You have read about key factors in the past regarding a successful campaign:

• A good, highly segmented mailing database
• Superb creative with a real WOW factor
• A compelling, highly relevant offer

The Forth Element – Sequencing

There is a forth, often overlooked element to a successful direct mail campaign – Sequencing.
Here is a quick interesting little statistic.

Statistics show most sales take at least 5 contacts with a client or prospect.  In fact, 80% of sales are made on or after the fifth contact.  Many sales people never make it to 5. A lot of them stop trying to connect after the first or second attempt. Even worse if a client DOES buy most sales people don’t bother with any follow up communication.

So too in direct mail, and particularly with email campaigns where it takes longer to get to the order phase. Direct response mailing is there primarily to sell something – One mail-out or sales letter to a new prospect simply isn’t enough! It needs multiple efforts/visits, but in a highly planned, sequenced manner.

If you or your company would like help in your direct mail efforts contact us.
We are always happy to help.

http://ecoastgraphics.com/contact.htm

Many are calling it the smartest new way to make any company more valuable to its customers — and more competitive. Can one-to-one marketing work for you? It has for Capitol Concierge.

Like every company builder who finds success, Mary Naylor has more than once been blessed. Some of her good fortune was standard issue: Her two investors turned out to be “phenomenal mentors.” And her hometown of Washington, D.C., turned out to be the perfect locale for her company, Capitol Concierge — which sets up concierges in office-building lobbies to provide personal and business services, from picking up dry cleaning to managing a catered lunch.

But the best blessing was one few founders would deem a blessing at all: the business Naylor stumbled onto turned out to be so demanding that survival depended not just on satisfying customer needs with alarming proficiency but on learning enough about customers one by one to anticipate their needs even before they knew they had them. For Naylor’s company, now at $5 million and expanding fast enough to make last year’s Inc. 500, great customer service was just the market’s cost of entry. What was required to stay alive — let alone grow — was one-to-one marketing.

Which would have been fine, probably, if Naylor had known what it was.

* * *

Today savvy marketers everywhere rue the runaway costs of acquiring new customers. The savviest, one of whom the 32-year-old Naylor has determinedly become, go further. They’ve responded to those costs and a host of other competitive pressures by focusing not on accumulating more customers but on getting more business from the customers they already have. They aim not to find customers for their products and services but to find products and services for their customers — the deceptively simple theme of the recent business best-seller The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time. (“You can reduce almost every principle in the book to that basic truth,” says coauthor Don Peppers, a former advertising executive.)

One-to-one marketing borrows from several popular marketing concepts: relationship marketing, database marketing, customer-satisfaction initiatives, and even airline frequent-flier programs. It champions the use of now-popular technology to identify, track, and interact with individual customers — noting “every transaction, every time they call to ask a question or make a complaint,” says Martha Rogers, Peppers’s coauthor and partner on the lecture circuit. (See “Ask the Marketing Doctors,” for the pair’s advice to the sales-lorn.) Dale Carnegie meets Bill Gates? Sort of. But it’s not as expensive or time-consuming as that sounds — not given how much more profitable it is to win repeat business than to chase new prospects. And if technology is the glue of one-to-one marketing, you still needn’t be a Net head or an ACT addict to get started. You just need a different point of view. Forget market share and economies of scale. Think customer share and economies of scope. Fortunately, the customer-share mentality comes easily to entrepreneurs. The corner grocer was the original one-to-one marketer.

Nowadays, Speedy Car Wash, in Panama City, Fla., inputs license-plate numbers to instantly identify customers by name and retrieve information about previous visits, such as whether they like the trunk vacuumed or the window seams washed — or whether they are due a discount on waxing. A Seattle country-music station sponsors not only a listeners’ club but also a toll-free line listeners can use to respond to individual ads. You may have heard of Peapod, the Chicago virtual grocery store that takes your order by PC and remembers your brand of peanut butter. In Burlington, Mass., Individual Inc. produces a customized business newsletter that’s downloaded to your fax or computer. And Oriental Trading Co., an Omaha direct marketer with millions of customers, responds individually to people who order Alleluia kites, Jesus Loves Me bracelets, and praying-hands stickers from its main catalog by sending them its Inspirations catalog.

Smart and economical tactics, all. In fact, Peppers and Rogers’s one-to-one tract might have been subtitled “How to Beat the Big Guys by Changing the Rules” — except that the big guys are doing this stuff, too. Federal Express’s intricate package-tracking system reveals worlds about its corporate clients. If you subscribe to Time, you may have noticed a recent offer from Godiva with your name on it — fill out a survey and receive a chocolate-dipped strawberry. And Levi’s custom fits blue jeans according to your measurements.

Read the full article here

December

December 1st – 7th is Cookie Cutter Week

• Hold a contest for new cookie cutter designs or other uses for cookie cutters besides cookies. Draw people into your place of business to pick up entry forms and again for the awarding of prizes. Use imprinted kitchen items as prizes.
• Use cookie cutter week as a backdrop for business-to-business promotions based on the negative connotation of cookie cutter. The idea is that your product or service isn’t “cookie cutter.” Include shapes appropriate to your industry or business or have custom shapes made to be sent in direct mail pieces.

Some other designations for December that you might be interested in are:

• National Drunk and Drugged Driving Prevention Month
• National Safe Toys and Gifts Month
• National Tie Month
• December 1st – 7th: Cookie Cutter Week
• December 1st: World AIDS Day
• December 2nd: Special Education Day
• December 4th: National Dice Day
• December 7th: Pearl Harbor Rememberance Day
• December 5th-12th: Chanukah
• December 10th: Human Rights Day
• December 12th: Poinsettia Day
• December 15th: Cat Herders Day
• December 15th – 29th: Halcyon Days
• December 16th: Barbie and Barney Backlash Day
• December 17th: Wright Brothers Day
• December 21st: December Solstice
• December 21st: National Haiku Poetry Day
• December 22nd: World Peace Day
• December 22nd: First Day of Chanukah
• December 22nd: First Day of Winter
• December 25th: Christmas
• December 26th: Kwanzaa
• December 26th: Boxing Day
• December 28th: No Interruptions Day
• December 31st: New Year’s Eve

November

November 29th is Electronic Greetings Day

• Invite employees and customers to participate in World Kindness Day by doing random acts of kindness. Provide bowls of fortune cookies with suggested acts of kindness inside, or gum imprinted with acts of kindness, etc., for people to choose from.
• Give customers or clients almost any imprinted item as an act of kindness on November 13.

Some other designations for November that you might be interested in are:

• American Diabetes Month
• National Adoption Month
• Lung Cancer Awareness Month
• November 1st: National Family Literacy Day(R)
• November 2nd: Daylight Savings Time ends
• November 2nd: Cookie Monster Day
• November 3rd: Cliché Day
• November 4th: Election Day
• November 4th: Use Your Common Sense Day
• November 6th: National Men Make Dinner Day
• November 11th: Veterans Day
• November 12th – 18th: Children’s Book Week
• November 13th: World Kindness Day
• November 13th – 19th: Children’s Book Week
• November 14th: National American Teddy Bear Day
• November 15th: America Recycles Day
• November 16th: National Adoption Day
• November 17th: Homemade Bread Day
• November 18th: Mickey Mouse’s Birthday
• November 19th: “Have a Bad Day” Day
• November 20th: Name Your PC Day
• November 21st: World Television Day
• November 23rd: You’re Welcomegiving Day
• November 27th: Thanksgiving Day
• November 28th: Black Friday
• November 29th: Electronic Greetings Day
• November 30th: Computer Security Day

Several weeks before the company made the announcement about their menu addition; they sent a teaser mailing to restaurant and marketing trade media. A plain white box contained two plush pandas labeled Tom-Tom and Eddie. An accompanying card read, “Experience Pandamonium at Panda Express,” and urged recipients to check their email for “big, beefy news.”

“What’s more lovable than plush panda bears?” asks Kimberly Porrazzo, VP of client services at a marketing agency, the PR firm promoting the launch. “It was a natural link to the new Beijing Beef menu item and the comprehensive advertising campaign, which included a 12-state television campaign, six-market radio campaign, and an outdoor advertising campaign.”

A follow-up email explained that the chain was “stirring up ‘pandamonium’ with its new dish, Beijing Beef” and gave details about the dish as well as the ad campaign.

“Editors and reporters said they loved the panda bears, as well as the food drop that was enjoyed by select editors,” Porrazzo says. “It certainly broke through the clutter, and we are still monitoring results.”

Dos and Don’ts Got Slogans?

By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant

The right slogan can propel any item from so-so to sensational.

Do:
• Include the client’s company name in the slogan.
• Use literary devices such as alliteration, assonance and poetic rhythm.
• Consider the scope of the client’s operation so that the slogan doesn’t pigeonhole the company in their customer’s eyes.
• Employ humor with care.

Don’t:
• Use words that are hard to pronounce or spell or come across as slick or snobbish unless that’s part of the joke.
• Make unfounded assertions.
• Use sexual innuendo, unless the client clearly asks for it.
• Spin off previously used slogans.

Quiz: Do You Remember?

Which of these companies goes with each slogan?

1. “Leave the driving to us.”
a. Hertz
b. Greyhound
c. Amtrak

2. “The choice of a new generation.”
a. Coke
b. Dr. Pepper
c. Pepsi

3. “Above and beyond.”
a. FedEx
b. Prudential Financial
c. FTD

4. “What the big boys eat.”
a. Wheaties
b. Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli
c. Wonder Bread

5. “Something special in the air.”
a. Chanel No. 5
b. American Airlines
c. Airwick

6. “The right choice.”
a. Sprint
b. Bell
c. AT&T

7. “We’ll leave the light on for you.”
a. Super 8
b. Sheraton
c. Motel 6

8. “Makin’ it great.”
a. Pizza Hut
b. Domino’s
c. Little Caesar’s

This was the official statement released by the company after it sent a bag of squirrel food, the Squirrel Street Journal newspaper and a personalized note from a squirrel to reporters. Next, the recipients received a logoed bag of peanuts and a squirrel, or rather, mousepad.

These promotional products were used to build hype for its “Save a squirrel” campaign which launched in April.

“We’ve already had tremendous interest in the ‘Squirrels’ campaign from the automotive industry as well as consumers,” says Carri Irby, brand manager of Monroe Shocks and Struts, prior to the launch of the campaign. “As our billboards go live in the coming weeks, we expect a tremendous spike in traffic to our Web site, as well as word-of-mouth advertising driven by local broadcast outlets and the thousands of businesses that sell and install Monroe shocks and struts.”

The squirrels have gotten around, as the message is broadcast on billboards throughout the country, on 2,000 radio stations, within Major League Baseball stadiums and via the Web.

Monroe also made sure to add a heavy assortment of promotional products to the mix. Mousepads, note cubes, pens, trash cans and bagged peanuts are available for use by its sales force. “Our promotional programs are tightly integrated into the campaign,” says Irby. The squirrels could not be reached for comment.

For the launch, HealthPartners also used a tie-in promotional product: a urine-specimen cup filled with yellow M&M’s. The cup mailed to the media, along with a press release, and was also used internally at staff meetings as a prize in trivia games.

Gary Young, a representative of Kerker & Associates, says that the overall campaign has been well received, and feedback about the urine cup has been especially amusing. “The response has been almost uniformly lighthearted and positive,” he says. “I’ve fielded comments like ‘You’re right. This is the first specimen cup I’ve ever gotten in the mail.’ ‘Thanks for the yellow M&M’s, but I think I’ll pass.’ ‘Tell me you washed this cup before you re-filled it.’ ”

As for the mascots, they’ve proven so popular that HealthPartners has set up a web store selling Petey P. Cup T-shirts, mugs and notebooks. “There has been plenty of chatter on blogs and in local media, too,” Young adds.