15 Statistics That Illustrate Direct Mail’s Potential Power

15 statistics that show why direct marketing should be considered as an element of your marketing mix (complied by Compu-Mail):

1. Direct mail continues to be used heavily, with a 43% share of total local retail advertising.
2. Young adults, 24 years and younger, are among the most direct mail responsive.
3. 92% of young shoppers say they prefer direct mail for making purchasing decisions.
4. An International Communications Research survey found that 73% of consumers actually prefer mail over other advertising methods.
5. 59% of U.S. respondents and 65% of Canadian respondents agreed with the following statement, “I enjoy getting postal mail from brands about new products.”
6. 56% of customers find print marketing to be the most trustworthy type of marketing.
7. 70% of Americans say mail is more personal than the internet.
8. Personalized print media has a more powerful presence than a personalized email, because the audience can recognize that it takes more effort to customize print media than digital.
9. 76% of small businesses say their ideal marketing strategy encompasses a combination of both print and digital communication.
10. 40% of consumers try new businesses after receiving direct mail.
11. U.S. advertisers spend $167 per person on direct mail to earn $2, 095 worth of goods sold; a 1, 300% return.
12. 98% of consumers bring in their mail the day it’s delivered.
13. Of these, 72% bring it in as soon as possible.
14. 77% sort through their mail immediately.
15. 48% of people retain direct mail for future reference

How to Grow, and NOT, Grow Sales: SalesMemes 33

How to Grow, and NOT, Grow Sales: SalesMemes 32

The 6 Best Practices That Will Grow Your Sales in 2014

Sales Renewal clients are accustomed to hearing the term JointSourcing – a unique business model that combines pay-for-performance with expense sharing. The model means that we focus on not simply what works, but what works cost effectively. The key to growing sales through JointSourcing is a multi-pronged approach to sales and marketing.

The six key “prongs” we focus on when creating a JointSourcing plan for our clients are:

1. Website Marketing

• This includes building a website that is written with your customers and prospects in mind. (Start by Choosing the Right Domain Name.)
• Optimize your website for search engines – all the right keywords and search terms in all the right places.
• If you sell locally, in a physical location, be sure to also maintain a local presence on the web.

2. Content Marketing

• Create good-quality content (for your blog, via downloads and white papers) on a consistent basis.
• Let people know you have this great content via social networks that are appropriate for your prospects and customers. (Want some tips for building your Facebook business page?)

3. Social Media Marketing

• Grow your social network – join groups, forums; interact with customers and peers – and spread the word about your business by creating fresh content for your network. (Here’s a real life example of how it works.)
• You can also look beyond the obvious major networks – have you considered using Reddit for your business, for example?
• And of course, your customers are often your best ambassadors – use customer reviews and testimonials to your best advantage.

4. Customer Marketing

• Keep the customers you have happy and earn ongoing revenue from them with E-mail newsletters (and remember to continually test your message!)
• Loyalty programs – from multiple-purchase discounts to special membership programs – are another way to generate revenue from loyal customers.

5. Paid Marketing

• Quick to start and offering near real-time control, advertising in general and Pay-per-Click advertising specifically, can be a very effective way to get your products or services right in front of prospects who are ready to buy.
• And with the right targeting, messaging and offer, direct [paper or email] marketing is hard to beat for growing B2B or B2C businesses.

6. Strategy and Management

• No marketing program should be contemplated without benchmarks and continuous improvement built right in. That’s why businesses need to employ all of the analytical tools and best practices available in order to be continually assured their sales and marketing programs are cost effective and yield the best R.O.I. (And please don’t forget the old fashioned telephone, because Marketing ROI without Call Tracking is Like Baseball Stats that Exclude Away Games).

Will 2014 be the year your business maximizes its online sales and marketing to grow sales? Sales Renewal can help get you started. Contact us to find out how.

E-Mail Campaign A/B Testing – We Have Two Winners!

A recent A/B e-mail campaign test pitted a multiple product image mailer against a single-image mailer. The experiment resulted in a dead heat!

Sales Renewal creates holiday-themed emails for the Concord Flower Shop – about six per year. Typically, the emails feature nine to 12 floral arrangements with multiple options for the recipients to click through to the website and purchase. (The image, the description and a “Select” or “Learn More” button are all hyperlinked to the products on the site.) The results consistently compare favorably to Constant Contact’s benchmark standards for opens and clickthroughs, and either meet or exceed the industry standards.

For Valentine’s Day, after discussion with our client, we prepared an e-mail campaign to test our standard design against a more simple, single-image mailer. Since multiple factors can affect an email’s results, we kept the remaining controllable factors – subject line and time of day sent – the same. We also attempted to remove any list bias by dividing the list via random number selection.

Well, the results are in, and both emails win! Some highlights of the test:

• Both emails resulted in an equal number of direct sales
• The single image version generated more clicks
• The multi image version generated a higher conversion rate (percent of clicks that led to a sale)
• The single image generated higher sales dollars

How will we use these results? Other than understanding that people tend to wait until the last minute to buy their holiday flowers and that sending an email – no matter what the layout – is helpful in getting them to make their purchase (most of the sales came on February 13 and February 14), we now have two strong formats that we can use for future holidays, ensuring we can keep the recipients engaged and our communications fresh and varied.

Are you using e-mail as part of your online marketing efforts? Are you testing your format? Subject line? Time of day and day sent? Let us know the results!

– Audrey Trieschman