Will The US Postal Service Survive?
Direct mail marketing maybe dead in 2011?
Direct mail marketing maybe dead for many companies and slowly dying for many others. The reason is that postal rates are due to increase in 2011.
Many political leaders understand the problems and many others want the government to step out of the way and do away with the many old fashioned postal monopoly laws.
The financial waste of this postal monopoly laws resulted in a $3.8 billion dollar net income loss at the end of 2009 and an expected cost of $7 billion in 2011.
The future for many direct mail marketers looks very grim and this effects thousands of companies and millions of jobs for marketers, retailers and business owners.
The new postal price increases would be above the Consumer Price Index which would violate the safeguards imposed in pricing in the USPS.
The post service will be cut services instead of improving it. The USPS is currently reviewing the reduction in mail delivery to five days per week.
This would save about $1.9 billion to $3.5 billion per year. It’s time to save the USPS and the many direct marketing jobs that depend on it.
The solution is deregulation…
and privatization will greatly benefit customers and ensure a brighter future for the direct mail marketing industry.
About the Author:
Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. As an Internet Publisher and Entrepreneur, he has developed a website to help small business entrepreneurs find the best mailing list and marketing programs ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection, Tips and Tools for Finding the Perfect List. Once you e-mail segments, track how they differently they react to messaging options. Free 100 leads from InfoUSA from your neighborhood or across the country you choose or call me for more details buy mailing lists Guaranteed and a 100 free leads if you open an account today!
4 Myths about Direct Mail Testing
Is Direct mail marketing making a comeback in 2010.
Copy, Offer, Lists, Formats, Personalization —Questions that you might have yourself before testing your next
campaign.
With reduced competition in the mailbox and e-mail essentially failing as a prospect tool, 2010 can actually be the year when response to direct mail picks up, especially if you test and do it right.
Do you look at response rate or profit per hundred mailed or profit per order when evaluating results?
Make sure your measuring your direct mail marketing results accurately. Response rate is not as critical, in my opinion, as the other two, although it can greatly influence your profits.
What can I do to convince my company to start reinvesting the marketing budget back into direct mail instead of throwing the entire marketing budget at Web marketing?
Make a compelling case for direct mail’s accountability, and show them what your competitors are doing—or not doing—to make your case.
Talk about the control package failure aspect of direct marketing a
Direct mail is the best way to drive more site visits; even Facebook users are finding that out.
Present a compelling case, supported by statistics you find.
You’ve heard that a different headline would pull up to six times more than another. Is this true?
Headlines and, in a sales letter, the P.S.Post Script are read first, so that’s where you’ll see a good deal of impact. Even changing a single word in the headline can make a significant difference.
Decades ago, the legendary John Caples increased response 20 percent by changing “How to repair cars” to “How to fix cars.” Sometimes surprisingly mundane changes work wonders.
An educational institute for bankers once asked us how to get more branch managers to respond to its newspaper ad.
We suggested simply adding the words “branch managers” in large type at the top of the ad, leaving everything else, including the headline, unchanged. Replies shot up.
It makes sense that a product priced at $24 would outsell the same one priced at $29, but the opposite is often true.
So, rather than try to reason which wording will sell more, you can know by doing a split-copy test. (I assume you’re dealing with a headline. If the wording is buried in copy, I would stress over other things first.)
Until next time, here is to your continued success!
.
About the Author:
Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. As an Internet Publisher and Entrepreneur, he has developed a website to help small business entrepreneurs find the best mailing list and marketing programs ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection, Tips and Tools for Finding the Perfect List. Once you e-mail segments, track how they differently they react to messaging options. Free 100 leads from InfoUSA from your neighborhood or across the country you choose or call me for more details buy mailing lists Guaranteed and a 100 free leads if you open an account today!
National Direct Mail Boost
Direct mail volume increased 16% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2010 to 6.1 billion pieces.
The insurance and credit card industries were the strongest direct mail performers of this growth. The volume of credit card-related direct mail increased 36% year-over-year, reaching 1.2 billion pieces in the first quarter.
Insurance mail grew 8% from the prior year, reaching 2.6 billion pieces.
This is a pretty big comeback in comparison to last year.
The mix of consumer-facing direct mail has changed considerably from a year ago, with insurance-related mailings leading the pack with 43% of all volume.
Insurance is the biggest sector and outmails everything A year ago, credit cards were No. 1, then insurance, mortgages and loans.
For the rest of 2010, looks like a good year for a comeback for direct mail with credit card and mortgage companies leading the way.
The future looks bright for credit cards in particular, because there have been a few companies, Chase and Capital One, driving the growth.
Because of new credit card regulations bu the Obama administration some are still holding back.
Until next time, here is to your continued success!
.
About the Author:
Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. As an Internet Publisher and Entrepreneur, he has developed a website to help small business entrepreneurs find the best mailing list and marketing programs ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection, Tips and Tools for Finding the Perfect List. Once you e-mail segments, track how they differently they react to messaging options. Free 100 leads from InfoUSA from your neighborhood or across the country you choose or call me for more details buy mailing lists Guaranteed and a 100 free leads if you open an account today!
Increase Direct Mail Response with Customized Envelope
With the recent developments in print
You can now customize the outer envelope to increase response rates.
The more personal information you can put on the outside of the envelope without it looking messy. The better the open rate and eventually response rate.
The #10 Envelope
This is something that needs to be tested.
We are trying to make envelopes more engaging
Some commercial printers…
Keeping costs….
Until next time, here is to your continued success!
.
About the Author:
Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. As an Internet Publisher and Entrepreneur, he has developed a website to help small business entrpreneurs find the best mailing list and marketing programs ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection, Tips and Tools for Finding the Perfect List. Once you e-mail segments, track how they differently they react to messaging options. Free 100 leads from InfoUSA from your neighborhood or across the country you choose or call me for more details buy mailing lists Guaranteed and a 100 free leads if you open an account today!>
How to Triple Your Direct Mail Response
How to improve your direct response marketing with customer analysis
Develop a strategy that determines who your best customers for retention and lifetime value purposes are.
The first step in the process is analysis and trying to determine your best customers.
You begin this process by looking at their history
Taking that data to predict which customers are most likely to buy your services when they walk through the door or Website.
From this you segment customers most likely to purchase.
From this analysis you are able to develop a mailing campaign and this will be good enough to get a significant return on investment.
Focus on the top 20%….
Since they provide 80% of your revenue.
How do you create a model that is focused on this segment of your database?
With an acquisition strategy…
You start by asking your best customer the right questions….
Like, why did they choose your particular product over the thousands of others on the Internet? You take this information and conduct studies to segment buying behavior of customers to understand how your customers go about buying the products that you sell.
You need to find out more by asking….
- What they watch or read before purchasing
- How they go about purchasing as far as the process
Than you focus your advertising based on the answers that your customers provide. You start by testing your copy that is segmented towards your high value customer (top 20%). Since this is where your return on investment is generated from.
The other factor that you should consider when you consider promoting to this group.
How did your acquire this customer through direct mail, email or Website capture? If you acquired through direct mail than this tells you that they respond well to direct mail and the probability purchasing again is high.
Customer lifetime value
This is retention and determined by the number of relationships that you have with the customer. How much revenue is this high valued customer able to produce over his lifetime in my database? You must score this customer as far as revenue generated and identify if the probability is high that they will purchase again.
Determine if they shop on the internet before purchasing online and develop new products to fit the needs of this customer.
Once you e-mail segments, track how they differently they react to messaging options. Free 100 leads from InfoUSA from your neighborhood or across the country you choose or call me for more details buy mailing lists Guaranteed and a 100 free leads if you open an account today!
Direct Mailing lists and NCOA Compliance
Is Your Business Losing Thousands of Dollars in Postal Savings!
For Not Complying with Postal Mandates Pitney Bowes recently surveyed respondents to a Business Insight mailer that said that only one-third use manual updating procedures when mail is returned to them from the National Change Address due to incomplete internal customer database lists.
This indicates that few companies are cleaning their lists or a regular basis and taking advantage of discounts being offered from the postal service for using NCOA services.
The new postal mandates this year include Move Update Standard will first be billed an additional 7 cents per assessed piece.
The Pitney Bowes study conducted just recently queried more than 50 executives and IT managers who conduct high-volume mailings in the insurance, finance, communications and utility industries.
Only 39% of respondents in the survey said they have an automated process in place to deal with returned mail from NCOA and ACS methods.
Lost postal savings opportunity
The conclusion is that most mailers are not taking advantage of mass mailing savings by keeping their internal databases clean and up to date.
This also indicates that the overall marketplace hasn’t fully updated as a move to update strategy.
The goal of the Move Update Standard is to reduce the volume of undeliverable-as-addressed mail which costs the federal agency billions each year to process. This mandate was effective as of November 2008, requiring businesses to update their bulk mailing list for both First Class and Standard Mail.
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Direct Marketing Mailing
Direct Marketing Strategy
Over the last 30 years, direct marketing mailings has seen tremendous growth in worksharing and personalization.
Worksharing allowed everyone to keep costs down and gave people their own systems and logistics, this was a measure that was initiated by the USPS in the mid-70′s. But personalization of mailing pieces in the 90′s powered the success, this was due to the sophistication of databases and the ability target the message to specific groups of people which gave direct mail marketing it’s competitive advantage.
During the 90′s more companies became more interested in desktop programs to do segment marketing and to launch direct mail campaigns from their own offices. Not only was direct marketing strategy more focused with database marketing but mailers were able to reduce costs by mailing smaller quantities from their own in-house databases.
In the 1990′s direct mail marketing pieces were becoming more creative and standard mail had hit a 100 million pieces and direct marketing reached a new high in total advertising budgets. The creativity of direct marketers were still improving this evolutionary time. The context could now be variable and you could now personalize and segment your mailings all at the same time.
Direct Mail Personalization Evolution
Personalization makes the offer relevant to the consumer since it is direct personal communication. The one-on-one marketing relationship marketing began here. Now the relationship has began online, the marketer is no longer just getting out the message but now he is getting immediate feedback from his customer.
Direct Marketing Ideas and Todays Economy
The times are like no other in the history of the USPS since volume declined by 26 billion pieces in 2009, but the declines in direct mail volumes as a percentage were not as great as most other advertising channels, like newspaper, radio and TV.
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