Direct Mail vs Adverts

Okay, Direct Mail gets a lot of bad press - junk mail. But if done correctly it can make you a lot of money and get you a lot of new clients (or customers - I will continue with "clients" from now on).

Think about advertising in a paper or magazine for a moment. For your advert to work your target clients must:

1/ Buy the paper
2/ Read the page your advert is on (unless it's a full page ad.)
3/ Notice your advert amongst all the others (again, unless it's full page)
4/ Need your service enough to act on your advert now - because you can be sure they won't keep it for future reference.

However, at BananaOffice, we do all our advertising by direct mail. Yes we have the free one line in the Yellow Pages and Thomson directories and we have a website, but our advertising budget is spent on mailouts and the reason is simple - we can get our message right in front of our target client!

If you do it right, you can ensure that your target client not only sees your letter but also, if they don't contact you straight away, will keep it for future reference (we have received calls from people we sent letters to four months before).

How do you ensure that with all the other direct mail yours stands out? Follow the following steps:

1/ Make sure all the enclosures look professional. It might cost a lot to get nice glossy brochures, etc., but it will earn you a lot more in the long run.

2/ Make sure you write to the right people. There are firms who provide mailing list addresses and, for businesses to business, you can specify the type of industry, size of company, number of employees, geographical location and in the case of limited companies, their turnover.

3/ Ensure you have a name to write to - you may occasionally get away with "Dear Sir/Madam" but it looks so much better with a name.

4/ Have a "personalised" cover letter. Make sure your prospective client's name is on it and try to ensure you mention something about their business within the letter - anything you can do to make it look as personal as possible. This is going to get noticed over a standard letter that's obviously been sent to 100 other people. Also make sure you don't commit the cardinal sin of having something like "Dear Mr J Smith", or "Dear Mr John Smith..." or other variants, it should read "Dear Mr Smith".

5/ Personally sign the letters. If someone else is going to be signing them do not do a "PP" or "Signed on behalf of...". Why not just put the name of the person who is actually going to sign the letters? Also, don't use a pre-printed signature, rubber stamp or "fancy" computer font - all these shout "junk mail".

6/ Put a real stamp on the envelope - or at least the Royal Mail Smart Stamp. Don't use a franking machine or pre-paid envelopes. Again these just shout mailshot.

7/ Follow up a couple of days later with a phone call. If the thought of calling people ties your stomach in knots (it does for me) then hire a firm who specialise in this sort of thing. Again, it's not cheap, but it can work wonders.

Now, doing 5 and 6 above will take some time (I've spent a whole morning signing over 300 letters and putting stamps on), but it makes your letters look more personal. Subconsciously the recipient will think "They can't have sent out that many if they are personally signed and have a real stamp on them".

So following the above will ensure that your letters will be read before the inferior junk mail and will either be acted on immediately or kept for future reference.

If you would like more help or advice on direct mail campaigns do not hesitate to contact me.