Mailpost Business Franchise Opportunities

Automotive direct mail is one of the most commonly read types of direct mail. In fact, an article by DM News cites a survey showing that 73% of car buyers respond to direct mail.

Why do so many auto dealers and manufactures use direct mail marketing?

1. Direct Mail is Cost-Effective

Automotive direct mail campaigns can be shaped around any marketing budget. Direct mail can be as simple as a 4″ x 6″ postcard, or as complex as multi-part letter kit. The smart automotive marketer can use the more affordable pieces for lead generation, while reserving the more expensive pieces for current or past customers.

Automotive direct mail is also cost-effective due to volume factors. Most direct mail companies offer price breaks with increased volume. Under such a system, the more you mail the more you save. Automotive direct mail volumes can be easily scaled up or down to coincide with budget cycles or limitations.

Then there’s the ROI factor:

When used effectively, direct mail marketing can yield a favorable ROI. It has for decades, and it will for many more years. Sure, direct mail strategies have changed with advances in technology, the Internet, etc. But the fact remains that automotive direct mail produces results. Why else would the vast majority of auto manufacturers use direct mail?

2. Direct Mail is Flexible

Automotive direct mail can support any marketing goal. Whether it’s a lead generation program for potential customers, or a service reminder to existing customers, automotive direct mail can produce results. Here are some of the most common uses for automotive direct mail marketing:

New model announcements
Lead generation campaigns
Customer rewards / loyalty programs
Inventory updates
Service reminders

These are some of the most common uses for automotive direct mail, but they are by far not the only ways to use the medium. Forward-thinking automotive companies are finding new ways to use direct mail every day. Direct mail is a dynamic, versatile marketing tool.

3. Direct Mail is Measurable

Direct mail is one of the most measurable of all marketing channels. Once you have a response-tracking mechanism in place (like special 800 numbers, web page tracking, or business-reply cards), the rest is simple math. With television or radio advertising, you have no way of knowing how many people saw your ad, even if you can count responses.

Conclusion

Automotive direct mail can be an effective marketing tool, but it requires a good deal of research and planning. We hope this resource has increased your knowledge of automotive direct mail, and we wish you well in your direct mail marketing endeavors.

* You may republish this article online if you retain the author’s byline and the active hyperlinks below. Copyright 2007, Brandon Cornett.

Mailpost direct marketing

Let’s get something straight right now-direct mail marketing works. Please tell me you’re not one of those myopic marketing guys that thinks just because everyone is on the Internet the old avenues of advertising are futile! The truth is many companies have found success by using flyers, brochures (actual brochures, not virtual e-cards!) and even direct mail marketing.

The key to making sales is to make your business a part of your lifestyle. You go where the people are. If people are picking flyers off of their door knob then you may be able to pique their interest with a well produced flyer advertising your company name, new promotion and website address. If people are checking their mail everyday then a direct mail marketing campaign will definitely catch their attention.

Direct mail marketing works because people do need to take a break from surfing the Internet all day. As soon as they start opening their mail, they will see your print ad and immediately evaluate the service based on your words and images. If your pitch taps into a need the customer immediately has, rest assured he will hold on to that coupon.

The Universal McCann Insider’s Report recently published figures showing that direct marketing budgets were soaring-in fact, commercial industries spent over $50 billion using nothing but direct mail advertisements in 2005. So yes, you can’t really argue with someone who suggests that direct mail marketing can be successful.

The point is, when you actually compare the strategy of direct marketing with article marketing then you start to notice some subtle differences-differences that are ultimately important. Consider for example the natural limitations of direct mail marketing.

The Disadvantages of Direct Mail Marketing

Cost: With direct mail marketing you are paying for paper and ink-each and every piece of it. Though you do often hear about how cheap direct mail marketing is (since you’re paying literally pennies for a single sheet) it still remains the most expensive form of mass promotion you can use.

Waste: You are paying for sheets of paper that will be discarded. Not only is this a waste of money, but you’re also inadvertently contributing to the pollution of the earth, and probably upsetting your green-friendly customer base (even if it’s recycled paper).

Reputation: In fact, direct mail seems to have an ugly reputation of being “junk mail” and for this reason, many homeowners won’t even bother looking at the ad to begin with. Why? Probably because most of your direct mail competitors create really dumb ads and give direct marketing a bad name in general. Sad, but true…no matter how brilliant your ad is, many of your targeted readers will tune your ad out completely.

One-Shot Opportunity: It’s hard to sell any business idea if you have only one opportunity to make your pitch. Just ask a real estate agent how often he can sell a house on the first meeting! Business nowadays is tied up with trust, establishing a relationship and intensifying efforts on your buyer’s needs over time.

Prohibition: Buyers tired of unsolicited mail can get prohibitory orders against companies they do not like, or can opt out of a specific mail order campaign.

Intense Competition: When a person is going through his or her mail, he is usually looking at several ads at once and not really concentrating on the message. In order to compete with the other solicitors you have to create vivid imagery, photos and text that will be remembered. You’ll probably be competing against everything from glimpses of dessert to beautiful young ladies to bombastic ads for “free cash prizes!” It’s just hard to sink down to that mentality-and even harder to do it successfully.

Inaccurate Mailing Lists: Many of the mailing lists you will pay top dollar for will be dated or inaccurate information. Often times, you will end up mailing a letter to an unknown resident. Very seldom does a homeowner perk up after reading “To: Resident.”

Electronic direct marketing does manage to dispense with one problem: the waste of paper. However, if there’s anything more reviled in this world than junk postal mail it is SPAM email. Cutting down on the cost still doesn’t fix the problem of annoying solicitors and badly managed marketing plans. Do you really want to compete against the ad wizards who came up with “You can make $5,000 a day writing Google ads”?

The Advantages of Article Marketing

Now, let’s consider the natural advantages of natural Search Engine Optimization, or as we often call it, article marketing.

Targeting: When you invest in article marketing, you are utilizing the full power of the Internet, and focusing your efforts in a concentrated and targeted “attack.” Instead of blindly reaching out to residents and broad demographics (as with direct mail marketing) with SEO you are targeting customers according to their needs and thoughts-exactly as they type them in a search engine.

Low Cost: Article marketing doesn’t charge you by the ad or even by the click. You only pay for the content itself and you buy all rights to it. Article marketing is largely seen as the cheaper alternative to Pay-Per-Click or banner advertising, since your ads essentially run forever at a much lower cost. The majority of traffic you get from an article marketing campaign is going to be coming from web viewers who are searching for specific keywords that relate to your business. With direct mail, you’re basically playing a guessing game. Therefore, while article marketing does cost you an initial investment, it comes at a lesser cost than direct mail and without all the guesswork.

Testing Niches: While your investment is smaller compared to direct marketing and even PPC ads, you are actually able to target more of your paying audience through more effective niche marketing. In order to do this successfully, you must consistently feed the search engines with new content. However, for the money you spend, article marketing offers a better return-on-investment rate, and again, a lower price overall.

Time-Saving: In article marketing, all you are waiting on is the completion of the articles and the article directory process, which SEO firms and ghostwriting services usually handle for you. The articles you buy will be submitted by the SEO firm over a period of time. Why? Because this helps to maintain a constant flow of submission, which helps regularly feed the search engines, thus ranking your site higher. Consistency is the key to higher rankings, which in turn is the key to greater traffic.

Article Marketing Trumps Direct Mail Marketing

Best of all, when you use article marketing, you are basically leveling the playing field. Instead of competing against filthy rich conglomerates like Yahoo! or Wal-Mart, you are battling it out customer for customer against your competition. You have your customer base’s undivided attention and an entire webpage to make your pitch. If you know what you’re doing market-wise, this is your best bet.

AccuraCast.com in the UK reported that in December of 2006 81% of Internet users worldwide, or 256 million people, visited a search engine looking for a keyword interest. SEO also showed much potential for growth, increasing 10% over the previous year, even while Google’s mainstream audience grew 250% in a short amount of time. The study even revealed something interesting about user behavior: the average searcher spent 27 minutes searching for the perfect website to answer his/her questions, and looked at over 93 individual pages.

You know what that means? You have at least 27 minutes to make your pitch on a recurring daily basis. To be fair, article marketing is not always easy. There are some web marketers who do tend to give us all a bad name by writing inferior content. Article marketing is also slower than PPC ads and sometimes the technical aspects of this technology can go over people’s heads. However, if you work with an experienced SEO firm then you can sidestep these common problems and just watch as your sales and prospects gradually increase.

This isn’t a piece of junk mail! This is a call to all the Internet marketers out there who are just now seeing the potential of article marketing. Are you getting your piece of the “Internet pie?” If you aren’t investing in article marketing, then you are missing a major part of your customer base. As we stated earlier, most online prospects are using search engines and are clicking on natural keyword results. Most serious prospects are looking for organic search results as opposed to quick ads or banners. One thing is for sure: there are far more people utilizing the Internet than there are people opening their postal mail and falling for the latest hype machine. It’s time for you to tap the established and proven market of article marketing and start increasing your sales!

Mailpost opportunities

Direct mail can be profitable for your business. It can be very lucrative if you take the right steps and the correct actions, especially when the economy hits a recession like today’s current reality. However, letting the recession not be an excuse to a direct mail campaign, know there are simple ways to start what should be a successfully tested campaign.

Note that you already have a business idea and have in mind that there are not many competitors if any in your city for your direct mail project! You feel confident that your product is unique and it will serve and help many people’s lifestyle and change lives. The first thing to do is make a business plan on what type of marketing/advertising you’re going to use for your offline business endeavors.

Having in mind that you have vast business experience in the marketing field and have already helped thousands make extra income from their home, you establish a plan in order to know how to better serve your community in helping people make extra income from home. You jot down every single step you need to make in order to make it happen.

If you need a professional website design in Photoshop, you jotted it down with the start-up investment in need for such design. Another option that might seem logical to use is an email marketing service in order to provide follow-up information to your clients. You jot down that information in your plan and examine how much it will take.

Identifying and getting the product to the market has many options of delivery. You can choose a physical package to deliver your “how to make money” product or you can choose a digital delivery download so your customers get your package immediately via instant download.

In fact, a direct mail campaign can be very effective if in your city most people are 9-5pm employees who have grown tired of the low pay a job might offer to many of them and can also be effective profitably wise when you have someone with hopes of starting their business from home while keeping more time for their children. Your target market might be deadly hot; it probably is a necessity in this economic situation!

So once you have started doing your due diligence on stickers, d-boards and every single effective marketing piece of advertising that your budget allows, you start seeing results. What are the results? You will not know the hottest places that your marketing is pulling profits if you are not tracking your business! So your next immediate step after you know what advertising material to purchase is making sure you know how to track your profitable ads, so you can get rid of the ones that are not working and invest more in the ones that work.

Without having this in mind, your advertising budget is likely going sour. You need to track your advertising campaign in order to know what works and what does not. Not doing so will be like cruising down the highway with your eyes closed, risky! Making a plan, having a hot product that not many people know about, advertising correctly, and tracking what works should increase your chances of success tremendously. Be smart and follow what works for many!

Mailpost Organisation

Email deliverability is all about making sure that your opt-in email subscribers get the information they wanted. Since you have added them to your mailing list after their approval, you should consider them as potential prospects for your business because they are interested in your marketing campaign. Each and every member of your opt-in email list is very important to you. You can convert your subscribers into clients with effective email marketing campaign. If the emails you send out to your members don’t reach them properly, then you are definitely missing some serious business. At the same time, you should be aware that no one or no tool could guarantee 100% successful email delivery.

You have to find ways to improve email deliverability. Without your efforts, some or most of your emails may reach intended recipients. But, you will not know if your subscribers actually read your mails? If the emails bounce, most of the email services will let you know. However, when the emails are marked as spam or left unread by your subscribers, then you will not know anything about that if you don’t use appropriate mail monitoring tool. With such a tool, you can get a lot of information regarding the response of your subscribers.

The email monitoring software you use must provide you on demand service to you meaning that you should be able to get statistics and analytical data you want when you require. Generally, these tools will monitor your emails for blacklist, spam, ip blocks, domain, and other issues that normally affect delivery rate of your emails.

It is certain that you have to shell out a few bucks to buy the best email monitoring software, but it is an essential investment if you are running email marketing campaigns. With the statistics from monitoring tool, you can effectively increase the results of your campaigns because you will have a lot of information using which you can improve your campaign.

Peter Kritas Mailpost

Direct mail lists provide opportunities for businesses to acquire, retain and create loyal customers. Yet which lists are typically the best performing lists? How do you go about finding mailing lists? And once you’ve found a list, how do you know if your investment paid off?

Direct Mail List Basics

Direct mail lists generally fall into three categories:

Company owned lists: These are direct mail (or email) lists that you’ve created on your own. Many online business include an opt-in box on their website so that customers and visitors can choose to provide their email address in exchange for information, news, white papers and other gifts. Companies can also create their own “house lists” as such lists are called by using records of previous purchases and leads to create a basic mailing list. For direct mail, you can use physical addresses without tacit permission. For email marketing, always use an opt-in method and only conduct permission-based marketing to avoid getting branded as a spammer.
Response lists: Response lists are rented by companies that specialize in mailing lists, called list brokers. Such a list is based on past purchasing or response behavior and may include catalog mailing lists, direct mail or direct television buyers, or magazine subscribers. Many companies make money by renting their list out to other companies. The idea behind using such a list is that past purchasing behavior is the best indicator of future purchasing behavior. In other words, if someone responded to a direct TV ad for jewelry, chances are better that they’ll respond to another offer for jewelry. List brokers often add additional selections for an extra fee, such as 3 month buyers. This allows you to target people who have recently bought such an item. Again, based on years of data from many industries, these are people most likely to respond again to similar offers, which is why direct marketers seek out such lists.
Compiled lists: Compiled lists are created or compiled from public records. Such lists used to be based on DMV records but now are mainly typed into computers directly from telephone books. Sometimes public data such as census data is appended to the list, providing some ability to sort by income and other factors from census data. Compiled lists are the least expensive but also the least likely to respond to specific offers. Going back to the jewelry example, you may rent a compiled list of people living in a high income zip code, thinking that they are likely to buy jewelry from a direct mail order catalog. But you have no way of knowing from the compiled list if such people are comfortable shopping online, by phone or from a catalog. A response list indicates that in the past, such consumers have done so – and are more likely to do so again.

There are general list brokers who offer a wide range of mailing lists and specialist such as Market Data Retrieval that focus solely on on industry, such as education in the MDR example. Ask colleagues for the best list brokers in your industry.

Renting Mailing Lists

Once you’ve found a company offering lists, search their catalog or talk to a list broker on the phone. Share your ideal client profile; who are you targeting? The list brokers will suggest several lists and email or fax you data cards. Such cards provide the facts about the list: who is renting it, whether it is compiled or response, and data selects available. Data selects are optional methods to use a computer to narrow down the most likely prospects to respond to your offer. Select may include age, gender, products purchased, or recent shopping behavior.

Lists have a base cost per thousand. Typically list companies will not rent fewer than 10,000 records, so take the cost per thousand records, multiple that by 10, and that gives you the minimum amount of money you will have to spend on a list. There may be additional charges added on for various selections or to actually generate the list from the computer.

Make sure that the list has been updated recently. Good list companies run their lists through several databases obtained from the Direct Marketing Association and the US Post Office. These include removing the names of deceased persons, updating lists with the new addresses of people who have moved, and suppressing (removing) people who have requested to be on the “Do Not Mail” list or preference list from the Direct Marketing Association. All of this may add costs at the beginning of a list rental process, but think about the money wasted mailing pieces to people who cannot respond. If they’ve moved, died, or hate junk mail, why mail to them in the first place? You’re spending money on the creative design, the printing, the mailing house costs and postage, so save the money and don’t mail to those people.

Testing and Use of Direct Mail Lists

Although the minimum amount of names on n a typical direct mail list rental is around 5,000 to 10,000 names, many companies will allow you to rent a smaller segment for testing. Be sure to code your direct mail pieces with a unique phone number, source code or another method to track responses so you can see which list performed the best.

Mailing lists are rented for one time use or multiple, unlimited uses. You’ll be asked up front to specify which use you intend and most companies ask for a sample mail piece. One of the most frequently asked questions people new to direct mail ask me is, “Why can’t I just pay for one time use and then reuse the list, since most lists are provided electronically nowadays?” The answer is simple: you will be caught! Mailing list companies include addresses called “seeds” on their list which look to you and me like just any other name on the list, but actually go back to the company or to someone employed by the company to monitor the list. If you’re caught using a mailing list more times than you paid for it, you are subject to legal prosecution, fines or both. It’s not pretty. Don’t do it.

Direct Mail in Today’s Market

Direct mail has been around since the late 1800’s when catalogs opened a world of new goods to rural Americans. Although a large number of consumers have moved their shopping online, many still prefer to look at an old-fashioned catalog before buying. Direct mail can entice and invite consumers to visit a website to order. A good mix of old-fashioned direct mail marketing, postcard marketing, and a robust website with search engine optimization techniques in mind is a winning combination to acquire, retain and create loyal customers – and make money in the process.

Mailpost

Direct mail is the way to obtain customer’s attention as a method of marketing products. It is very helpful to create a link between consumer’s mind and producer. You can use direct mail to advertise your product through printed advertisements, posting letters or other options to large number of customers. You can use bulk-mails and targeted mailing lists to reduce the mailing cost and increase potential response of customers. Direct mail copywriting is a process, which works for the clients to advertise their products. You can apply this process in the field of publicity, marketing and in many other fields.

The traditional mode of advertisements is TV, newspapers, radio. Through these channels, you cannot reach to customers directly. In the traditional process, there is no option to personalize customers, which is the main source of attracting customers. Therefore, business owners discovered a new innovative technique to get attention of customers through promotional letters, handouts, catalogues and many other types of mediums. A freelance writer has great scope to achieve success in this field because he has the ability to motivate customers by his script.

The purpose of direct mail copywriting is to inspire customers to buy the client’s products or services. You can distribute direct mail to a large amount of people to gain as much interest as possible for the client. The writer, who is well versed in writing convincing advertisements, can perform well in this field. To get success by writing direct mail, you should be very smart and intellectual in your words. In addition, you have to be a creative minded person, so you can attract people through your writing. For this reason, there is a big chance for the business to get a positive feedback from their potential customers.

From the initial period of direct mail, customers ware habituated to get it through different media like handouts, door hangers, pamphlets, and handbills. Those were the primary methods. In the past, the meaning of direct mail was to contact directly with customers through door-to-door sales or by contacting with third parties like stores and sales people. Now you have another procedure to find customers attention directly and that is e-mail or electronic mail. Direct mail copywriting is a unique, easy and popular way to create thoughts into customer’s mind about the product or service. There are many advantages to use e-mail as media.

You can reduce your expenditure by using the lower rate of bulk mail. The primary techniques are good to communicate within local areas. For a larger area, there is no substitute of e-mail. You can easily reach out to your customers personally. You can create a targeted list of the potential customers to increase responses about your product. Targeted mailing list is also very popular for drawing attention, because you can reach to the existing and potential customers. For a writer direct mail copywriting is a profitable business. After being a famous writer or gaining success, the client’s seeks him to promote their product through his script, which becomes a source of earning extra income.

Direct mail copywriting has some problems also. Another name of direct mail is junk mail, which creates irritation for customers when they are busy checking their important mails. To exchange this irritation into curiosity, there are varieties of new techniques like using special fonts, designable envelops. Envelops appear with personal markings, which not only makes the customer feel very happy but also arouses his interest and curiosity, which induces him to open the mail. As a result, you can be confident about getting their feedback. Therefore, nowadays copywriting in the form of direct mail through the electronic medium has become the prime choice of all businesspersons irrespective of the size of their business.

Now e-mail is working as the main source of direct marketing of any product. The latest example of this is online marketing. People can get an overview of the product; in addition, customers can get some discount options after making online purchase. For the customers it is very helpful as they can get detailed information about the product before purchasing the product. The writers can get fame and fortune both by choosing direct mail copywriting as their occupation. Finally, we can say in the present world, this profession is very popular not only for writers but also for business owners who want to promote their products.

Mailpost Franchise

Listing names of Big Mail Requestors, and sending out packages of Big Mail is an easy way to get your start in the business of selling by mail.There are a number of mail order operators pulling in an easy, extra thousand dollars a month, by what you’d hardly call work – doing nothing more than receiving money for advertising a list of people’s names interested in receiving Big Mails, and sending out envelopes stuffed to overflowing with Big Mail.

Regardless of where you live – you age – teenager or senior citizen – man or woman – there is no reason you can’t do the same – pull in extra thousand dollars a month, with the same idea.

Getting started is not as easy as turning on a water tap, but then your initial investment will amount to practically nothing – and the requirements upon your time should not amount to more than a few hours a week

First, let’s define the market – Who wants Big Mails, and why they want it… Big Mails are wanted or should be wanted, by just about every person in business, especially those involved in selling a product via the mails, in order to keep himself abreast of who’s doing what, how they’re doing it, the new offers being made and the newcomers to the business. The reasoning is because of the time and postage saved by automatically receiving all of this information, as opposed to writing and mailing letters to each individual offer you see that arouses your interest, not to mention the time saved in searching through all the different publications to discover these things. Some people – the dreamers and the lonely – like to receive Big Mails simply for the sake of having mail delivered to them every day. There’s no sure way of determining which of your Big Mail Requestors these people are – so you just forget about it, and send your Big Mails to everybody on your list. Besides, the actual number of people in this category are fewer than you might suspect.

Now, let’s define what’s inside a Big Mail Package you or your buyers – Big Mail Requestors – will be receiving in the mail… Generally, you’ll find at least one, but usually several publications: ad sheets, tabloid mail order newspapers, and an occasional newsletter. The rest is almost always a collection of various product advertising circulars. At least two of these circulars will be from the person sending the package to you in the first place.

Many, if not most of the beginners in this business, first get their name listed as a Big Mail Requestor, on as many Big Mails Wanted lists as possible. They even save the mail they receive, and once a week, every other week, or once a month, they stuff their accumulated Big Mail into individual envelopes and send it to the names on their lists of people who have paid to be listed as Big Mail Requestors. Don’t forget – All Big Mail suppliers always include at least a couple of two-sided circulars of their own. These are usually Commission

Circulars – product advertising circulars, sometimes provided by a prime source or distributor with a blank space on the reply coupon for the dealer doing mailing to rubber stamp his business name and address. More often than not, the distributor furnished the dealer with “camera ready” copies of circulars to use.

The dealer takes these C/R’s to a quick print shop, and has several thousand copies made up with his business name and address imprinted on each circular.

Every time you send out a package of Big Mail, always include two advertising circulars of your own – circulars that may interest the recipient and cause him or her to send to you for the product or service offered. These can be commission – dropship – products, or products that you have devised, produced and are selling.

Incidentally, the best way to go with commission circulars is to ask for or get a camera-ready copy of the original, and have a large quantity of them printed locally with your name in place of the supplier. This will save you hours of very boring work entailed in rubber-stamping your name on several thousand circulars. If for whatever reason it’s too expensive to get your circulars printed locally, then check around for a printer who does business by mail, and will make your circulars for you with your name and address on the ordering coupon. Also, it will almost always pay for you to have the printer fold your circulars for you before he ships them to you – he can do it all in about an hour, while it could take you a couple of days to a week or longer to fold 5,000 circulars yourself.

You can include as many product circulars in your package of Big Mail as you want, but It’s been proven time and time again that three very good – outstanding – circulars, all related to the same idea, bring back more responses than an envelope overflowing with circulars. What I’m saying is that a circular inviting the recipient to send for Book #317, “How to Make Money Writing & Selling Simple Information,” plus a circular on Book #365, “$50,000 a Year from Mail Order Ads,” will pull far more inquiries than 10 or 12 different circulars inviting the recipient to send for a mixture of related items. The reason is quite simple – After about 3 circulars, you begin to overwhelm the recipient with opportunities. In reality, he’d like all of the books you are offering, but he only wants to spend so much and therefore, he’s faced with a decision of which ones to send for – and more often than not, he ends up not sending for any of them.

Including a mini-catalog listing of your offerings if quite different, and generally acceptable to most people receiving big mail packages, or product advertising in the mail. Generally, this is regarded as not so much loose paper and something they can hang onto for awhile and maybe order from, much the same as they order from a JC Penny catalog.

When you’ve got your name listed on a number of lists as a Big Mail Requestor, and after you’ve got a steady supply of this kind of mail coming to you, start placing ads of your own in some of the larger circulation ad sheets and other mail order publications as a Big Mail Supplier. For ideas on ads to use, glance through any mail order publication and come up with one you think will bring the most replies in.

Now you’re on your way with the basic plan and “know-how” for a fast start as a Big Mail Supplier. In order to expand your big mail operations into a real money-making business, compile a list of magazines, newsletters, mail order tabloids and ad sheets. Then draft a letter to these publishers, advising them that you can supply them with several hundred prospective subscribers each month.

Explain that your prospects come from responses to national advertising, which you run at no cost to them, the publishers: Go on to explain that your national advertising offers Free Trial Subscriptions to the nation’s leading money-making publications, and that you feel your list will be incomplete without his publication…

Sweeten the pot further by detailing how you’ll be sending the names and addresses of these fresh prospects on peel ‘n stick labels – that these mailing lists will belong to him on receipt – and that you encourage him to copy them for follow up mailings…

You charge each of these publishers $100 a year for this service, and even when you have 100-150 signed, keep looking for and attempting to sign more publishers.

Don’t ever stop soliciting publishers, and go after the biggest as well as the very smallest of them With a number of accounts signed and paid, you place an ad such as the following, in several national publications:

FILL YOUR MAILBOX WITH OPPORTUNITY!
World’s leading Money-Making publications!
Free trial subscriptions! $2 for processing to:
(Your name & address).

When the responses to your ads come in, type the names and addresses onto “master” sheets or put them into your computer systems as respondents to your advertising. Sometime around the 15th of each month, copy your masters onto the number of customer sheets of labels you need, and send them out. You bank the money from your advertising respondents.

One hundred publishers times $100 each means $10,000 per year… A minimum of 200 respondents to your advertising each month means another $4,800 per year And then, by contracting with a reputable list broker to handle the rental of the

“HOT” names you accumulate each month, you should be able to double or triple these figures… And $30,000 income your first year in the Big Mail business is nothing to “cry about” at all!!!

Meanwhile you’ve got all these new prospects, to whom you can send your own sales materials You can also expand your services and become a subscription agency, a publications distributor, or even a mail order publications Advertising Agency…

You could compile, publish and sell directories of newsletters, tabloids and ad sheets… Directories of Mail Order Associations… Mailing lists of people wanting Big Mails… or mailing lists of people wanting Commission Circulars.

Mailpost Peter Kritas

More than three-quarters of direct mail and marketing material delivered in the UK in 2009 was recycled after being disposed of, putting the country well ahead of targets for reducing the amount of such material going to landfill.

In 2009, the British government and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) agreed that, by 2013, 70 per cent of direct mail materials should be recycled. But latest figures show that, not only has that target been easily exceeded, but it has leapt well ahead of schedule, with the proportion of direct marketing materials sent for recycling in 2009 reaching 76.5 per cent.

The DMA puts this excellent result down to two major factors – a massive rise in domestic recycling, and the increased awareness by consumers, and their greater use of, the Mailing Preference Service, whereby households can opt out of receiving non-specifically targeted and addressed direct marketing home delivery. These changes in behaviour have had major impacts on both the amount of direct marketing material being distributed – which fell by 348,600 tonnes in the first six years following the introduction of the voluntary industry accord in 2003.

The massive growth of recycling of home delivery items meant that 79 per cent fewer of these letters and packages were sent to landfill sites in that same period. In turn, in 2009 alone this is said to have saved more than 380,000 tonnes of emissions of greenhouse gases – an amount which one average petrol car would have to travel one billion miles to emit.

A higher proportion of direct marketing materials is now claimed to be recycled than of general paper products overall, according to the Confederation of Paper Industries.

The reduction in the amount of such materials being distributed also means that delivery companies have to devote less time to handling them. This then means that home delivery services in general have become far more efficient, and as a consequence delivery companies can concentrate on more urgent items, getting more of them to their destination more quickly.

Of course, these aims have been greatly boosted by technology, which assists home delivery companies in many ways.

For example, it allows for the more efficient planning of routes before journeys begin, which contributes further to reductions in CO2 emissions. And if drivers know their route before they set out, home delivery companies can also offer their customers more accurate estimates of the arrival time of their consignments.

The Direct Marketing Association will continue talks with the Government Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and mail deliverers over increasing the efficiency of direct mail deliveries and thereby cutting the amount of materials both disposed of and recycled still further.

Mailpost Leadership

It was not too long ago that many people had no internet, much less an e-mail address. But the internet brought in a new era that is full of unlimited information. The internet gave birth to electronic mail, more popularly known as e-mail. E-mail opened new avenues to the world of communication. In the beginning e-mail was only used as another means of communicating with other people for personal or business related matters.

Now people of every age group have an e-mail address. But, since the past few years have gone by, its potential for marketing has been exploited to its maximum both in good and bad ways. At the same time, who can disregard the services of direct mail which have been operating for nearly two centuries? It is still the preferred method of communication for many people.

E-mail is the cheapest method of communicating in mass quantities available as of this date. The advantage with email is that you can send email to many people at the same time just with the click of a mouse, where as in the case of direct mails one has to go through putting letters in envelopes for each and every person, make different address labels, mail it and also have to bear the cost of mailing. Time is money and e-mail marketing saves a lot of time.

While e-mail marketing might look easy, if you compare the net result, the story is totally different. When you are marketing through e-mail you want to make sure that you are e-mailing the right person, otherwise the e-mail would end up going to a junk folder. Also you got to be careful that you don’t miss the subject or the body of the e-mail, otherwise the net result would be same. In this age of spamming, spammers use a variety of subjects.

Studies show that direct mail is more efficient and has better success than e-mail. First, it is not as easy to block direct mail as junk e-mail and secondly the process of blocking mails itself is not automated like e-mail. The other reason why people hate e-mail marketing is due to constant bombarding of e-mails from spammers and illegal marketers from Nigerian money scams to porn to online prescription drugs to stock quotes to what not. In addition to that, you also get promotional offers from big companies and who can ignore phishing these days.

Many people have developed a negative perception about e-mail marketing and they simply delete or spam the e-mail if they do not identify it as their regular e-mail. In contrast direct mail is seen with respect and people pick their mail as a daily routine and open them with a priority.

Direct mail has a personal feel attached to it, one of the reasons why people prefer mail greetings over an electronic greeting. It takes time to personalize a direct mail where as an e-mail is instant and the fate of e-mail is also instant i.e. immediate deletion. Researchers are constantly puzzled by the mystery surrounding why people are so enthusiastic about direct mail.

But no worries, this is only good news for the marketers that they have something in their tool kit that works. So marketers have the mailing list of potential customers handy and send some nicely composed letters to them about your company and its products.

Snail mail has a potential of going through the hands of gatekeepers and administrative assistants before actually going to their boss which can end up being thrown in trash. The survival chances are rare unless its subject is business oriented and has some important information. But e-mail wins in this regard, as it reaches directly the person to which it is intended to go, after that its fate is left to the person whether to read or send it to spam folder.

A more scientific explanation of why direct mail is dearer to people than e-mail is the sensory perception of people. A direct mail uses three of the four senses of a person i.e. visual, verbal, listening and touching where as e-mail does not use sense of listening and touching. But this can be achieved by adding appealing graphics, text reading ability and streaming audio to the e-mail.

The statistics show that direct mail has not died and in fact the volume has grown by leaps and bounds in past few decades. A typical example is the fact that we receive more magazines, journals, mails from universities, DVDs etc. than we used to receive few years ago. This leaves the marketers with a dilemma about which method to use. The answer is simple, use email to contact only those people who you know and use direct mail for the people who don’t know you.

Peter Kritas Mailpost: Leadership Traning Part 5

There is no doubt that the recent Global Financial Crisis had a huge impact on many CEO’s around the world whether their business was established or in a start up phase. Stress levels reached new heights for leaders as the economic pressure were felt.
Successful Leaders anticipate change, vigorously exploit opportunities, motivate their followers to higher levels of productivity, correct poor performance, and lead the organisation toward its objectives.
A review of the leadership literature, in fact, led two academics to conclude that the research shows consistent effect for leadership, explaining 20 to 45% of the variance on relevant organisational outcomes.
Training and the effectiveness of leadership programs vary. They will because the programs themselves are so diverse. Moreover, people learn in different ways. Because some leadership programs are better than others and because some people participate in programs that are poorly matched to their needs and learning style, we should expect leadership-training effectiveness to have a spotty record. So decision makers need to be careful in choosing leadership training experiences for their managers. But they shouldn’t conclude that all leadership training is a waste of money.
In conclusion we say that leadership training is a more positive feature provided it is imparted to managers who have come up in the organisation to a certain level by their natural ability and the leadership training will definitely hone their skills to achieve much better performance and capable of taking higher responsibilities.

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