by Travis
Don’t give the same thing to everyone
Every single day, I go to get the mail, and next to my mailbox sits a garbage can, filled to the top with the exact same things. New condominium fliers, special offers, government newsletters.
If the postman were observant, he would put all this junk directly in that trashcan instead of our mailboxes. If the post office weren’t so greedy, they’d be honest with the advertisers and how effective these mailers really are.
At times, they think they’re smart, they’ll drop one of these on our doorsteps. Same difference.
When we see that you’re lazy, don’t take the time to think about each of us personally, don’t care if I say no to you, you’re immediately blacklisted. All the “thought”, time, and money you put into buying that mailing list, crafting that copy, acquiring those stock photos, running them off the press, a complete waste.
Had you sent me a simple, personal, creative, and genuine letter, you would have increased your efficiency ten-fold. Sure, thousands of others may have received similar letters, but I don’t know or care about that — look, I got this nice letter and great offer, just for me.
Eliminate the term “mass” from your vocabulary. Each of your customers are more important than all of your customers. And existing customers are more important than potential customers.
In everything you do, “Hey Travis” will get you a lot farther than “Dear valued customer”.
i get the same thing too. all i got to say is a bird in hand is worth 50 in the bush.
“Each of your customers are more important than all of your customers. And existing customers are more important than potential customers.”
Right there, that’s the moral of the story. 1:1 and sustain over expand… those 2 things will be critical to keeping traditional orgs from going underwater (or at least their marketers).
it’s so true. all those junk mail goes straight to the recycle bin. moreover, i get annoyed with mail that i have to open and shred, such as credit card offers,etc.. it just take more time away from doing something meaningful to dispose trash grrr.
Better yet, customize other items specifically to your customers as well. It’s hard to do, but the more you can customize “ALL” communications with clients, the better.
Keep databases with customer information; what they’ve bought, problems they’ve had, what they’ve returned. Then in your next communication ask them how their last purchase is working out.
Your customers will not only feel cared about, but you will learn more about customers and your products.
Advertisers are getting smarter these days. I’ve receive countless (spam) mails that address me personally. They always tell me that I stand a chance to win a car or whatever and all that I have to do is to send them a reply.
And the reply will come with lots of contest forms and wach contest form that I send, I know that I will be spammed by more mails.
Hate them.
Great post. So much money and time wasted my marketers on these mail-outs that go straight into the rubbish bin.
Travis -
I have just recently subscribed to YGG and have found it to be a valuable addition to my daily feed reading. Keep up the great work.
Although I respect YGG content, I must cry fowl on this post. As a marketing director for a group of auto dealerships, I am caught between the traditional automotive industry advertising methods and the new class of mediums (social networks, viral marketing, etc…) I respect everyone’s distaste for the typical automotive mailer, because I do to! But the fact of the matter is they work. They have a better ROI than television, radio and newspaper. I’ve had returns on direct mail pieces as high as 1300% (we spent 6k on the mailer and got 78k in gross profit.)
I have caught myself looking at different advertising and saying what a waste of money. But the fact of the matter is I work in an industry where 99% of our customers haven’t heard of brands like flickr or have a gmail account (actually I misspoke - I just ran the numbers and 2.52% of our email database have gmail accounts.). Not these indicators alone depict our customers, but we live in a world where new forms of advertising are relevant only to Generation Y and most of X.
Sorry for the rant, but I still think there are relevant direct mail campaigns (especially with variable software such as XM Pie’s UDirect) and we will see significant returns on them for years to come.
Chris,
I can understand what you’re saying from a business point of view. With products that sell for dozens of thousands of dollars, a direct-mail campaign, which may only cost a few thousand, would make sense from a cost to return point of view.
But from a
consumer’sperson’s standpoint, the one from which I wrote this post, that doesn’t make my life any better or connect with me in any way.The odds are pretty good that if you send out 100,000 mailers promoting dirt-cheap prices on a certain model of vehicle in a certain city, there will be a person or two that just so happens to be looking for that vehicle. It’s a combination of luck and timing.
But to the other 999,998 people that served as the migrator between their mailbox and the trashbin, that’s a huge waste.
I agree that traditional advertising will always work to some extent. There’s no question. Having been forced to create such advertising for my entire education and a good portion of my career, I eventually hit the point where I realized that talking at people instead of with, wasn’t worth the portion of my life that I gave up for that.
Social networks, viral marketing, and all the other buzz terms that people asume works for every industry, are just mediums…….they’re the icing that most people flock to without even having a cake (concept).
I took place in a pitch to a gigantic auto dealer (and friend of mine) at the previous agency I worked at. It was interesting to see how everything really worked.
In the end, their priority was the dollar, not the consumer, and any creative idea we would have pitched would have been given the yay or nay by the accountant. They couldn’t define branding and thought CRM was an address book, not a set of meaningful actions.
I could go on forever. I don’t disagree with what you’re saying from a business standpoint. Direct-mail can work. But from a consumer’s standpoint, you’re more than welcome to keep it to yourself. ;)
Those guys are getting really innovative these days - slipping rolled-up flyers into my door handle, taping them to my door, sliding them into the crevaces between the door and doorframe.. that’s innovation at its best. In public places, the urinal drop-ins are getting more and more popular too.. I guess they figure that since we’re there, we might as well read about the latest and greatest credit card to hit the market (who can get enough credit cards?).
In all honesty, I received a flyer yesterday at my doorstep that actually had an effect on me. It wasn’t personalized to me with my name on it or anything, instead it addressed me with “Hi neighbour”. It was hand written and photocopied with definitely zero attempt to add any ‘jazz’. It read: “Our team will be in the neighbourhood paving your neighbour’s driveway. Since we have our equipment here, we can offer you a good deal, too.” I don’t know if I’ve fallen for another gimmick, but this sad little hand-written note stood out above the real estate agent ads, the new Indian restaurant take-out menu, and certainly anything else that was ‘innovatively’ shoved in my face. I think we might actually give them a call to have our driveway redone (it’s about time).
Now if we can only find a way to cut down on those useless magazine inserts…