 Do What You
Do Best!Companies from the smallest on up can benefit from the services and active involvement of a professional direct mail company such as ours - and with good reason. First, there's the matter of practical efficiency. A professional direct mail company works with the mail every day - in a big way. If you try to organize your office staff to mail out even a few thousand pieces, it takes you away from your regular day-to-day business. Even if you are familiar with the intricacies and mechanics of bulk mail preparation, the big question is, "While you suddenly find yourself in the direct mail business, who's watching the store?" If you lose a single sale while you are preoccupied with tabs, trays, carrier route presorts, discounts, postal forms, or whatever - it can cost a whole lot more than you can ever save by handling your own mailing. With a professional direct mail company on the job, however, you and your staff are off the hook and back to the business at hand. Next, there's the matter of money. Often, even at relatively small mailing quantities, a professional direct mail company more than pays for itself. Considering our knowledge of the postal system, its rules and regulations, ad given our vast experience with printing efficiencies, invariably we are able to help you lower your mailing costs. A professional direct mail company like ours gets the job done quickly and accurately. There's no distraction to your staff or negative impact to your pocket book. Plus, with the money you save, you are able to expand your mailing program to include an even greater number of prospects. Now do what you do best. Call (603) 893-1523 for all the direct mail support you'll ever need. Discover Pleasant Surprises Discovery is fun, especially when it leads to something good, valuable, profitable - or all three. Discovery isn't a random activity. Nor does it depend upon serendipity. You can set out to make a discovery - such as discovering new business. Here's how you do that. When you mail every month and study purchasing trends you may learn that certain times of the year - times you thought were "sleepers" - are actually very active selling periods. For instance, you know that Christmas is a strong season. So is graduation time. But without actively seeking a discovery, you might never know that "back to school" is a spectacular and profitable season in and of itself - with accelerated sales and inquiries. Without actually investing in the mailing, you might never have predicted the importance and value of this newly uncovered selling season. Yet by being consistent in your mailings, you'll discover a whole new profitable season. The best part is that while you are in the process of discovering this new market, sales go up! That's another inherent benefit from monthly mailing, since frequency and consistency are both powerful direct mail allies. "It sounds like a great plan," you say, "but where does all the money come from to support this discovery?" Not to fear! Your mailing and marketing budget won't disappear as a result of your discovery activities. That's because you don't need to mail monthly to your entire universe of customers and prospects in order to make your discovery. Often you gain what you need to know by mailing to a modest portion of your list and then evaluating and projecting the results. From a practical standpoint, mailing monthly to make your discovery happen isn't as complicated as it appears. From design through final evaluation, we can help orchestrate the entire program for you. Ideas That Move People Copywriting is people moving - that is, moving people to take action. The more you visualize your prospects as individuals and address those specific human concerns that motivate them, the greater your chances of getting them to take action, to call, or to buy. So, what moves people? People can't resist an irresistible bargain. They want to work less, yet make more money. They seek unbounded pleasure and satisfaction. More often than not, greed motivates them. In our society, people thrive on exclusivity - from the clothes they wear and the neighborhoods they live in to the clubs they join. People seek salvation. This doesn't have to be a religious thing. They want to be saved from too many commitments, and too much financial responsibility. People seek to improve themselves. They want to save time. Given a choice, they'll take a quick fix anytime over something that needs patience and nurtutring. They seek security and safety. They want to e completely independent and yet feel that they're just like everyone else. People want a sense of belonging. They desire more confidence and prestige. People seek power, stature, fame, the admiration and flattery of others, and insider information. They are often envious, revengeful, and proud. And when you can identify why they're feeling guilty, you have the secret to their motivation. People need to satisfy physical hungers or thirsts. They seek better health and well being, and, of course, they want to live longer. People seek to avoid danger, trouble, taxes, and poverty. An official notification can scare the pants off them. They fear. Many times they fear the future - a fear of fear. They want to be protected. Love motivates, so do grief, sorrow, pity, and affection. Finally, people respond to patriotism, conversation, children, pets and fun. The key is, you don't need to put each and every nugget of human nature in every piece of copy you write. But you do want to think carefully about what it is you're selling, to whom, and how best to get their attention and motivate them to take action. Downsize Your Mail! We dare you to try this one: Put a billboard in the mail! Why, you ask, would anyone want to? Because billboards are rapid, efficient forms off communication - simple messages that make a point no matter how fast they seem to go speeding by. Of course the post office may look at a billboard and say, "No way. It's not a standard size for mailing." Well, if you can't get the post office to take a full size billboard, you can certainly send a slightly smaller one. Downsize it a bit, call it a "postcard," and you've achieved your goal. Putting a billboard in the mail, you communicate the big picture in a very intelligent way. You don't need much more than a postcard to say: "Save an extra 20 percent," or, "Storewide clearance," or, "That model 54 that is so hard to come by. Well, we've got plenty." This little 4¼-by-6 inch billboard just told your entire story - efficiently and at an incredibly low cost. By the way, you can mail your postcards first class presort for about the same as bulk mail. When you do, you'll automatically audit your list. That's because first class postcards that don't find their destination come back to you for updating. Little Changes Make Major Impacts! When you are watching your budget, yet realize how important it is to keep your direct mail materials looking fresh, here's one way to appear to change a great deal while you are actually changing very little. This is, of course, in the area of design, layout, color, and graphics. When you change your design, layout and color, your customer or prospect sees a whole "new" you. In most cases, this new you doesn't cost much more. A simple change in color helps our Bullseye newsletter alert our readers that a new issue with fresh ideas and new information has arrived to help them do a more effective job in their mailing program. Does blue in our masthead cost more than orange? Of course not. The same holds true for design. Thanks to desktop publishing, it doesn't take much to change or "freshen" the look. Move this here and that there. Insert a new photo. Change the cartoon. Add a rule down the side. You look refreshed! Printing doesn't cost more because you use a new eye-catching red. Now we're not necessarily advocating change just for the sake of change. There are times when you've got a good thing going and you don't want to change. If you're following all of the other rules, however - increasing the number of people you mail to, freshening the offer, and so on - you'll know when the time is right to make subtle changes or more aggressive ones. Who's Handing You This Bull? Bullseye is brought to you by Gallery, LLC - experienced providers of quality marketing communications. To meet the growing demands of the postal industry, our new facility at 4 Raymond Ave., Salem, NH, masters the new postal regulations and provides cost-effective ways to assist companies like yours with their mailing and marketing needs. Our services include first class, standard class, international and bulk international mail processing; list maintenance, data entry, merge / purge, coding, conversions, custom reports and word processing; ZIP+4, barcoding, carrier routes, NCOA address applications; and every lettershop service from collating and folding, to sealing, sorting and tabbing, and much, much more. You can count on Gallery, LLC for design, printing, personalized laser letters, and fulfillment. For more information about Gallery, LLC's services, or to be placed on our mailing list, please contact Renée Casey at (603) 893-1523, or e-mail renee.casey@galleryllc.com. © Copyright 1998 Gallery, LLC in association with SFG Publishing. |