

discovery.

Because this report is primarily devoted to you being able to offer

direct mail services to local businesses, it’s important for you to

understand what will be the ideal customer for your prospect.

Once you’ve got a business owners attention and can talk with them

about their customers, it’s easy to narrow down who to target, but

I find it’s best to have a good idea of what list might work best for

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your clients prior. This way you can pique their interest and use it as a

closing tool. When you approach a business owner with the fact that

you already have a list of interested people, you get their attention

much faster.

Targeting Example

Let’s say your wife works next door to a uniquely decorated childrens

store that showcases unique hand-woven diaper bags in the window.

Think to yourself “what kind of customer is likely to shop there and

buy those expensive diaper bags?”

Personally, I’d imagine it would be the families who have a baby in the

house. People tend to be twice as likely to buy things after a major life

event.

Now what if you could instantly find the addresses of all the people

that have just had a newborn?

Do you think that the store owner might be interested in getting her

products directly in front of everyone who in her area who just had a

baby?

Of course she would and she’d have no problem paying you if you

could market directly to them for her. While this example involves a

baby store, the concept is what’s important for you to understand. If

you have a list of people that are highly likely to buy something, all

you have to do is get that product or service in front of them.

A professional direct response marketing consultant would instantly

put together a direct mail campaign to reach the right people, which in

turn would drive in loads of new customers to her business. A person

selling websites or social media isn’t going to bring in any noticeable

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business. This is why direct response marketers get paid the big bucks.

This is why YOU need to learn how do these type of campaigns for

your clients!

Pulling lists

I mentioned before that targeting customer profiles recently got a lot

more amazing.

For decades, if you wanted a list of certain customer profiles, you’d

contact a “list broker” who could source the targets you wanted and

deliver them in a spreadsheet. Over the years, there have been more

and more websites that allow you to hand pick your own lists online

and buy them at very reasonable prices (usually ten cents or so per

lead).

You don’t actually buy them though, you “rent” them. Nearly every list

you order online will be good for ONE mailing only. You’ll need to

buy another list for future mailings or pay extra to have the permission

to use it multiple times.

If you want to pull lists on a frequent basis, the common choice in

recent years has been a program called “salesgenie” that gives you

unlimited views of your lists for around $1800 per year, required to pay

up front!

Plus if you want to download and actually use your lists to mail, you

have to pay extra when you need more than 500 or so. It’s always been

pretty much out of the range of any budding marketer.

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The golden ticket

The most incredible resource for pulling lists actually just became

available a few months ago. You can now look up and view unlimited

leads and download up to 25,000 per month, for only $24.95 per

month and you can cancel it anytime!

One month of using this resource and it will pay for itself many times

over. Even if you want to use it solely for prospecting, you’ll go crazy

over how useful it is. Want to know the phone numbers, addresses, and

emails of all small businesses in your local area that have less than ten

employees, make less than $500,000 per year and have good credit?

Just pull the list!

Focusing power

Want to narrow all your prospects down by industry or business type?

Want to view only dentists, physicians, or roofers?

Just pull the list!

This will save you ridiculous amounts of time and efforts in your

prospecting and while you prospect for certain businesses, you can

pull up their ideal lists as well to get a head start on their mailing

campaigns.

Hot lists

“Hot leads” are going to be your best friend forever. Hot leads are ones

that change frequently and contain ready to buy consumers. These lists

revolve around major events which create a window of behavior that

involves typically needing certain services and products.

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“Recently Divorced” is an example of a hot list. Think about who

might benefit from a having a targeted list of people just recently

divorced in your area? How about a gym or fitness center.

A targeted mailing campaign with postcards from a local gym

headlining:

“Remember how your body used to look?

“Get it back quick with our new

30 day rapid fitness program!”

This might deliver a very good response to recently divorced

individuals that are starting a brand new life, don’t you think?

Hot lists are incredibly responsive to direct mail and in my experience,

they are ultra-deliverable too (which means they have a low chance of

being returned).

Get into the mindset of the hot lead

When someone experiences a major life event, they often have new

desires, new outlooks on life, and new responsibilities.

In order to fulfill those needs, wants, and responsibilities, they’ll need

certain products and services. Since we were just talking about recently

divorced people, let’s think about them...

You have to start thinking of what goes on in their heads during this

life changing event. By understanding their thoughts and wishes, you

can target business that may want to market to those people through

you.

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What happens when someone is recently divorced?

• they have a fresh new look on life
• they want to become attractive again
• they want to meet new people
• they might want to buy a new house
• they want to buy new clothes
• they might be depressed
• they might be horny
• they might want spiritual guidance
• they might suddenly have more income
• they might have bad credit
• they might want a new car

All of these reasons can provide great marketing opportunities. This

is where the professional direct response marketing consultants shine,

and there’s no reason you can’t follow this same process in order to

profit yourself.

At first glance, most marketers would say “who the heck would want a

list of people recently divorced?”

But as you see, with some thought, we’ve come up with a lot of reasons

why someone would want to. I bet there’s well over 20 industries in

your local area that would love to get offers in front of every recently

divorced individual. They just never thought about opportunities like

this, and if they did, they probably never found anyone to handle it for

them.

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Strong emotional/visual marketing

When people are in emotional states (happy or sad), they’re much

more receptive to direct response marketing. That’s why when you’re

targeting hot leads, you want to hit them hard with an image and an

offer.

Think of the typical recently divorced female. She probably has

endured a difficult marriage and most likely she’s ready to experience

the world like she did before she got married. Chances are, she’d like

to get her body back in shape and restore some confidence.

A postcard with a great image on the front that matches a similar age

range to the average divorced female who wants to get back in shape

can be very powerful. Here’s one I literally just made as I wrote this

chapter...

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There’s no doubt about it, that image and headline is going to hit

home with a large percentage of recently divorced females.

Divine Intervention?

The headline reads “Isn’t it time to get your body back?”

She’ll probably think “Wow, yeah it actually is time to get it back”, and

may very likely blame this postcard on divine intervention. She has no

clue that someone has intelligently marketed to her because they know

she was recently divorced.

The back of the card

The back of the card is super important because that’s actually what

gets seen first in the mail (postage side up). Some key elements to

have on the back of a postcard is:

• A bold headline at the top
• A short blurb of copy
• Bullet points featuring the benefits
• A clear call to action
• A clear way to respond (website and phone number)
• A compelling offer

You want your target to be interested enough to turn the card over,

where they can see the striking visual that hammers home the message

you want to send.

You can actually design the back of smaller postcards in black & white

if you’d like but on larger size postcards (6x11 in particular) you almost

always want to print the backs in color.

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• Lose weight fast
• Feel better about yourself
• Shape and tone your body

Bold, clear

headline

Compelling offer that

stands out

Red Arrow

for strong

emphasis

Short copy

and benefits

driven points

Clear phone number

and website to re-

spond to.

Clear call to

action.

Divorced Female

123 Lonely Lane

Smithville, TX 12430

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Starting a Search:

Here I’m going to use my super secret online source that allows me

search over 50 databases that are updated weekly and monthly.

We’re going to find a hot list that we can market to the upscale babies

and kids store we talked about earlier.

PICKING A LOCATION:

I select a nearby county (low population so it’s all within driving

distance). 172 new parents are in the database.

Perfect for

targeting the

upscale baby

store

All new parents

within the last

five weeks.

I chose county,

you may need

to do city or zip

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RECENCY OF EVENT

Although you can certainly market hot lists weekly, in most cases it’s

best to just keep marketing to them monthly where the sample size

goes up. I choose five weeks.

VIEWING THE RESULTS!

All the names and address are displayed to me in detail. I can

download the list to an excel or openoffice spreadsheet and just send it

to my direct mail handler for delivery!

I always pick

Last five weeks

Instantly

download all the

records.

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For only $30 on gotprint.com you can print

1,000 postcards.

For $50 you can get a professional graphic

designer and layout artist

([e-mail]) to design your

clients postcards.

Fellow warrior Doran Peck (

myezprinter.

com) will MATCH gotprints price, print the

pieces for you, address them, sort them for

lower postage rates, and mail them each

month for only 35 cents each including

postage.

This means that you could sell the owner

something like “only $3 to send a postcard

with a special offer on it from YOUR STORE,

to brand new parents in our area!”

The total cost to you will be less than fifty

cents! Sending 150 each month would

make you $375 and you don’t have to do

ANYTHING BUT CLICK BUTTONS.

SECRET LIST SOURCE

The brand site that allows you to pull unlimited lists (and downloads) is

infofree.com

It normally costs $49.95 per month but if you use the promo code:

STRUCTURE

You get it for only

$24.95

every month and you can cancel any time!