Now just before I recorded this, I just spent half an hour on the phone to a direct mail company. Now this is for some new venture.
You might say, ‘ooh Jon if you are such an expert in internet marketing and online stuff, why’d you need to sweet talk to direct mail people?’
Well my friend, it is a good question. And I’ve got a good answer. Because there are a number of people searching online and searching on social media, and just randomly looking about for that stuff.
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But there are a, there is a massive massive percentage of people who are not looking online. Who are not online at all?
And if you are in a business thing, who are not allowed to be online. So, so that’s why in your business, at work, if you’ve got a job and you are working, companies still deliver catalogs.
If you look at your post in your mail, people still use direct mail. Now you might call it junk mail, however I can assure you that costs a lot of money.
Oh just by the way, just to clarify, this isn’t all about direct mail. I’ll come back to that in a minute.
But when people are doing that, and they are paying their hard earned money to acquire your business via that direct mail or what you call junk mail.
It’s because despite the fact of what you think, you may be annoyed about it, but it works. Otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it. They are not doing it for a charity.
In the UK, I mean although you get special direct mail rights. It costs over 50 pence to send a letter. So for every hundred, those going to be a 50 quid. They are doing it because it works.
But there are other methods. So let me just reel some off. And so this is just because why not it is so cheap and so affordable, and so easy. So for example, leaflets.
If you send something out, if you send an invoice to somebody. Why don’t you put in a leaflet with an offer? It’s a free stamp, you are already posting something to them. And it’s going to the person who is going to pay the money. Quite often that’s good.
If you are sending out a box, if we send out boxes of fire extinguishers. We put in a thank you card with an offer saying hey did you forget anything, here’s a percentage, here’s a discount off again.
So we encourage and people buy that. People do because we have a special coupon code that you have to use. And people use it all the time.
Now you might say, oh they are probably going to buy again. Were they? How do you know? So we can tell you how much that gets, and I tell you it’s a ton more than it costs us to print those leaflets.
And you might think, oh what about the design? We had them designed on Fiverr www.fiverr.com. Listen in. $5 or a bit more.
Postcards
Anyway postcards. Postcards, yes. Have you ever noticed, you ever had one through the post? In the UK, We don’t get that many. Therefore they stand out. They’ve got a picture. You don’t have to open the envelope. It’s right in front of you. You can use those as inserts.
You could find your friend who’s got a company down the road. Perhaps you sell rubber wellies. Your friends got a company that sells camping gear.
Why not ask them whenever they mail out something, they got direct mail, an online one. Every time they send out a package, you put a leaflet or postcard for your stuff with an offer.
And quote a referral code, that whenever you get one, it adds up for them and you give them a payment every so and often. Then you don’t even have to pay to put it in. or just say, can I give you a few quid in and put these in?
You can get them printed at, well they call Vista print, Dirt Cheap. They do offers all the time. All sorts of things.
Newsletter
But how about a newsletter. Everybody is doing them online. We spend half our days deleting them because they are awful. So what about printing one?
It doesn’t have to be a magazine. It could be two page, a double sided A4 letter size thing. Smaller, just print one. Hire a writer, hire one of your staff, ask one of your staff to find articles. Contact your suppliers, say can you give us an article this month?
It’s easy. Stop making excuses. It’s easier than you think.
Catalogs
A catalog, you think of a catalog, you are thinking of I Kia catalogs, aren’t you? Or Argos in the UK. Or JC Penny. Something like that. In fact JC Penny in the US stopped doing catalogs to save money.
Their client, their customers dropped by so far, they had to start printing them again. And they thought they were saving money. They lost customers.
People like catalogs. But that catalog does not have to be like JC Penny or Argos. It can be like the little Scrufix one. It can be like Big Dug, or something like that. Or Iron mongery direct. Sorry I can only quote UK ones because those are all I know and those are the ones I get because I run a business. And that’s what we, I see piled up.
So have I bought from those companies? Probably. At some point, Yes. So what else, direct mail I mentioned.
If you’re thinking, just don’t think that direct mail is junk mail. It’s one, it’s called direct response. In other words, if you send out a 1000, it costs this, you will get a response rate of 1.17 % and the margin is this. You will have made x profit. It’s a scientific statistical thing.
They don’t mail randomly, they don’t just stick it in your letter box like the local plumber does. They go to lists that match with demographic. They test.
Check it out. Check it out. Why do you think big companies use it? Because it makes a fortune. Seriously. And the other one, this last one.
Hand Written Letters
Hand written letters. Hand written notes. Hand written cards without a logo. Just pop in. imagine a hand written card, plain white card, say, Thanks. Really appreciate your order. Jon. Imagine getting that with your thing.
It’s just those little touches. You are going to think, ‘Oh I can’t write them all day.’ get someone else to write them then.
Why can’t you? If you are a famous tennis player, you’d sit there, someone, if you’ve agents, you got to sign these thousand posts, autograph these thousand posters. You’ll do it, wouldn’t you? You’d moan. But you’d do it if you’re told the reason. Okay.
That’s all I can help you with.
Drive Time Podcast
This is Thursday, time for a Drive Time Podcast. And this week, this is one of my all-time favorites. This is so good, if, I said someone yesterday, I would pay for this.
It’s that good and I am not kidding. It’s even better than this one. In my opinion, no no no. honestly. It is. It Is ‘Online Marketing Made Easy’ by ‘Amy Porterfield’.
If you’ve never listened, go and listen, and you’ll understand. It’s like a free lesson. A free course, she does it to death, and she has got the most lovely, heartwarming voice. I can’t explain. It’s just a lovely voice and it makes you feel, Haaaahh!
Tomorrow is Friday. Friday we have Ones to Watch. We have Kate Cook tomorrow. Now she is a food nutritionist expert. She is not trying to change your diet thing or anything like that. It is not like that.
Listen because she is great. And she is going places. She does, that’s why she’s one to watch. Thank you, speak to you soon.
