Using Direct Mail To Drive Store Traffic

Your Graphic Artist Will Point You To a Low-Cost Printer

Direct mail – post cards, self-mailers, letters, brochures, aka junk mail – has always been a staple of the hearing aid practitioners’ marketing effort. Some of these mailings really pull in traffic while others don’t even pay for themselves – at least right away. 

So, what can you do to improve the pull of your direct mail campaigns. A few things come to mind based on my own successes and failures. Oh, and BTW, those failures? Yeah, they’re expensive. So, get the most for your indicia.

Start With the Mailing List

If your beautifully written prose is being mailed outside your service region or to kids under 12-years-old, you’re wasting time and money. The list – your Golden List – may take some time to develop.

If you’ve never done a direct mail campaign, it starts with a list house – a company with giant databases loaded with names, addresses, telephone numbers and other personal data. You can conduct searches by everything from annual household income to number of geriatrics within the home.

Big Brother isn’t watching. LOTS of Big Brothers are watching and collecting data on the buying habits and lifestyle habits in your household and millions of other homes just like yours.

So, step one is to eliminate all addresses outside certain zip codes. In other words, pick geo-specific regions within an easy drive to one of your retail outlets.

Step two: target areas where wealthy people live – zip codes of the best towns in your area. These population centers (1) have the resources to purchase hearing aids and (2) are more likely to address a hearing loss with a hearing aid purchase.

Step three: Check the currency of the list. I still get junk mail addressed to my mother-in-law who died in 1993! And some sucker paid 50 cents for that address. You don’t want just any 25,000 mailing addresses – you want people who still live at those addresses. Current information.

Step four: Seed the mailing list. Add a couple of friends’ names to the list as a check that the mail is getting through. We’ve all heard horror stories of entire catalogs disappearing before delivery and the business owner who mailed those catalogs is just plain out of luck.

A reputable list house guarantees the quality of the data it sells.

Next, the Mailer Itself

Have your mailer professionally designed by a graphic artist with the text written by a proven sales copy writer. You can find these creative types all over the web. Try Elance.com. oDesk.com and Guru.com for starters.

Think about the printing costs. Obviously, a straight black-and white letter will cost less to print but, if it has to be folded and slipped into an envelop, that extra step may cost more.

A one-color mailer is just that – it’s black-and white with one additional color. It’s a little more expensive but it also creates the illusion that the mailer is more colorful than it actually is.

The most expensive design is the four-color mailer. This is the full color mailer most of us are used to seeing. If the mailer includes photos, for example, four-color is a must. But, if you’re sending out a professional letter, black-and-white is expected.

BTW, the big box stores that sell office supplies can print up thousands of b&w to full-color mailers at a very low cost.

Postage

Yep, the PO ain’t delivering your mailer free.

Two ways to go, here. You can visit your local postmaster and purchase what’s called an indicia – that little bulk mail symbol you see in the upper right hand corner. The indicia is printed directly on the mailer making things simple.

Or, you can purchase bulk mail stamps. This is actually a good idea if you’re going to do mail blasts in different test markets. No additional indicia required.

Test Market

Which mailer pulls in the most store traffic?

What zip codes deliver the lowest CPS – cost per sale?

Does the letter drive more traffic than a post card?

You won't know until you do a little test marketing. With each test mailing you do, track results with absolute precision. The goal?

To develop the Golden List – the best list with the best prospects at the lowest per unit cost of delivery.

Conducting simple A/B tests over a period of several months will give you the empirical data required to start refining your mailing list.

Project Management

You can hire a local ad agency to do all this leg work but you’ll pay for that leg work. There’s nothing in this list that you and/or an administrative assistant can’t do in-house.

Your graphic artist will be able to recommend a printer who’ll do a short run for cheap. So, use all of your company assets and save on your direct mail campaign.

You may not WANT to do all of these chores but you’ll save 40-50% of your expenses by DIY.

Finally, consider your pull rate. Anything over 5% is fabulous. So, if you mail 20,000 pieces in your service region and drive 1,000 new customers to your hearing aid outlet, you’re going to be one happy store owner.

The key is to develop the Golden List, seed it, choose the best, most eye-catching design and conduct test mailings to refine your list further.

So reach out and touch someone. Someone looking for your hearing health services and products. Those prospects live in your town.

Drop them a line.

John M. Adams III

jma3@hearingtutor.com