7 principles for direct marketing success

7 principles for direct marketing success:

1. Establish your objective before you start
   1. Keep it simple
   2. Don’t make customer choose
   3. Generally one theme per promotion is best
2. Target the right audience and market segments
   1. This will help you integrate your marketing with the sales department.
3. Write copy to show what your product will do for the prospect
   1. Focus on the customer.  They buy benefits, not features.  Talk about how they will feel when they buy your product
4. Make it easy for your prospect to respond
   1. Give as many methods to respond that you can; email, fax, web registration, phone, mail with return postage paid envelope
5. Think campaign, not 1-shot
   1. Frequency is important in mail.  Research shows that if no connection has been made after a mailing, send a follow up piece 2-4 weeks after the initial piece.  This will raise the response rate by 50%.
6. Research and test every year
   1. If you have done the research, you have not done testing and vise versa.  You have to do both to understand what your success is.
7. Develop measurement system to determine return on investment
   1. Do not measure just on CPM (cost per 1000), CPC (cost per click), or CPI (cost per inquiry) instead use conversion to sales, cost per order, contribution to overhead/profit and lifetime value

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