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How to influence response to your mailings
The level of response to direct mail is one of the most shocking facts in advertising. A few years ago, the Direct Marketing Association surveyed 1,122 industry-specific campaigns and came up with an average response rate of 2.61 per cent. That’s a failure rate of over 97 per cent!
The figures for 2010 are not much better, on either side of the Atlantic. The DMA in the US reported 3.42 per cent response from a house list and 1.38 per cent from a prospect list. Email to a house list got a 19.47 per cent open rate, 6.64 click through rate, and a conversion of just 1.73 per cent.
SME’s report a typical direct mail response rate of less than one per cent. Forgive me for throwing all these figures at you, but I think you’ll agree that such results amount to a waste of time and money.
I once approached a blue chip company that was mailing its members to offer membership renewal by continuous credit card authority (direct debit by credit card). Their large ad agency had just achieved a 12% response, and everyone was celebrating.
I offered an alternative approach, and got a 32% YES response.
The point is that it is not written in the stars that you should have a single-digit response rate. There are things you can do to deliver a better return on the money you spend. Here are a few:
- Provide an incentive to reply, even if it’s to say No thanks. The more replies you get, in total, the higher will be the Yes response.
- Plan a series of mailings and other follow-ups, not just a single shot. Some people need seven contacts before they say Yes.
- Segment your list and make a specific offer/approach to each segment, rather than the same message to all.
One more piece of advice. Use a professional copywriter with experience of direct mail. Unless you are one yourself, do not write your own mailings. At the same time, do not expect a copywriter to wave a magic wand. Give him or her a chance to develop the right relationship with your prospects and customers.
It will be money well spent.
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Basic Direct Marketing
I was talking the other day to a close friend who has a successful business in the service sector. Because of my background in direct marketing, she was asking my advice on a mailing she was planning.
She was intending to send out a tri-fold leaflet with a covering letter. Pretty standard practice among SMEs. I asked her what she would be testing, and she looked blank.
“What is there to test?†she wanted to know. “I have an established ‘product’, a good reputation in my market, and I just want to stimulate a few more sales.â€
“Who will you approach?†I asked.
She said she was going after people who had not yet used her kind of service, whether provided by her or her competitors. New blood. I replied that her pockets were not deep enough to convert non-users, and she’d go broke before she succeeded.
Concentrate on users, and convert them to your brand, was my advice. But test.
Again she asked what she should test.
In direct marketing (mailshots, if you like) you always need to test to be sure you are using the most effective marketing elements.
There are six elements you should always test:
1. The market: find out which section of the population is most interested in your offering.
2. The product: is it right for the market in today’s circumstances?
3. The offering: is it offered or packaged in the most accessible way?
4. Price. Are you charging enough? Or can you stimulate a big increase in sales if you drop your price a bit?
5. The creative: can you dress up your offering differently? Can you offer some incentive to buy, some bonus or ‘extra’ to sweeten the deal?
6. The material: letter plus leaflet, or letter alone? Long copy or short copy?She wanted to know more, but we ran out of time …
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When others take away your victory
This year’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone was fascinating for the dramas it presented alongside the race itself. At least four of the competitors (‘drivers’ is too mild a term for them) must have come off the track spitting feathers because of the actions of others.
I shall not include Sebastian Vettel, whose extended final pit stop cost him the lead, because Alonso might have caught and overtaken him anyway.Consider Mark Webber. He qualified in pole position, but quickly lost out to Vettel and the usual clutch of Ferrari and McLaren stars. Still in contention, he also suffered a delayed pit stop, but fought through to third place and was challenging Vettel for second place on the last lap, when he received team orders, “Maintain the gap.†In other words, “Don’t overtake.â€
It must have seared the soul of the Australian whose every instinct is to strive for the highest position he can attain, and to challenge anyone who stands in his way.
Then there was the 7-time World Champion, Michael Schumacher, who started well down the grid and fought his way from 16th to 9th, thus demonstrating that he still has it in him. How galling, then, to be handed a ‘stop and go’ penalty for accidentally colliding with Kobayashi. As he sat in the pits during the 10-second countdown, his body language was eloquent.
Third up was Jenson Button. He was having a good day at the office when he came in for his final pit stop. It was quick, and as the lollipop went up, Jenson was off, only to be flagged down and told to return. One of the mechanics had failed to fix the wheel nut on his front right hand wheel. Marching back with his helmet still on, Jenson must have wanted to strangle the person responsible.
Finally, Lewis Hamilton. In qualifying, his car let him down and he started in 10th place. Well before halfway he was up among the leaders, even though his car was still off the pace. The rain had taken away the technological advantages of Red Bull and Ferrari, and it was down to driver skill.
With a handful of laps to go, Lewis was told to back off and conserve fuel, or he wouldn’t finish the race. Someone in Team McLaren had miscalculated. Hamilton was soon overtaken and finished fourth. Not a bad result, but so much worse than the podium position he would have had.
The four incidents had one thing in common: those competitive sportsmen were robbed of the results they deserved, through the interventions and errors of people who were not themselves competing. It’s one of the hardest disappointments that a competitor could experience.
In the high intensity of Formula 1 or any other top level competition, it will be felt most deeply. But it could happen to any of us in business too. And if it happened to you, would you have a Plan B?
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Ever been asked to get to the point?
What’s the point you’re making?
Get to the point.
Click!All within 3 seconds. That’s all the time you have to grab or lose your listener’s attention. Let me help you understand why it happens and what you can do about it.
First, let’s consider why.
Every day, each of us is assailed by thousands of messages – in print, in sound, in pictures, and even in person. It’s a deluge that overwhelms the senses, closing off those private moments of reflection that once we knew, forcing us to react to the demands of the moment.
Result: we have been trained to switch off.
As fast as we respond to those demands of the moment, we tend to lose interest and turn our minds to some other pressing matter. Attention Deficit has reached epidemic proportions.
It is therefore vital to be able to make your point in just a minute, because two of the dominant characteristics of advanced nations in the 21st century are a short attention span and instant gratification.
In the early ’90s, Steven Silbiger wrote a best-selling business book called “The 10-Day MBA”. He wrote that his aim was “to cut to the heart of the top MBA programs’ subject matter clearly and concisely – the way only an MBA can, and the way academics would not dare.”
An MBA in only ten days?! It struck a chord with thousands of people who rushed to buy the book. I know many of them. I’ve seen the book on their shelves, and heard them confess that they had not actually read all 348 pages.
The book is excellent. It offers what many people want: a step-by-step guide to mastering the skills taught in top business schools. In a hurry. Yet it is not “instant” enough for those who cannot, or will not, spare the time to sit and read the book, digest its information and decide how to apply it.
So how is that relevant to spoken communication and making your point in just a minute?
The relevance lies in the time pressures that govern our lives in the western world, and the need to decide quickly what is useful and discard what is not. We live in an age of Information Overload.
The important consequence is that we are being conditioned to tune out and switch off the information we do not want. It has become a universal conditioned reflex. It means that most people cannot concentrate for very long. Our brains can think several times faster than people speak, so even while we are listening to someone else, our brains are dealing with something else, especially if what’s being said is less than riveting.
In conversations, speeches and presentations, people drift away. That’s why we need to develop the skill of commanding and retaining the attention of our listeners. That’s why we need to be able to make our point in just a minute.
Why contain your message in just a minute?
The most important reason for being succinct is that it makes you and your message more acceptable. “Get to the point!” is the anguished cry in everyone’s head (including our own) when others launch into a long-winded account of an event or a proposal. A common variation is, “What’s the point you are making?”
In contrast, it is truly refreshing when we receive a communication that is brief and to the point. Even our language has changed. In the previous paragraph I first wrote “discursive account”, but changed it to “long-winded” – not shorter, this time, but it reaches your understanding quicker.
First impressions
The same principles apply to face-to-face meetings. As you know, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. That first impression may be created in a fraction of a second. It’s part of the process of communication.
Think back to the last time you met someone you instantly liked or disliked. Why? What did they say or do? And are you letting others make similar snap judgements about you?
So what can you do about it all?
In a business context it is important to think through your positions and your propositions. Know what you believe and why, and be clear about the benefits of your offerings. Practise making your point, using simple structures such as Problem, Cause, Solution, as though a resistant business prospect has said, “You have 60 seconds to tell me why I should listen to you.”
At the 2009 meeting of world leaders, Gaddafi was given 15 minutes to speak, and rambled on for an hour and a half. Most of us don’t have that luxury.
When you know how to make your point in just a minute, you create a communication style that projects a sense of purpose. You’ll connect better at networking meetings. Your opinions will be better received. Strangely enough, you’ll even learn to listen more.
And that’s what wins friends and influences people.
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Self-serving advertising can cost you dearly
The advertising industry’s magazine, Campaign, is running a series on the history of advertising in various objects. No. 18 is Strand cigarettes. By a sheer coincidence I was talking about it (and the ad campaign) only yesterday.
Written by a brilliant copywriter, John May of S H Benson, the commercial featured a Frank Sinatra lookalike, and rapidly became much talked about.
Campaign reveals that Strand was bought by only 0.3% of male smokers and 0.7% of female smokers. A resounding flop!
However, Campaign explains the failure like this: “… great advertising can’t sell a poor product. Strand was just a lousy smoke.â€
Spot the fallacy. If hardly anyone bought the product, how did anyone know it was a lousy smoke? Campaign’s explanation is clearly an attempt to exonerate advertising and shift the blame away from the ad’s creator.
The real explanation may be more obvious: the commercial’s plain purpose was to flaunt its creativity, both in the Big Idea and in its clever execution. A common failing in advertising. It did not relate to the motivation of smokers, nor did it reflect their preferred lifestyle.
Did the agency do any research or testing? Or was it just another example of self-serving advertising? The theme music was great and did well in the charts. The photography was moody and very well observed. And the actor accurately portrayed a singleton in need of care.
Just because the individual elements were well done, it was (wrongly) assumed that the ad would sell the product. It’s well known in Selling that when people notice and applaud your performance, you have failed.
Besides, would you have wanted to pull out a packet of fags that proclaimed you a lonely sad sack?  ‘Nuff said.
PKP
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Make your presentations worth hearing
When you make a presentation, however short or long it is, and whether it is for a grand occasion or not, always make an effort to make it memorable. That way it will benefit both you and your audience.
There are 9 essential elements that make a presentation worth hearing, and I’d like to offer you a simple way of remembering them all. So let me start with the image. Picture a shed high up on a mountain. Behind it you can see the snow-covered Alps. The shed belongs to your mother. Got the picture?
Now remember this phrase:
Please Remember Frozen Alps Behind My Mother’s Mountain Shed.
Got that? Now let’s take the initial letters in turn.
P = Purpose. Why are you making the presentation? What are you hoping to achieve, and what do you want to happen when you have finished?
R = Relevance. Will your presentation be directly useful to your audience? In what way? It must relate to their interests.
F = Focus. Is the presentation for the benefit of your audience … or yourself? Are you aiming for applause or action?
A = Authority. Why should they listen to you? Make sure that you an authority on the subject. It helps if you have written a book about it or can demonstrate your credentials in some way.
B = Benefit. How will they gain from listening to what you have to say? Give them something they can take and apply to make their lives or their business better.
M = My. The first M stands for Message. What sits at the core of your presentation? What matters is not the information you impart, but its significance. Be clear about your Message. What should they take away and remember about your presentation?
M = Messenger. The second M is about you. Why do they need to hear the Message from you? What makes you the custodian of the Message?
M = Method. The third M stands for Method. You must develop the skills to put across your Message and deliver your presentation effectively. Otherwise you will just waste the opportunity. The content will not speak for itself. It needs you.
S = Sincerity. You must walk your talk. If you really believe in your Message, speak with conviction and sincerity. You can’t (and must not try to) fake it.
Once again, there is the phrase to remember and help you reconstruct the nine essentials to make your speech or presentation worth hearing:
Please Remember Frozen Alps Behind My Mother’s Mountain Shed.
If you’d like help with any of this, contact me here: phillip@speakingandpresentationskills.com
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How to DELIVER!
If you have a speech or presentation to make, the way you deliver it will make all the difference. Here’s a 10-point checklist for you:
1. Speak with conviction and energy – each speech can expend as much energy as a full day’s work
2. Be focused – facts tell, feelings sell!
3. Make it a performance – use drama, images, visual aids and ENERGY
4. Be distinctive – make it memorable – put your personal mark on it
5. Use vocal variety – entertain and surprise them – keep them interested
6. Have empathy – talk to them, not at them – don’t fear personal contact – smile: give a reason to like you
7. Maintain good eye contact – one friendly face at a time
8. Show what you mean – use gestures and positive body language
9. Stand tall and balanced – stay centred, walk with a purpose
10. Serve the audience’s needs – offer information, entertainment, involvement. Finally, PRACTISE, PRACTISE, PRACTISE!
I have some Open courses coming up in central London. 29th June, 16th & 22nd September, if you are interested. Drop me a line.
Phillip
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25 Ways to Keep Customers for Life
- Reward your customers. Send them a gift or a lead for new business
- Buy or use their products or services. Loyalty works both ways.
- Be accessible and return phone calls or emails promptly.
- Keep your word. Deliver what you promised – on time.
- Under promise, and over deliver.
- Be flexible. Be open for business outside normal hours, even on holidays.
- Thank your customers for their business. Send handwritten notes.
- Always look professional. Your customers should feel proud to do business with you.
- Have integrity. Trust is hard to build, almost impossible to recover.
- Be supportive of your customers – like a good friend.
- Remember their birthdays and anniversaries. Send cards and small gifts.
- Promote their business to others. Believe in them.
- Be friendly. Aim to make it a pleasant experience to deal with you.
- Eliminate hassle. Make it easy to buy from you.
- Be a problem solver, not a hardware store.
- Have real people dealing with customer queries, not a multiple choice answering machine.
- Treat existing customers like pure gold.
- Occasionally, cancel an invoice, just for goodwill.
- Help customers get what they need, even if you don’t supply it yourself.
- Keep customers informed of all your new developments and products, and offer them the same special deals you offer new customers.
- Train your staff to have a welcoming, helpful and respectful attitude.
- Use Mystery Shoppers to check how customers are treated.
- Who speaks for your company? Call your business yourself to learn what callers hear.
- Never be indifferent to customers or prospective customers.
- Treat your staff well. They are your partners in business.
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Cross culture is on your doorstep
Talk about cross culture or cultural diversity and people think it’s ‘over there’. In reality, it’s very much ‘over here’. What’s more, it’s one of today’s hot topics in business – one that concerns you if you are a senior manager or business owner.
Let me start by defining ‘culture’. In simple terms it means, ‘the way we do things here’. That could apply to the norms in a region, in a country, even in a company. Just think about the way different banks do business. They are all in the same line of business, yet each bank has its own style, values, and practices, and each delivers a very different experience to customers.
Two examples of banking practices: one in Bogotá, Colombia, the other in South London. The first concerned Tom Bennett, a senior accountant with a major New York accounting firm, who travelled to Bogotá on business. He popped into a branch of the country’s largest bank to cash a cheque.
When he eventually got past the gaggle of people in front of a teller, he handed in his cheque and waited for his money. As you do. While he was there, several people elbowed their way to the same window and handed in their cheques, treating Tom as though he was in the way.
What he didn’t know was that the custom was to hand in your cheque and step back to allow others to do the same. You would be called when your money was ready. If Tom had known that he would have avoided the unpleasantness he encountered.
The second incident occurred in a South London branch of a leading bank, a few years ago. I was standing in a queue when an Oriental trader, perhaps from a restaurant, came in and went up to the Enquiries window. He asked to see the Manager and was asked to take a seat in the open plan area. Eventually a young man, obviously not the Bank Manager, came out and sat with the trader, within sight and earshot of all the other customers in the bank.
The Oriental gentleman was very uncomfortable and mumbled a question that was probably not the one he had wanted to raise, and left very quickly. He had not been offered any privacy for his conversation and I reckon he felt both embarrassed and humiliated by the expectation that he would discuss his business requirements in public.
Both incidents arose out of cultural misunderstandings.
In your business, you may have customers and staff with cultural expectations that differ from your own. That puts ‘cross culture’ firmly on your doorstep. If you’d like help with managing those differences, email me at phillip@speakingandpresentationskills.com“>phillip@speakingandpresentationskills.com.
Phillip
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The 4 vital elements of the Marketing Mix
Siva is the name of a popular Hindu god who destroys in order to renew and regenerate. It is also the acronym for the four essential elements of supply-side Marketing:
- Solution
- Information
- Value
- AccessÂ
Known as the Marketing Mix, the 4 elements prompt you to ask the right questions to establish if you are offering what your market wants, instead of just galloping into battle. The concept was first articulated by E J McCarthy in 1960, but is just as valid today.
In order to make a credible new business presentation, you need to ask the right questions, to identify how your business offering fits with the needs of the client company, and to position yourself as a solution provider.
The Product is the Solution to the customer’s problem. When you think of it in that way, you move away from a mere description of its features, and speak instead of how it addresses the customer’s needs.
When Planning your pitch, the kind of questions you would ask are:
- What is the need or the pain that this product can deal with?
- How will it be used?
- Is it complete on its own or does it need some other product as well?
- How will it be recognised in the market place?
- How does it compare with alternatives?
- What makes it a ‘must have’?
Information means telling your market about your product or service, which needs to be advertised, promoted, presented and supported. It is about identifying the target market and its needs, satisfying those needs effectively, and making sure the rest of the market knows about it.
You would need to ask:
- How are competitors promoting the same product or service?
- Which media will reach your target market most effectively?
- How and when is it best to interrupt them with your message?
- Can you link your message to external events?
- Are there seasonal influences to consider?
- Can you use PR, sponsorship and other indirect promotions as well?
The third element is Value. In the supply-side context, price is often the deciding factor. In customer-centric Marketing, however, the emphasis is on the Value provided. Price alone means little, except when the product is a commodity, or treated as such, indistinguishable from other brands of the same product. It makes more sense to build up the value and diminish the impact of the price.
Price questions may be obvious, including:
- What are competitors charging for similar products?
- Is the product or the customer price sensitive?
- Will a drop in price increase market share?
- What is the perceived value of your product or service?
The fourth element is Access. This is about getting the product to the target market, and making it easy for customers to find and get hold of the product. Brand loyalty drives customers to seek the product and will determine how tolerant they may be of delays in availability, before seeking alternatives.
You need to know:
- Where do buyers look for your (kind of) product or service?
- Are your distribution channels sufficient?
- How do your competitors go to market?
- Are your distribution channels all profitable?
- Do you need/use the internet?
The four SIVA elements are relevant to the way in which you present your case to your market. For help with structuring and putting across your business case, contact phillip@speakingandpresentationskills.com.
