mailpost
Mailpost Business Franchise Opportunities
Mailpost Business Franchise Opportunities
The local family small business movie theatre is a dying breed due to insane growth of larger multi-plex movie theatres with huge budgets and huge theatres in giant malls. But There is no reason to give up the ship so easily, in fact it makes sense to alert all the locals as to your better ability to serve their needs. But how can you do that?
Well perhaps you can develop a robust yet inexpensive marketing and advertising program might do the trick. Let me explain; you see, direct mail and direct-mail marketing coupon packages for movie theaters make a lot of sense.
This is because a movie theater can offer a two-for-one discount or free popcorn and a Coke with the purchase of two tickets. This will bring people into the movie theater to enjoy them selves and if they had a good movie experience they’re bound to come back.
Direct-mail marketing for movie theaters should be sent out once per month within a 15-mile radius of the movie theater to make the most impact and greatest return on investment. If you own a local movie theater perhaps you will consider all this in 2006.
Mailpost Leadership
Mailpost Leadership
All the numbers are in and the stats have been posted. Everyone is well aware that 2009 was a tough year. Those companies who have weathered the storm and are working their way back into more offline marketing may be thinking about doing something fun and unique to spark interest in their products or services but aren’t sure if they can afford it yet.
Ever consider using a dimensional marketing piece but decided against it because you think it’s too expensive?
Here are a few insider secrets from design experts that make dimensional marketing more affordable than you think.
1. Design Options
Every great promotion starts with design. Which dimensional design will convey your message best? Decide on a theme and determine how much room for copy you will need. Then establish your budget. If you don’t see a standard 3D design that fits your budget, don’t be afraid to say so. A paper engineer’s strength is in the engineering and they can design to your budget.
2. Bigger Is Not Always Better
The larger your piece, the more it weighs. If you plan to mail at First Class rates, your mail piece should weigh less than 1 ounce for the best rates. For Standard Mail, keep it under 3.3 ounces. Also bear in mind the thickness of your mailer and let your sales rep know if you’ll be adding any other materials to the envelope. Additional materials can affect weight and rigidity, which could incur a surcharge. To save money on envelopes, choose a design that fits into a standard size envelope.
3. Postage
Plan ahead to save on postage! For $0.44 per piece, First Class mail delivers in 1 – 2 days. However, if you can allow for 1 – 2 week delivery, you can save 30% – 40% on your postage costs. Other savings, such as automation and presort discounts, are also available. Paper engineers design with weight, thickness and flexibility in mind to qualify you for the greatest savings. As design firms create new products, paper engineers work closely with USPS mail piece design specialists to ensure quality delivery and optimum postage rates.
4. Paper Stock
The available selection of paper is overwhelming! Brightness, thickness, texture and coating contribute to the functionality and aesthetics of a three-dimensional piece, but also affect pricing. Design firms should have an extensive library of swatch books and can offer you suggestions for meeting your budget, while achieving the look and feel you desire.
5. Mailing List
Maintaining a clean list of customers and prospects is always the best way to control mailing costs. If you can’t mail to your entire list, choose those customers and prospects that are most likely to respond to your offer. If you are mailing from your own database, select the top tier prospects with the greatest sales potential. If you are purchasing a list, make sure you are selecting the right decision-maker titles within your target industries.
Three-dimensional marketing products don’t have to be expensive and out of reach. When you start looking at the details and fine-tuning your design process, you’ll find there are ways to create a unique, three-dimensional piece that is affordable.
The real savings comes when you see your dimensional piece pull a much greater ROI than a traditional flat piece, but we’ll cover that one another day.
Peter Kritas Mailpost
Peter Kritas Mailpost
Want to boost response in your B-to-B mailings? Need to break into new markets, find a new application for an existing product to a new audience? Need to reach out to hard-to-get-at executives and get their attention? Need to increase your response rate to the tune of 300% while increasing ROI?
The answers might be found with one of your vendors, but it’s not your list broker, your printer, or your data processing shop – it’s at your packaging producer!
The average senior executive receives a minimum of 8,000 messages of various types a day, either through passive billboards and building signage, e-mails, pop-up websites, product packaging on shelves in stores, television, background radio, newspapers and magazines, mail in the in-box, and other sources.
If you want your message to stand out, you had better be prepared to do some homework on your target audience, and give them something they will remember and find actionable.
One of the best ways to show that you really know your target is to send them something they find valuable. Of course, you could send them each a few one hundred dollar bills in an envelope, and if the envelope looked like “unwanted” mail, the only one who would gain would be the clever garbage man who sifted the trash! Even if you send something that is exactly on track, you still have to get it to the recipient and they have to find it intriguing enough to open it. They won’t find the value and all that research is wasted unless they get past the “messenger”.
Studies commissioned by a major mailer carried out by a well-known research firm(us)have revealed that boosting open rates has direct correlation to sales carry-through. You had probably drawn that conclusion yourself through simple instinct and deduction, but the study proves it beyond a doubt. So now, based on that, the challenge becomes more basic – get their attention and make it intriguing enough to be sure it gets opened, and sales will follow. Well, not quite.
The study of 50 top executives at commercial companies of over 1000 employees along the East Coast made clear that while they were obviously going to have a better chance of purchasing something from a solicitation if they opened the package, those odds only increased by an estimated 20%. That boosts your overall response by .05% – not much help.
One of the more powerful drivers was brand – if they had heard of the firm on the envelope, they were more than 65% more likely to open it than if it came from an unknown source. Previous studies had shown that it takes from 5-8 repeated exposures to yield recognition from an unknown audience. It would then follow that if you send your best and most effective piece first, it stands little chance of getting any attention at all. If you warm-up the prospects to build recognition with simple brand-oriented messaging first, your big guns stand a better chance of being effective and well-received. Clearly, a more in-depth approach and a solid plan based on research is needed. One hit wonders need not apply.
The most revealing statistic to come out of the study was one regarding outer wrapper and its relevance to the target. Over 85% of the executives in the study said they would be more likely to open an item if it was especially large, odd-sized, or appeared to have come by a delivery service other than the U.S. Post Office – FedEx, DHL, even UPS fared better than the USPS to convey urgency. Some companies have gone to great expense to reproduce a faux FedEx envelope as a carrier to great initial success, but only for a short period of time, based on the other revealing statistic from the study. More on that later. These would have to be produced on a huge scale to gain any price economy, and the nature of B-to-B marketing trends toward smaller mail quantities, due to tighter targeting, reduced availability of good lists and market intelligence, and lack of manpower to do follow up necessary to close large-scale sales on high-dollar services and goods.
The downfall of this approach is two-fold:
First, the disappointment factor is very high – expectations are raised when the courier envelope appears on their desk, but upon opening it, they discover they have been “duped” by another irrelevant offer – into the trash it goes.
The second factor is lack of replicability. If you have several executives on your list from the same firm, spreading out the title selects to hit a broader spectrum within each firm, at the same address, receipt will likely occur on the same day at the same time, based on the nature of postal delivery and internal distribution schedules at large enterprises. Execs noted that if anyone lower on the org chart than themselves also received one, it was deemed of lesser importance than it appeared, and into the trash it went. A byproduct of this is that fatigue happens very quickly, and response decline is at least as rapid – recipients are now wary of the “faux FedEx” and are more resistant than ever to opening them. In a sense, they are the antibiotic of the direct response world – they work great for a short while, but the organism develops and immunity to it and it is less and less effective over time. Our research shows that these packages fatigue at an incredible rate, and recapture rates for mailing other offers is almost nil.
Clearly, a better plan is needed. Now that we’ve outlined the challenge, we’ll need to address the strategic approach to overcoming it. When using dimensional mail, the lesson is “Live up to the promise of the package”.
Mailpost Peter Kritas
Mailpost Peter Kritas
In common with many people today I conduct an increasing percentage of my business remotely, coming into contact with different groups of people only when the event occurs that has been the object of an email correspondence.
The title of these events is normally “How To Create A Sustained Performance Improvement” and during the introduction I explore some of the problems that are currently blocking performance our performance at work.
Almost invariably the answer to the opening question “What prevents you from performing at work?” is “E-mail”, and the answer is normally sung out as one voice.
The groups all agree on the problem and it is very difficult sometimes to bring them back to the purpose of the current event when they become embroiled in an orgy of horror stories about the way that E-mail is ruining their lives.
One day I took a step back and decided that if this was such an overwhelming concern it deserved the time it would take to examine its nature to see if we could effect a cure.
The first group that I listened to were all from the same department in the same organisation but working in different locations.
Their stated problem was that nobody wanted to be seen to get in the way of an idea so every E-mail that was generated was copied to everyone in the department by everybody else and that every body felt that they had to be seen to be making a contribution so they had to make a comment on every E-mail they received.
Individuals would routinely receive the same E-mail many times and each time felt that they had to comment on the comments that had been made since their last comment.
I asked the group how they would solve the problem and one wag suggested that each individual should be made to pay for every email that they forwarded on the basis that this would focus their minds and get rid of what was unnecessary.
The group could not work out how to make that happen practically but they explored the idea of personal responsibility and realised that in order to achieve the required focus payment wasn’t really necessary, but that accountability was.
They left that day with a plan to place before their IT manager, to log every E-mail that was forwarded internally.
This log was converted into a bar chart and a copy placed on each notice board so that every individual could see exactly the amount that they were personally contributing to the problem, or the solution.
A very simple strategy to solve what I had thought was a universal problem, except that this was only one facet of the nature of the E-mail monster.
I listened to other groups complain in the same way about the affect that emails were having on their ability to work and noticed a different problem and that was SPAM.
When given the space to pursue this E-mail conversation it soon became apparent that there was another phenomenon that affected a different group of users.
They were not being deluged with E-mail forwarded by their colleagues but were having their ability to do any real work compromised by the number of apparently unsolicited emails they received from external sources.
This was a different problem that clearly required a different solution.
While listening to these different conversations it soon became apparent that the longer the conversations were allowed to go unchecked the more they started to resemble conversations overheard in a playground about who had the biggest brother or who had found the most conkers on the way back from school the previous night.
Each story told was preceded by a casual estimate of the number of E-mails the individual received each day that always carefully outbid the previous story teller before embarking on the tale of what a monumental task it was to delete all of these E-mails.
I slowly came to realise that the number of E-mail and the size of the problem was being worn as a badge by the complainant, being used in a backhanded way to complain about how popular/important they were.
Having made this discovery it was easy to go to the next logical step which was to realise that in order to feel more important individuals were actually encouraging their own bombardment by signing up for regular mailings on the premise that they may be useful and then in fact deleting them as soon as they arrived.
In this way individuals were building for themselves a comfortable feeling of their own importance that was reinforced every day by their in-trays which contained hundreds of E-mails that were laboriously deleted every time, but were never unsubscribed.
This is my challenge, and it will hurt.
Count the E-mails in your inbox in the morning.
Count the number that you delete without a thought.
What if instead of the delete button you clicked on unsubscribe?
It will hurt to even think of this because you are ripping away your safety blanket that gives you daily reassurance that people keep sending you emails because you are important or popular,
We can reclaim our day from the E-mail monster that we have created for ourselves by hitting unsubscribe.
It is our choice?
This morning I received fourty four E-mails in my in tray (I have exaggerated the number to make me sound important) and without thinking I deleted thirty nine of them.
Realising what I had done I went to the deleted mails file where I was able to unsubscribe from five of them and put twelve into the junk mail file.
The first one or two “unsubscribes” felt awful because these were people whose mail I would no longer be receiving, I had cut myself off, but as I went on it started to feel so good, the feeling that these E-mail monsters would no longer be in charge of my day.
I got so carried away that I continued through my deleted mail file for another 30 minutes unsubscribing and junking most of what I found.
This was probably one of the most effective half hours of my year.
Mailpost direct marketing
Mailpost direct marketing
Direct mail marketing is a costly strategy to implement, and that’s why it’s very important to get it right the first time around. And because people tend to have very good memories with regard to unsolicited mail, executing your campaign without flaw becomes all the more necessary.
Limit your proposal to a maximum of three pages.
Anything longer could discourage your recipients from even taking a glance at it. Keeping it brief is always good but never to the point that you’ve failed to deliver salient points of your proposal. Of course, costs are also another consideration. The fewer pages you use, the lower your expenses are on printing and postage.
Work on making your letter visually attractive.
Lets start with the first thing they’ll see: the envelope. It doesn’t have to be made of linen, but make sure at least that the envelope textures nice to touch. White envelopes always look professional, but they’re more vulnerable to dirt as well. If you can find an alternative color that would still appear professional and match your company’s color scheme, so much the better.
Offer a free gift.
The smaller and lighter the free gift is, the better because you get to save on postage. Offering freebies is crucial: it’s yet another incentive for people to learn what you have to say. If possible, make sure that the words FREE GIFTS are printed on the envelope. Naturally, it won’t hurt your cause if your free gift just happens to be related or even complementary to the products you’re marketing.
Make an offer they can’t refuse.
Direct mail marketing won’t be successful simply because you’re giving away free gifts and you’ve written an excellent network marketing proposal. More often than not, recipients could simply enjoy your gift and throw away your letter. To avoid that, you need to give them yet another incentive one that will require them to meet you in person.
Your second offer doesn’t need to cost you a thing. You may tell your recipients, for instance, that they have the option of joining your business seminar for free. You can tell them that itís a chance for them to learn how to be a millionaire.
Place a deadline on your offer.
A deadline creates a sense of urgency. It helps convince people to make a move rather than allow them to continue floundering in their indecision. And if you’re worried that deadlines could instead force you to turn your back on your customers, don’t be. Remember: you can extend those deadlines anytime and simply tell them that it’s due to popular demand.
Make sure it’s free from technical errors.
Technical errors have nothing to do with what you’re selling and everything to do with the rest. Consider grammar, punctuation, font effects, and spacing. If you don’t want to entrust your mail to the post office, you should look for a freight company that offers affordable but efficient service.
Have it reviewed.
Don’t send it out just yet. You still have two more steps to take care of. Firstly, find an objective and knowledgeable third party to review your offer. Make sure you let him see even the type of envelope you’re using. Make the necessary changes.
Verify addresses of recipients.
To avoid waste of time and effort, try verifying the addresses of your recipients. If everything’s in order then good luck! You’re all ready now to launch your direct mail marketing campaign!
Mailpost
Mailpost
The E-Mail Identity Theft Scam is running Rampant. These E-Mail Scam artists will go to great lengths to Get Your Bank Account information and Steal your Identity. Learn how to Protect To Yourself Now!
A Typical E-Mail Identity Theft Scam will send you an e-mail requesting that you update your Bank Account Information. Often this request to update your account is made under some false pretence like it is suspended or has been suspected of Fraudulent use.
E-bay has an excellent online Tutorial that teaches how to spot and protect yourself from spoof e-mails, While this Tutorial talks specifically about E-Bay many of the Tell Tale Signs are very Similar and would apply to E-Mail Identity Theft Scams
[http://ewguru.com/spoof-emails]
Here are 8 Surefire ways to spot an E-Mail Identity Theft Scam E-Mail
1 – Wrong E-Mail Address
Any E-mail Sent to an E-mail Address that is Not the E-mail Account you used when you signed up for the account is more then likely a scam.
2 – Fake links.
While many emails have links included, just remember that these links can be forged too. It is always best to type the e-mail address of the bank directly into your browser window ([http://www.yourbank.com])
3 – Requests Personal Information
Any E-mail that requests you enter personal information like User ID, password or bank account number either by clicking on a link in the E-mail or completing a form within the e-mail are a strong indication the e-mail is a SCAM
4 – Urgent Subject Lines
Subject likes * * * Please Verify & Update Your Account * * *
5 – Generic greetings.
Lot’s of emails begin with a Greeting, such as: “Dear Account Holder instead of the Name you used when you registered for your account are more then likely scams. Your bank Knows your Name.
6 – Scare to Action
Many Fake emails try to trick you with the threat that your account is in jeopardy if you don’t sign in and fix it NOW!
7 – HTML Website Fakes
Emails that appear to be websites. Some emails will look like a website in order to get you to enter personal information. Banks never asks for personal information in an e-mail.
8. Misspellings and bad grammar
Fake emails may contain misspellings, incorrect grammar, missing words. Many Times these are used to trick the E-mail Filters
A quick review
If you receive an E-mail with a Link requesting you to click on the link and sign in to your Bank account, Don’t Do It!
If you receive an E-mail that looks like your Banks Sign in Form, Don’t Sign in!
If you are unsure if the e-mail is Real or fake call your bank and ask.
Mailpost Organisation
Mailpost Organisation
A BIG MAIL SHOULD CONTAIN:
At least three to four Mail order Magazines Circulars containing offers or interest to new mail order dealers. Circulars which the Big Mail Dealer has been to mail.
Do you enjoy reading Mail Dealer magazines? Do you enjoy ordering and receiving “Big Mail?” Do you enjoy working with new Mail Order dealers and opportunity seekers? If your answer is “YES” to all of these questions, then it would probably be profitable and pleasurable for you to start a “Big Mail” service.
In the pages to follow I will show you how to set up a Big Mail Service. I’ll show you how to advertise your service and I’ll also show you how to use the Big Mails that you receive in your mail to your own advantage. I’ll show you how to use commission circulars (how to get a lot of them free!) and I’ll also show you how to keep track of them.
We’ll talk about co-publishing and we’ll discuss circular mailing (you’ll learn how to get people to pay you cash to mail their circulars for them!).I’ll show a simple trick that will get you a lot of free advertising and I’ll show you where to get a free mailing list that will create a lot of new customers for you, if you are willing to put in a little work to get them.
But…before we get into this…I would like to give you a word of caution. Big Mail selling looks easy and it sounds easy IT IS NOT! Selling Big Mails is a lot of work,HARD WORK. And it is NOT a way to get rich quick.
You will probably not make any money at all for a least a few months. In fact, you will have to invest more than you take in. If you are willing to invest a little of your money, and a lot of your time, then you will gain invaluable experience selling Big Mails, and then you will make money. You will gain experience that you could gain nowhere else in the whole world. And if you are alert, creative, and AMBITIOUS, you can eventually turn your mail order business into a very lucrative enterprise.
If you are still interested…and I hope you are..read on!
The first thing you should od is to sit down with the latest issue of MAIL SALE ADVERTISER or POPULAR ADVERTISER and order a least twelve Big Mails. After that, get into the habit of ordering a least one Big Mail EVERYDAY!
Then devote a portion of EACH DAY to STUDYING them. And I do mean STUDY!
Feed your mind and your imagination with all kinds of ideas. The Mail Order Business is a very creative and imaginative one. The more you feed feed you imagination, the more it will do for you!
Set up a personal notebook. I would suggest you divide into four sections:
* Commission Circulars Sources
* Sources of low-cost printing
* Prospective Mailing Customers (Save the circulars that other dealers have been paid to mail. I’ll show you why later on .)
* Good ideas.
You can set your personal notebook up any way you like, but I use a loose-leaf notebook and scotch-tape the ads, circulars etc.
Read and re-read every circular and mail order magazine that you can get you hands on. SAVE ANY IDEA THAT APPEALS TO YOU! Start ordering SMALL supplies of “commission circulars” that APPEAL to you. (never try to sell anything merely because it pays BIG commission.)
When you are satisfied that you really want to start selling Big Mails, there are two very practical things you must do.
1. Order a name and address rubber stamp. Be sure it is SMALL enough to use on commission circulars.
2. Open a PERSONAL CHECKING ACCOUNT. Open it in YOUR OWN NAME. When you start to advertise, use your own name. If you do that, there will be no problem when you go to the bank to deposit checks that your customers will send you.
Your next step is to place an ad in a least SIX mail order magazines or ad sheets. In the beginning you will have to use publications that will accept handwritten copy, since you do not yet have “camera ready” ads. Your ad should read something like this:
BIG MAIL-25 cents Commission circulars mailed FREE! (your name and address)
A simple ad like this will pull better than one with a lot of words in it.
You probably already know which magazines and ad sheets you want to advertise in. That is fine! But I would suggest you start off by advertising in at least one or two of the following:
Mail Sale Advertiser
Popular Advertiser
Mail Order Bulletin
Timely Tips
All of these are letter press publications, which means they will set your ad up for you. They appear regularly EVERY MONTH ON TIME, and almost everyone interested in mail order reads them!
Because these publications are CO-PUBLISHABLE, the publishers of each publication will send you 50-100 copies to include in your Big Mails. Your name will appear on your copies as the CO-PUBLISHER. You will get to keep around 50% as your commission on any ads or subscriptions you sell. If you are faithful mailing your copies, you can often make enough profit on ads and subscriptions to pay for all your ads. This way your ads actually cost you nothing.
Each advertiser is also mailing his copies to his customers or mailing list, and every last copy mailed has YOUR ad in it… The printer is also mailing a copy to every person on his subscription list…so, usually within about ten days after your address appears in print, you will start receiving letters with quarters in them asking for Big Mail. Some advertisers, for one reason or another are quite slow in mailing their copies, but this can work to your advantage. You will often get orders two or three months after your ad appears!
COMMISSION CIRCULARS
Long before you start receiving orders for your Big Mail, you should have acquired a starting supply of “commission circulars.” You will want to include them in every one of your Big Mails.
Commission circulars are usually 3×6″ or 81/2×11″ circulars offering such things as: Rubber Stamps Name-address Labels Folios Magazine Samples Mailing Lists Envelopes Printed Stationary Business Directories Catalogue Samples Drop-ship Samples Printed Circulars Formulas Books Mail Order Plans Magazine Subscriptions Name Listing Services Pen Pal Clubs, etc, etc.
Wholesale firms supply commission circulars to mail order dealers, usually at cost. The dealer stamps his name in the blank space under “Order Form” and mails them to prospective customers. When he receives orders (and he will if he mails them regularly), he keeps his commission, which is usually about 50%. He then sends the balance, along with his shipping label, to the wholesaler, who drop-ships the order directly to the customer under the dealer’s shipping label.
Commission circulars can be profitable for you, as a Big Mail Dealer, if you are very careful to select only those circulars which appear to MAIL ORDER BEGINNERS. You will soon learn that gift items and general merchandise rarely appeal to people who are ordering Big Mails, unless you are offering them on wholesale basis. (Safari boots, transistor radios, hunting knives, automatic can-openers, $15.95 necklaces are nice, and they can be sold by mail…but not to mail order beginners!)
If you work at it, you can make a lot of extra money by including good commission circulars in your mails. Test a few hundred copies of each commission circular. If it evokes no interest, discontinue it. But if it produces and order or two,then include one in every piece of mail you send. When you have found a circular that “pulls,”try to have them printed with your name and address on them. (printed circulars will often pull FIVE times better than stamped ones.)
Don’t mail poorly printed circulars. They tend to make your entire mailing look sloppy> You will also find that 6×9″ and 8 1/2×11″ circulars pull better than 3×6″, although some 3×6’s pull surprisingly well.
Once your ad appears ( starting COMMISSION CIRCULARS MAILED FREE) you will start receiving commission circulars. Test every circular that is given to you. Push the winners, discontinue the duds. You will eventually develop a list of real money makers to include in your Big Mails.
Most of the suppliers of commission circulars are honest people. They offer items of real worth. But occasionally you will find circulars that you should not mail. They will get you in TROUBLE! * Adult Offers (pornography). Even if you do not object to this, some of the customers will…and some of your customers may be minors.
* “Stuff and Address Envelopes at Home..Send a $1.00 for your Starting Kit,” These offers are illegal. People have been convicted in court for selling them. Beside, the plans are worthless.
* Chain letters–These are also illegal. Beware of any circular that says you will receive $20,000 in sixty days if you will mail a dollar and “follow the instructions, etc.”
There is one more thing I would caution you about. There are about 40-50 standard folios that have been around the Mail Order Business for the last twenty years. They are EXCELLENT folios, well written, well printed, and the advice in them is absolutely valid. But it is a waste of time trying to sell them to mail order beginners. Most of them already know where to get them at wholesale prices! If you receive FREE commission circulars offering these folios, by all means, mail them. You may get an order or two. But if you are going to buy expensive circulars, be sure you are offering something NEW something which EVERY mail order dealer has not already seen at least one hundred times!
FACTS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS!
As a Big Mail Dealer, you will be selling many things. So that you can fill each order accurately and promptly, I suggest that you start another looseleaf notebook Divide it into three sections:
1 Commission Circular Information
2 Co-Publishing Information
3 Advertising Schedule
1. Commission Circular Information—Every time you receive a new supply of commission circulars, sit down and examine them. (Sometimes you will receive two or three varieties in one envelope.) Tape one sample of each circular in your notebook. Underneath it write:
* Name and Address of the Drop-shipper
* Amount to forward to the Drop-shipper
* How to obtain additional circulars. (Are they available with
your name and address imprinted on them?)
2. Co-publishing Information–Most publishers of mail order magazines will send a “Fact Sheet.” If they do, simply scotch-tape the sheet in your notebook. If not, record these facts yourself:
*Name and Address of Printer *How much to forward on new advertising, subscriptions, etc
3. Advertising Schedule–To keep your ads running CONTINUOUSLY, you will have to keep track of “closing dates” (the last date on which a publisher will accept advertising for his next issue.) Here is a very simple method to use:
Take a page of common notebook paper. At the top of the page, write the name of the month. Then number down the page from 1 to 31. (Use one line for each day of the month.)
The closing date for Mail Sale Advertiser is the 15th of the month, but you will want to mail your ad on the 5th of the month (always mail your ads in TEN DAYS EARLY.) So next to the number 5, write down the code letters “MSA.” If you check this sheet religiously every day, you will never forget a closing date.
Before you mail your ad, turn to the page for the following month and make a notation of that month’s closing date. If you will use this system ( or your own variation), you will remember every deadline, whether you are advertising in five magazines of five hundred!
CIRCULAR MAILING
Once your Big Mail ads are appearing regularly, you will start to receive orders for them regularly. As soon as you are averaging five a day, you can advertise yourself as a CIRCULAR MAILER. It’s easy to get started. Each time you renew your Big Mail Ad, send in another ad like this. (As co-publisher, your ads cost half the advertised price!)
100 250 500
3×6 .50 1.25 2.25
6×9 .60 2.50 2.50
9×12 1.00 2.00 4.00
These prices are given only as examples. The postal rates and other costs change and you should check the ads currently running Circular Mailers and charge about the same rates. Cut-rate prices will NOT get you more orders.
A circular mailing ad will almost ALWAYS pay for itself immediately. ( Incidentally, many dealers have tried to run a combination Big Mail and Circular Mailing ads. They do work half as well as TWO SEPARATE ADS!)
As soon as you receive a circular mailing order, send your customers a sample mailing. Be sure it is neat and be sure it includes the LATEST issues of several mail order magazines.
Then include ONE of his circulars in every Big Mail until you have finished mailing them. If you have not received any more circulars to mail, send him a friendly thank you not and let him know that you have finished mailing his circulars. Tell him you hope he receives some orders from your mailing. Include some new circulars from new advertisers and a NEW magazine. If he has any more circulars to mail, he will likely send them to YOU!
Remember, circular mailing depends on REPEAT customers. Never exaggerate mailing capacity ( either in personal letters or ads.) If you really try to get orders for your customers, they will be back for more!
HOW TO GET FREE ADS
There are many editors of mail order magazines and ad sheets who will print your ads free if you will mail 100 to 200 copies of their publication. Here is a very effective way to get them to run YOUR ads:
Take a sheet of white typing paper. Type the following words on it.
PRINTERS PUBLISHERS: If you will print any of these ads in your publication, I will mail 100 copies for you FREE! (With co-publishing rights, I’ll mail 200 copies!) Note that all of these ads are camera ready for your convenience.
Then use a rubber-cement to paste copies of ALL YOUR DIFFERENT ADS on the sheet! (If your ads have been printed on colored paper, bleach them before you paste them up. Pour a little clorox over them, until the color disappears. Rinse them in water, and dry them on a piece of flat cardboard.)
Once your circular is pasted up (camera-ready), take it to your local instant photo offset printer and have 500 or 1000 copies printed on WHITE paper. (Be sure its on white paper.) Enclose one of these circulars in every mailing. You’ll be amazed at the results!
WHERE TO GET GOOD MAILING LISTS FREE
If you advertise regularly, you will get a lot of response to your ads. But if you will do a little specialized direct mailing, you can double your business almost immediately. Here’s how:
Imagine that you have just received your mailing copies of TIMELY TIPS from the printer. If you look at your self, you discover that you still have 14 of lasts month’s issue left to mail. Sit down and make up 14 SPECIALIZED mailings. In each mailing, enclosed:
1. One copy of last month’s TIMELY TIPS
2. One copy of each circular you have been paid to mail.
3. One copy of your new FREE MAILING FOR FREE ADVERTISING
circular.
To whom do you mail them? COMPILE YOUR MAILING LIST FROM THOSE BIG MAILS YOU HAVE BEEN ORDERING EVERY DAY! Mail them too:
* CIRCULAR MAILING PROSPECTS–Each time you receive Big Mail, examine all the circulars. Who has paid the dealer to mail circulars for them? If they have paid him, THEY WILL ALSO PAY YOU…if you will take the time to send them a sample mailing!
* NEW AD-SHEETS AND MAIL ORDER MAGAZINES–Whenever you see the announcement of a new publication, send a sample mailing and be sure to enclose your Free Mailing for Free Advertising circular. You’ll get many, many free ads, if you work at it.
* NEW MAIL ORDER ADVERTISERS–Save the names of new advertisers in the mail order magazines or ad-sheets. You’ll be amazed at how responsive they will be to your mailings!
Every time you receive new mailing copies, mail out the remaining copies of last month’s issues to the categories listed above and your mail order business will grow faster than you ever dreamed it could. You’ll be surprised at the new business you will be able to generate using this method.
Mailpost opportunities
Mailpost opportunities
The delivery of e-mails is the most critical portion of sending out e-mail newsletters, opt-ins or even bulk e-mails. An e-mail marketing initiative would be greatly enhanced if an online business has an efficient e-mail delivery service provider. E-mail delivery service providers should be bent on providing its clients with fast and dependable e-mail delivery.
There can be many disadvantages if online businesses decide on managing their own e-mail delivery. Problems such as the system hanging or crashing during the send out of multiple e-mails; receiving hundreds of bounce e-mails; or your site being taken offline because of sending out multiple e-mail messages could easily arise. To save yourself from these dilemmas, it is high time that your online business resort to e-mail delivery service providers.
The delivery of e-mails can be made more efficient if the providers are devoted to maintaining links with e-mail providers and ISPs. They should also be good at enforcing rules and procedures in keeping spam e-mails at bay (and out of your e-mail delivery network for good). One of their major concerns should also be keeping up with the technology of e-mail authentication to make sure that e-mails are delivered and accepted. Of course, e-mail delivery should also be highly dependable and high-performing.
Most e-mail delivery service providers have their own technologies of e-mail delivery engines. These often provide simultaneous parallel email delivery, variable allocation of resources, and retry capabilities (in multiple levels). E-mail delivery service is then assured even if the online company is sending out just a dozen messages per day or millions (there is no difference).
The most effective type of e-mail marketing is by sending out newsletters. Newsletter marketing is suited to most of its recipients: doctors receive medical newsletters; educators are delivered with newsletters on literature or science (or whatever fits their expertise); mothers are sent out parenting newsletters. It’s all about giving the readers what they need.
When it comes to sending out newsletters, there are e-mail delivery service providers who can make their professional services available by doing newsletter delivery management. Most of them have programs that target all kinds and sizes of newsletters and also additional features such as intuitive interface and integration elements. The providers do the services for you, most of them do not require you to install any hardware or software on your system, neither is there a need to configure networks.
There can be many features that are added to the basic e-mail delivery service. Such services as automatic birthday or anniversary e-mails to customers; standard automated e-mails (which contain web pages); or e-mails being sent out once the recipient clicks on a certain web page are not uncommon. In addition to the regular e-mail delivery, these service providers can also manage e-mail campaigns for online businesses.
E-mail campaign management can do the following: automation of e-mail campaign tests (this optimizes the response on the campaign); automation of the e-mail campaign itself (with website retrieval for automated responses); most can provide tracking of responses, analysis and reports. The great thing about hiring an e-mail delivery service provider is that they can send out targeted e-mails (most of which are based on behaviors such as opens, clicks and even conversations). Custom integration can also be made available.
It is time to consider getting services for e-mail delivery when there is a great need to reach hundreds or thousands of e-mail recipients. This would greatly increase the probability of closing many deals each day and, thus, making you more money. E-mail delivery services are equipped with the capacity to scale up to millions of messages (newsletters, bulk e-mails or opt-ins) every hour. Some providers can also manage numerous data centers along with several distributed e-mail servers. They could also provide multi-user management to be able to host customer lists.
Looking at all these aspects, e-mail marketing is no longer such a basic task anymore, is it? If you would want to reach out to millions of clients with just one click, it is now possible so make use of that power. Invest on e-mail delivery services and you are in for a few, major surprises.
Mailpost Franchise
Mailpost Franchise
Companies and organizations have spent many billions on e-mail and other Internet message delivery mechanisms over the past decade, often at the expense of more traditional marketing methods, like direct mail. But in some respects e-mail has failed to live up to its initial promise. And marketers who are turning back to tried-and-true methods like “snail mail” report excellent results, often better than e-mail.
According to a 2005 Direct Marketing Association (DMA) comprehensive study of marketing tools, e-mail produces the best return on investment and is the cheapest and fastest direct marketing tool. But only a fraction of the average company’s prospective customers opt in to most rentable lists. And it can be against federal law to send commercial e-mails to people who have asked not to receive them. It’s spam. If companies play by the new rules, they cannot get their marketing messages to the vast majority of their prospective customers using e-mail.
So marketers are going “back to the future” by reinvigorating their marketing campaigns with renewed investments in printed and mailed materials to complement or substitute for e-marketing methods.
Why Direct Mail Works
In a recent article in B2B Marketing Newsletter, a publication of the Business Marketing Association, consultant Eric Gagnon described direct mail as the “workhorse” of every business-to-business marketing program. “While the buzz these days is all about Internet-based marketing–Google AdWords and e-mail marketing programs–direct mail is still the mainstay of most business-to-business marketing and lead-generation programs: where there’s a readily-identifiable mailing list of plausible prospects, and a mailing piece to send to them, there’s a profitable marketing project waiting to happen.”
Direct mail is effective at focusing marketing strategies on vertical markets that can be reached by renting targeted mailing lists. Says Gagnon, “The most important element of any direct mail project is the mailing list.”
Increasingly, marketers are finding that postal-mailed printed materials are better for prospecting new business because marketers can have access to entire lists, such as subscribers to a trade magazine or members of an association. Rarely more than a fraction of publication subscribers or association members opt in to a permission-based e-mail list. And the more “selects” required, such as job function, industry or number of employees, to carve out the best segment of the list to reach a particular target, the fewer names remain. Marketers who want to reach almost everyone who can be a customer must use direct mail in their multimedia mix.
For instance, only 31% of the subscribers to InformationWeek magazine agreed to receive e-mail, only 55% of Chain Store Age, and 65% of Sales & Marketing Management Magazine. To reach all of the subscribers of these influential industry publications, you must rent these lists and send them a direct-mail piece.
E-mail’s second major limitation as a cold-call leads-generator is deliverability. Spam filters, frequently changed e-mail addresses, multiple e-mail addresses for the same person, list churning and unreliability in e-mail dissemination mean that a substantial minority of e-mails that are sent don’t get delivered.
In an environment where success or failure is measured in tenths of a percentage point, every e-mail message that fails to get through to its intended recipient is a lost opportunity. Industry estimates indicate that the proliferation of spam filters has created a virtual spam filter minefield, which traps as much as 14-25% of e-mail messages broadcast for legitimate marketing purposes. And marketers rarely know who didn’t get their message.
Messages trapped by spam filters are shown as delivered on e-mail transmission reports. That is, recipient e-mail servers do not reply back to the senders to notify them that the message was trapped by the spam filter. There are tactics that can be used to substantially increase the likelihood that the e-mail will avoid spam filters, but there is no guarantee.
Not every printed piece gets to a prospective customer either. Many direct marketing professionals acknowledge that direct mail can’t reach everyone on a list. But there is no such thing as a spam filter in the direct-mail universe and at least there are postal mechanisms for reporting which pieces cannot be delivered.
Ninety percent is the standard guaranteed delivery rate of a direct-mail list, but e-mail delivery rates are usually high, too, and you only pay for the quantity delivered. The problem is that you don’t know how many are trapped by spam filters.
Rich Carango, vice president of marketing agency Schubert Communications in Downington, PA, was quoted recently by DM News as saying flatly, “There is a souring about the feeling of how well e-mailing is working, mostly because of spam filters.” His agency also guides their clients more toward direct-mail tools like newsletters and postcards.
Direct mail “is kicking butt,” Laurie Beasley, president of Beasley Direct, recently told a Silicon Valley audience of mostly technology marketers. She strongly recommended its use along with effective e-marketing methods, which she says can be made more deliverable employing certain techniques her company uses.
Reports B-to-B magazine in its July 10 issue, “In a bright spot for traditional media, (forecaster Robert) Coen said, despite the postal rate increase in January, direct-mail advertising in the first quarter grew 3.5% over the year-earlier period to 20.6 billion pieces.” He said marketers’ renewed interest in gaining better ROI is driving them to use direct-response marketing methods.
Many young people who grew up on the Internet enjoy communicating by e-mail or instant messaging and have never learned the mechanics–and benefits–of direct mail. They have little experience with the complexities of list acquisition, distribution, printing and the strategies and tactics of direct-mail creative. This generational predisposition toward e-marketing tools often means that companies are not taking advantage of all the direct-marketing methods that are available to them. But the trend is changing.
The DMA, representing mail, phone and online direct marketers, in its 2005 response rate study demonstrated a noticeable growth in corporate use of direct mail, after some years of decline. In its review of 21 industries, from computers to agriculture, the DMA documented direct mail edging out e-mail response rates by 2.77% to 2.48%.
E-mail outperformed direct mail in the study as a lead generator 3.15% to 2.15%, but, again, the results are considerably diluted by the fact that only a comparatively small proportion of potential customers on lists agree to receive e-mail. A fairly higher percentage of those became leads, but the statistical majority of prospective customers have chosen not to get unsolicited e-mails.
In some important respects, direct mail bested e-mail in the DMA test. Direct- mail response rates were even higher than e-mail in the online-oriented computer and electronic products industries (3.14% over 3.02%). Direct mail out-performed e-mail in other areas, such as revenue per contact ($0.85 over $0.18), traffic generated (5.84% over 1.54%), fundraising (5.08% over 0.66%) and direct order (2.20% over 2.07%).
A June 2006 article in DM News entitled, “Mail Withstands BTB’s Online Shift” quotes mega-direct marketer Harte-Hanks SVP Matthew Rosenblatt as saying that in spite of the money gushing into Internet promotional vehicles, “mail remains very powerful, particularly when used in conjunction with online strategies.”
DM News notes, “Mail also is a better driver than e-mail when C-level executives are the target audience. At this level the best types of communication are either dimensional pieces or very simple personal letters.” Some direct marketers have observed that younger workers have a greater tendency than senior executives to opt in to e-mail lists.
Steve Middleton, EVP of Strategic Planning for international marketing services agency Publicis Dialog says “E-mail is still an extremely effective mechanism for campaigns sent to our customers’ internal databases. When it comes to using external lists, however, the response rates have dropped precipitously over the last five years and yet the price for the lists has remained constant. The result is that the cost per lead for e-mail has been driven up significantly. With many of our large, blue chip accounts who used to use e-mail as their primary lead generation vehicle, we are now seeing response rates and cost-per-lead ratios from direct mail that far surpass the results from e-mail.”
Marketers can draw from a wide variety of direct-mail vehicles to suit specific campaign objectives: letters, packages, promotional items, postcards, brochures and publications like newsletters.
Some companies have used newsletters as very effective lead-generation, cross-selling and relationship-growing tools, empowered by comprehensive databases compiled by list brokers. Newsletters are often the most effective type of direct mail because they are less likely to be discarded in corporate mailrooms than brochures. They reach targets’ desks–the first threshold a direct-marketing campaign.
Secondly, newsletters are often better read than brochures because they are perceived as more informational and less promotional, contain success stories of customers who use a company’s services and products, use compelling artwork and graphics, feature product information and useful industry news, drive prospects to web sites and can help gather marketing research. They can even have persuasive PR value when you send them to reporters, editors and producers who use them for article ideas.
Direct mail: Using graphics to market
A picture is not only worth a thousand words in marketing. It’s also worth a heck of a lot of money in increased response rates, say graphics communicators.
One frustrating thing about e-mail communications is a marketer’s inability to use many images to present information, particularly complicated information. E-mail limits the use of complex graphics, since long download times can be annoying to prospects and some graphics never reach targets at all.
Furthermore, it is difficult to get the kind of reaction from an e-mail subject line that you can get from an emotionally evocative image on a brochure or publication cover that works with compelling copy. With direct-mail pieces, you can get more of your message into the hands of your target audience. The challenge with an e-mail subject line is that you’ve only got a few short words, coupled with the “from” line, in order to influence the maximum two-second read or delete decision. At least with a hardcopy mailing piece, your piece gets into the recipients hands and has more “real estate” to persuade them to open it rather than throw it away.
Limitations on the use graphics in marketing deprive a communicator from using essential aspects of the marketing spectrum. In addition, it is challenging for marketers to completely control the final look of e-mail communications. Unless they are very carefully coded to ensure the proper use of HTML escape sequences, the actual image may vary when viewed from different browsers. For example, a question mark may appear instead of an apostrophe and graphic images will vary when viewed on different monitors or output on inexpensive desktop printers.
In contrast, printed direct-mail communications give marketers total control over the look and feel of the final piece–from the photo quality to the paper stock. The power of visuals is strong in our fast-paced society. Generations raised on television are influenced by visuals and are less inclined to read text-heavy communications. Striking visuals entice prospects to read and respond to printed direct-mail pieces. They also better explain complex subjects.
The DMA study also revealed very high performance rates from “dimensional” direct mail, defined as mailings shaped other than the standard envelop stuffed with letters and materials. In fact, dimensional direct mail pulled dramatically better than standard commercial marketing mail.
Dimensional mail can take the form of imaginative objects sent to creatively illustrate a marketing campaign, like a football or an orchestral conductor’s baton sent to an executive with a message tie-in. Average response rates on dimensional mail over letter mail was 3.67% compared to 2.77%. Dimensional direct mail produced lead generation results of 5.4% compared to 2.15% for traditional direct mail.
Mailpost
Mailpost
The Test of Precedence
How do we react when another is selected for the assignment we expected or for the office or business we coveted? When another is promoted and we are overlooked? When another outshines us in gifts and accomplishments?
The Test of Sincerity
In our moments of honest self-criticism we will say many things about ourselves and really mean them. But how do we feel when others, especially our rivals, say exactly the same things about us?
The Test of Criticism
If you lost your position in an organisation or censured for your work, does that arouse hostility and resentment in our hearts and cause us to fly to immediate self-justification? Or do we simply go to a place of acceptance and understanding and move off to a place of wisdom? Do we hasten to criticise the critic?
