With a little innovation, postcards can break through the clutter and
deliver direct mail advertising messages to your audience
instantaneously. Here are eight powerful ways to use postcards:
First, let me apologize for implanting Subway’s Five (five dollar), Five Dollar Foot Long ear worm in your head for the rest of the day. I hope that you’ll agree with me that it was worth it to learn five lessons about winning support for change from the top leaders in your organization.
The lessons were inspired by a story in the current issue of Business Weekon Miami Subway franchise owner Stuart Frankel. He owns a couple of Subways close to Jackson Memorial Hospital and five years ago was tinkering with ways to boost his sales on Saturdays and Sundays. From that, the original five dollar foot long was born. Since then, the sandwich has generated $3.8 billion in sales for Subway and put the company on pace to surpass McDonald’s in worldwide store locations.
So, you’d think it would have been easy for Frankel to win everyone over to such a great idea, right? Not so fast, my friends. Even though he was raking in the dough (bad pun intended), Frankel had to work hard to convince the top brass at Subway that the five dollar foot long was the way to go. In reading between the lines of the Business Week article, I’ve come up with five (what else?) lessons for anyone who is trying to convince senior leadership to take a good idea and run with it.
To reduce stuffed
in-boxes, consumers are increasingly using spam filters
that block even the most legitimate opt-in email marketing. To make your targeted email marketing message resonate with customers and best prospects, consider these five tips:
When my company, L.I. Ninjutsu Centers, finds out something about the competition or even what one of our suppliers is doing that may pose a major sales threat to us, I find that using “ninja” techniques works well.
No other means of
advertising can be tested, refined, and tested again with the same
mathematical precision as creative direct mail. What should you test? Crystal Uppercue, marketing manager at EU Services, recommends focusing on these three components:
Brent Sampson, author of Sell Your Book on Amazon and Self-Publishing Simplified, offers thesefive marketing tricks you can adopt immediately to boost your business during slow times:
As a servant leader CEO, you should aim to make your team members (at all levels) heroes—heroes in their own eyes, heroes in the eyes of their peers and heroes in the eyes of their families.
Making 2009 the best year in sales is easier than you may think.
Here are three ways to help your company
improve its sales lead generation efforts during the recession.
“...How do I get traffic to my site?” one client asked recently. “And if I want to sell... using e-mail marketing, who do I send the e-mails to?” Here is one online marketing methodology that has been proven effective...
In a recent DM News column, I apparently offended a segment of the blogging community by suggesting that perhaps blogs might be “an utter waste of time … ” Here’s what all the hoopla has taught me so far:
Based on his experience, Olivier Piscart, managing director at Emailvision US, says
companies would be wise to avoid these five direct email marketing
blunders to achieve maximum ROI:
When prospects get your e-mail marketing message, they make a decision to open or delete it based largely on the subject line. Given the glut of promotional e-mail, how can you convince them that your message is worthy of attention?
The single most common complaint among business owners
about social networking and social media marketing is the significant
demand on their time. The solution, according to Dr. Maurice A. Ramirez, founder of the consulting firm High Alert, LLC, is to follow this SAM process:
Pursuing marketing fundamentals doesn’t require cash as much as it requires wit, persistence and a little creativity. Here are seven top free or low-cost marketing ideas:
Often, by being truthful about your weaknesses and flaws, you can gain substantial credibility with your buyer, increasing loyalty, sales, and customer satisfaction.
Afraid the recession is here to stay a bit longer? If so, you're not alone. Many economists are predicting doom and gloom. Here are 14 strategies companies use to maintain—even
increase—sales, while their competitors struggle to stay afloat.
One online advertising tactic attracting the attention of growing businesses is the microsite. How do you know if
your business needs a microsite? Internet marketing and e-commerce
expert Sabah Karimi says to look for these four telltale signs:
Asked if he could write an effective direct mail package on a
complex electronic control system, a well-known copywriter replied, “It doesn’t matter what the product
is. You are selling to people. And people are pretty much the same.” Wrong.
Dulzia Burchette, a black former saleswoman for the preppy-glam Abercrombie & Fitch clothing store chain in New York City, is suing the Ohio-based retailer for racial discrimination.
How well do you really know your customers? Knowing that you are writing to farmers, Information Technology (IT) professionals, or plumbers is just the start. You have to dig deeper.
“The old days of treating advertising, interactive, and PR like
separate entities are behind us,” says Scott Severson, president
of Minnesota-based ARAnet. To that end, Severson offers these four tips to improve your niche marketing campaigns:
Email has become so wildly popular that 75 percent of companies say
they will boost spending on it this year,
according to the consulting firm Eloqua. Why? Simms Jenkins, founder and CEO of BrightWave Marketing, provides the following insight:
As we rapidly gain experience and test results from Internet direct mail, we are learning more every day about what works in this new medium. Here are some techniques that seem to be successful in increasing click-throughs and conversions.
“What works best in e-mail marketing?” I got asked for the umpteenth time the other day. “Long copy or short copy?” It’s a quandary for direct marketers much more so than general marketers. Here’s why:
Package planning is essential to a successful direct mail marketing campaign.The bottom line, says Michael Fleischner,
author of The Webmaster’s Book of Secrets, is that your offer resonates with your target market. Also, consider the following:
Online advertising is no longer a sideshow of the marketing
industry. Brands rise and fall on marketers’ ability to manage the
virtual space. One of the more promising Internet advertising techniques
is the microsite, a variation on a traditional Web site. While the
mission of a Web site is to provide a wide range of information and
services, a microsite has a more focused mission.
If you are relying on
customers to find you through search engines, it’s important to
understand how people search for information. Recently, two Penn State
University professors analyzed 450,000 Web queries submitted to a
search engine. Here’s what they found:
How do you use an offline medium such as direct mail to drive
traffic to, and conversions on, your Web site? The key, says Michael
Fleischner, author of The Webmaster’s Book of Secrets,
is to develop a creative direct mail piece, choose the right list, and
create an offer that resonates with your target market. Also, consider
the following:
Lots of marketers plan viral marketing campaigns, but how many really
end up working? Why are marketers having such a hard time with viral
marketing? Why can't they seem to trigger a word-of-mouth epidemic?
Opt-in email marketing typically generates a response rate between 1
percent and 20 percent, although some campaigns do better and a few do
worse. Here
are five proven techniques for increasing click-throughs and
conversions:
When it comes to improving the value of copywriting
in print or online, a particularly effective strategy is to make a
product or service seem more impressive than it really is. New
Jersey–based copywriting expert Bob Bly, author of Internet Direct Mail: The Complete Guide to Successful E-Mail Marketing Campaigns,
offers a time-tested example: Sea-Monkeys
The key to coming out on top is paying close
attention to your customers and best prospects and making them your top
priority as part of any customer acquisition and retention program. Here’s how to go about it.
Late summer is a busy season for trade shows and other industry events. When
planning your preshow marketing program, consider these three tips from
Crystal Uppercue, marketing manager of EU Services.
You know what revs you up and makes you strong. So what’s stopping you
from discovering and exploiting those strengths? Identify these three
main components:
Q. Our CEO just implemented a new employee evaluation goal based on their volunteer work throughout the year. The more they volunteer, the higher the points they receive on their review, ultimately increasing their salary. Can we do this without risk? —T.M., Maine
Issue: Business and government leaders will unveil a new national job-readiness test next year that you can give entry-level applicants. Benefit: Cut down on bad entry-level hires. Spot high-school grads ...
Heads up: More employers are heaping legal trouble on themselves by tracking employees' volunteerism ef-forts and, in some cases, using that information (either directly or indirectly) as a prerequisite for promotions ...
When deciding whether to use direct mail, e-mail, telephone, catalogs or some other means to market your product or service, remember this key point: The medium that generates the most customer responses doesn't always yield the best return on investment (ROI).
When Schering-Plough leaders first thought of marketing Dr. Scholl’s
foot-care products to the Latino-American market, they feared that the
brand name would never play well with Hispanic consumers. They nearly
stopped there.
Larry Stupski served as vice chairman of Charles Schwab & Co., a
discount brokerage firm known for its innovative products and service.
Now retired, Stupski is chairman of Jobs for California Graduates, a
nonprofit mentoring program for disadvantaged youth. Stupski is living
proof that it pays to find a wise, insightful guide to help you sharpen
your skills and chart a successful career path.
