Benefits of Direct Mail
Direct Mail touches people every day. Direct mail, often called direct marketing or direct response marketing, is a marketing technique in which the seller sends marketing messages directly to the buyer. Direct mail include catalogs or other product literature with ordering opportunities; sales letters; and sales letters with brochures.
Many people look forward to receiving their daily mail. In fact, 98 percent of consumers bring in their mail the day it’s delivered, and 77 percent sort through it immediately. In addition to that kind of exposure, Direct Mail offers these benefits:
- It’s targeted.
Historically, the most important aspect of direct mail was its ability to precisely target previous customers. If a suitable list was available, it also did a good job of targeting prospects. However, with the arrival of Email and the use of cookies on websites, organizations could have a dialogue with their customers via the internet far more cheaply and easily. Mass advertising (TV, print, radio, etc.) can be expensive and isn’t always an option for small businesses. But Direct Mail can focus on a smaller group of individuals who are more likely to respond to your offer, giving you more bang for your buck. - It’s personal.
Direct mail can address the customer personally and be tailored to their needs based on previous transactions and gathered data. With Direct Mail, you can address your customers by name, speak to them individually, and appeal to their interests. And when customers feel that you understand their needs, they’re more likely to respond. In fact, 55 percent of consumers “look forward” to discovering the mail they receive. - It’s Optimization
Because of its direct accountability, direct mail can be tested to find the best list; the best offer; the best timing (and many other factors). Then the winning tests can be rolled out to a wider audience for optimal results.
- It’s Accumulation
Responses (and non-responses) can be added to the database, allowing future mailings to be better targeted.
- It’s flexible.
From letters to postcards to brochures, there is a large variety of inexpensive and easy formats you can use to create your direct mail campaign. You can add impact by including a special offer or free sample in the envelope.- It’s tangible.
Direct Mail allows you to physically place your message in your customers’ hands and encourage interaction. Along with an engaging message, you can make an unforgettable impression by incorporating elements that actively involve the customer, like stickers, and coupons. - It’s measurable.
Direct Mail is one of the few media channels that gives you the ability to track the success of your campaign. It’s as simple as counting the inquiries you received or counting the number of coupons redeemed. By tracking and analyzing your results, you’ll see what’s working and can make adjustments to future mailings if needed. - It’s easy and cost-effective.
You don’t have to be a Direct Mail expert with a big budget to advertise with the mail. With a computer, some desktop publishing software, and a little know-how, you can create your own professional-looking Direct Mail piece. With some Direct Mail Web sites, you even design your piece, import your mailing list, and have the campaign printed and sent—all online. - Your advertising message is targeted to those most likely to buy your product or service.
- Marketing message can be personalized, thus helping increase positive response.
- Your message can be as long as is necessary to fully tell your story.
- Effectiveness of response to the campaign can be easily measured.
- You have total control over the presentation of your advertising message.
- Your ad campaign is hidden from your competitors until it’s too late for them to react
- Active involvement – the act of opening the mail and reading it — can be elicited from the target market.
- It’s tangible.
Disadvantages of Direct Mail
- Cost – The cost per thousand will be higher than almost any other form of mass promotion (although the wastage rate may be much lower).
- Waste – Large quantities of paper are thrown away.
- Alienation – Some recipients resent direct marketing being “forced” upon them, and boycott companies that do so. Moreover, they may obtain Prohibitory Orders against companies whose direct marketing mail they find offensive.
- Some people do not like receiving offers in their mail, and throw them immediately without even opening the mail.
- Resources need to be allocated in the maintenance of lists, as the success of this kind of promotional campaign depends on the quality of your mailing list.
- Long lead times are required for creative printing and mailing
- Producing direct mail materials entail the expense of using various professionals – copywriter, artists, photographers, printers, etc.
- Can be expensive, depending on your target market, quality of your list and size of the campaign.
Personalization involves using technology to accommodate the differences between individuals. Once confined mainly to the Web, it is increasingly becoming a factor in education, healthcare (i.e. personalized medicine), and both “business to business” and “business to consumer” settings.
Benefits of Personalization
Here are the primary benefits of personalization to customers, with examples of each:
- Save time: Eliminate repetitive tasks; remember transactional details; recognize habits and shorten the path to engage in such habits (example: frequently called numbers on a phone should automatically go into the phone’s memory).
- Save money: Prevent redundant work (example: make it easier for employees and suppliers to know someone else has already solved the problem that they are currently facing); eliminate service components unnecessary to a customer; identify lower-cost solutions that meet all other specifications.
- Better information: Provide training; filter out information not relevant to a person; provide more specific information that is increasingly relevant to a person’s interests; increase the reliability of information; replace “average” information with information specific to that person’s environment.
- Address ongoing needs, challenges, or opportunities: Provide one-stop services; allow flexibility in work hours, job responsibilities, and benefits; accommodate unique personal preferences (example: allow employees to customize their office space, within certain boundaries); recognize and reward achievement with special treatment.
Personalization allows a company to tailor a specific product in accordance with individual standards, tastes and preferences. For example, baseball jerseys can be customized based on size, colour, team and logo, however there are a finite number of choices for these variables to choose. To personalize a jersey, a name or number can be administered to it as well as custom fitting.
The emergence of e-commerce has allowed for the personalization of clothing as well as the customization of audio CD’s and downloading of music as well as graphic design for personal websites from the comfort of one’s own home. Computer companies have been widely regarded as a market leader in made to order desktops or notebooks for high-performance and entertainment needs. Consumers are able to place orders based on product family, usage, price range, processor, and form factors. This customization ensures that each purchaser can view the merchandise available in order to make an informed decision.
Disadvantages of Personalization
No matter how remarkable or laudable a company’s efforts at personalization, there will always be some people who simply are not interested. Every firm must be prepared to recognize and instantly accommodate any of the motivating factors that would cause a person to decide he or she doesn’t want any sort of personalization.
From an individual’s perspective, there are numerous situations or attitudes that make personalization unwelcome.
- Anonymity preferred. There are many reasons why people might not want to be identified, from the innocent – it’s a birthday present they don’t want their spouse to discover in advance on their credit card statement – to the unethical or illegal. Some people are simply private, and prefer to mind their own business and let others mind theirs. Others recognize the growing infringements on private space and choose to take the cautious route. A. Michael Froomkin, associate professor at the University of Miami School of Law, wrote, “Anonymity may be the primary tool available to citizens to combat the compilation and analysis of personal profile data, although data protection laws also may have some effect.”
- Lack of relevance. People do not want a relationship with companies that have no relevance to them. Computer programmers have no interest in getting to know an executive recruiter who only places sales executives. Homeowners who only buy the finest products for their home will not be interested in a cut-rate furniture store. If you’ve never been to Arkansas, never plan to go there, and don’t know anyone there, you don’t want to be on the mailing list of the Arkansas Tourism Board. On the Web, companies constantly ignore this factor and ask individuals for information before demonstrating to the person’s satisfaction that their services are relevant. The prime example is companies that insist people fill out a lengthy form before they can gain access to a demo or to additional information. If a company asks people for information before it has demonstrated relevance, between 30 and 50 percent-depending on which statistics you believe-will lie to prevent revealing personal information.
- Lack of credibility. If you don’t trust a company, it becomes a relationship of last resort. Unless you have no choice, you don’t want to deal with it. People don’t need proof that a company deserves to be in this category. Often, a small suggestion that this might be the case is enough to justify caution.
- Lack of security. Good intentions aren’t enough. If a company fails to protect its assets, and those of its stakeholders, then people will not be willing to share anything of value with the firm. Security is like sausage making: the more you know about it, the less likely you are to be comfortable. People have real reasons to fear that today’s centralized networks are not secure, because they frequently are not.
Technology firms are working to solve security problems, although most admit that security is a process, not a single technological solution. There are no quick fixes.
- Impossible. Sometimes, people just aren’t able to take advantage of attractive offers. If a company, local government, spouse, or neighborhood forbids a person from moving forward, that’s life. Likewise, if people lack the ability to accept personalization-perhaps they lack a sophisticated enough cell phone, or a fast enough Web connection-it won’t happen.
- Infrequent contact. People will have little interest in establishing a relationship with a cab driver in a city they rarely visit, or with the company that installs their new septic system (a once-in-twenty-five-years event.) Companies get around this limitation by broadening their services to increase the frequency of contacts. Hewlett-Packard’s printer division used to focus on selling printers; now the firm realizes it can make more money selling printer cartridges, as well as paper, and in the process increase the frequency of its interactions with customers.
- Little value placed on potential benefits. People may not recognize the value in offered personalization, such as when firms offer to customize product offers. Many people don’t want to receive any such offers, period. Employees who are offered personalized training may not value it if they were unimpressed with their previous experiences with the training unit, and thus believe that even personalization won’t make the time invested worthwhile.
As companies move towards the personal – and the number of interactions increases – it’s important to gain greater objectivity about the attractiveness of a firm’s offers. Today, in the early stages of our shift towards increasingly personal business relationships, most personalization is still superficial, and way too much of it is mainly personalized marketing. No matter how targeted advertising becomes, it still won’t be anything more than a means to an end, and too much of it is flat-out annoying. People tolerate occasional annoyances, but when annoyances multiply, they begin to reek of harassment.
Even highly attractive offers won’t make a difference to a person who doesn’t value the potential benefits. Think about a new knowledge management system that theoretically delivers “better” information by filtering out “less relevant” citations. Many researchers may cringe at the thought, because they succeed by looking at raw data and thus understanding at a deeper level the background and related elements of a given situation.
Community building is a field of practices directed toward the creation or enhancement of community among individuals within a regional area (such as a neighbourhood) or with a common interest. It is sometimes encompassed under the field of community development.
A wide variety of practices can be utilized for community building, ranging from simple events like potlucks and small book clubs, to larger–scale efforts such as mass festivals and building construction projects that involve local participants rather than outside contractors.
Activists engaged in community building efforts in industrialized nations see the apparent loss of community in these societies as a key cause of social disintegration and the emergence of many harmful behaviors. They may see building community as a means to increase social justice, individual well-being and reduce negative impacts of otherwise disconnected individuals.
Benefits of Community Building
What is the purpose of your online community? What are the potential benefits to your business? Is it to offer technical support to your customers? To provide information about your product? To draw traffic to your site? Is the purpose to cut costs? To attract more customers by letting them interact with each other? The answers to these questions will help you determine what kind of community you will need to set up, and how you will maintain it. Here is a list of benefits:
- Increasing Traffic
According to Forrester Research, over 66 percent of sites that add community capabilities gain an increase in traffic. Visitors also tend to stay longer on sites that provide opportunities to interact with others.
- Increasing Customer Loyalty
Sites that are centered around selling a particular product or service can set up forums or communities related to that product or service to build up customer loyalty and attract visitors. According to recent research, the average customer visits a site at least seven times before buying from it. If customers come to know your site as a place where they can find quality information and answers to questions, they are more likely to visit repeatedly and buy your product or service. An example of this is Amazon.com’s community, which allows members to post their own book reviews on the site. This helps Amazon make visitors feel welcome, and in the end it generates more book sales.
- Cutting Costs
Providing customer support online can be significantly less costly than providing support by phone, fax, or mail. A recent estimate by Meta Group puts the cost of the average service call at $5 (U.S.), compared with a cost of 5 cents for an average Web-based contact.
- Providing Technical and Customer Support
Communities can be used to answer questions that customers may have about your product or service. MyHelpdesk.com is a good example of a site that offers Web-based forums for technical support (to join a forum at this site, you must first register and select a program or piece of hardware you need help with).
- Obtaining Information
Valuable information about what your customers want can be gained from their contributions to your community site.
- Leveraging Collective Expertise
Online communities can generate and concentrate high levels of collective expertise and experience. Edmunds.com’s Town Hall is a good example of this: Participants can ask and answer questions on automobile maintenance and repair, aftermarket parts and accessories, and many other car-related topics.
Disadvantages of Community Building
- needs a comprehensive, integrated approach which addresses social and environmental problems, and builds community capacity
- the place management approach holds the greatest promise
- place management is cost effective
- but, the hardest part is to reorient Government services and funding
Filed under: The Benefits and Disadvantages of Personalization, Community Building, and Direct Email | Leave a comment »