A Simple Call Can Explode Your Direct Mail Results And Help Your Small Business Marketing

Direct Mail is a great marketing tool for any small business marketing plan. It's the staple for many businesses world wide and has been for years. But, many small businesses don't have the budget for large mailings on a regular basis. One simple way to increase the return on investment on any direct mail campaign that you do, can be to simply pick up the phone and follow up.

Most small businesses just send out one letter, postcard or mailer to a list of prospects and never do anything else. And most don't get the results that they expect from that mailing. The key is follow up.

Here's a great step by step process that will increase the chances of any direct mail marketing piece to be much more successful and explode your sales.

First send your prospects a sales letter designed to look like it was personally mailed to them. Be sure to include their name in the letter with Mail Merge and personalize the letter a bit to sound more personal. You should set up a campaign of 3 letters to be sent out once every 3 weeks.

Be sure to reference the previous letters in the second and third letters.

Now, here's the kicker.

After the third letter, call the prospect. Yes! Actually pick up the phone and call them.

We all hate making cold calls in any sales position but this isn't really a cold call. You've already made a connection with them. When you call then, you're not trying to make a connection. You're actually following up to make sure that they received your letters. That's the purpose of your call. You'll start off by asking if they received your letters.

If they did, did they have any questions?
Who are they currently using for the services you provide?
Why do they use that company?
Would they be willing to sit down and talk with you about your product and how you can improve their business with your product?

Now you can get your foot in the door for a meeting and get in front of them.

Just because someone didn't call you from your direct mail piece, doesn't mean that they weren't interested. We all get busy and if they are a business owner you know they are even more busy. This might be the perfect opportunity to get to the top of their mind. They might have planned on calling you already and just had not had a chance to stop and do it.

I've personally used this several times and ended up with twice as many leads because of the phone calls than I did than by people actually contacting me after our own direct mail campaigns. That's a 50% increase from the mailers by themselves.

If they haven't received your direct mail pieces, here's your opportunity to update their contact information and still ask for the appointment. You could send them to your website and walk them through the benefits and advantages of your products or services and still end up with the sale.

So for small businesses direct mail is a great tool to add to your marketing mix but a simple 5 minute phone call following up to any mailing campaign you do can really explode your results and get that new client in the door that will pay for the entire campaign.