Chapter 7
Direct Mail: An Old Dog That Still Knows a Few Tricks |
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At its core, direct-mail marketing is a simple business: You acquire a list of names and mailing addresses. You write a sales letter. You mail it.
If the money you get back is greater than the cost of mailing and fulfillment, you are happy and you do it again. If you fail to cover your costs, you don’t. What’s wonderful about direct-response marketing generally, and direct mail in particular, is that it is the one form of advertising where you can “cut your losses and let your winners run.”
Like direct-print advertising, direct-mail advertising is a mixture of art and science. The art is in writing sales letters that deliver. The science is in tracking responses and using statistical computations to plan future mailings.
Writing successful sales letters is a creative process – a matter of figuring out the market and devising a new promotion based on the customer’s current concerns. List testing and analysis, by contrast, is a left brain activity – tracking responses accurately and running them through statistical models to determine future mailings.
So to be successful in direct mail, an entrepreneur needs to get both sides of their brain working – the creative and the analytical. This is a challenge, but it is also a wonderful benefit. There are very few other business enterprises that require this level of holistic thinking. Developing a direct-mail channel for your business will not only add a significant flow of new customers to you, it will also provide you with an infinitely rewarding intellectual business life.
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