Deliver the Message

Throughout the hundreds of episodes of Small Business School (SBS, 2001- ), Small Business 2000 (1995-2001) and Small Business Today (1994-1995), there are many profiles, tips, and quotes from direct marketing experts.

Direct marketing is the low-cost tool for business. For all of us small business owners we had better become experts to both understand and use it. These segments include:

• New technologies and how to use them.
• Campaigns that work.
• Metaphorical Muses.

The messenger was killed. You have heard people say, foretelling a possible future, "Don't kill the messenger." Our marketing is our messenger and most of our messengers are getting killed. Wasted. Just consider response rates. In many camps, anything over a single digit is considered a wildly enormous success. In some camps, even 1% is acceptable!?!

Waste not, want not. It's totally unacceptable thinking in the 21st century. It is a waste. A waste of your hard earned dollars. A waste of natural resources. And, a waste of people's time delivering things that are going to the landfills.

We have to wake up. With intelligence today, with data mining of the fast storage of information, our rates should be double digits and should approaching at least 20%. Then in every subsequent year, our expertise in creating targeted campaigns should increase and every year we should nudge up toward 100%. A lofty goal, to be sure, but why not? Tell people who are still selling single digits to go back to school and learn about databases. Find people who are doing DATA MINING and customer profiling.

Profiling can be good.

• Become a hunter and track your mailings. The old call-mail-call is forever changed; any order and any combination can work using: mail, call, email, meet. The customer or potential customer determines the order.

• What is direct mail? Copy oriented, visually oriented, self-mailers (including postcards), catalogs, and dimensional pieces. What have we missed?
• The power of words and the power of the "PS" or Postscript.

• Location, location, location has now become List, List, List.

• Clean up your list, scrub the database.

• The better the list the better the marketing campaign.

• Bulk is not bad, it is not difficult, and it can be targeted.
• Don't get kicked out by the automatic sorters; there are just a few rules to beat the competition in getting your mail to your target markets.

• The eight functions of marketing and 22 ideas about marketing.
• Saturation mail and shared mail can work for people after a neighborhood's attention.

Also, check out other resources on the web for EDI, the web, and the bleeding edges of technology:

• A show about measuring direct marketing results: Meet Bob Orenstein of International Wine Accessories. His response rates are among the highest in the industry, solidly double digit.
• Buying simpatico lists: Carol Schroeder of Orange Tree Imports.
• Catalogs work: Sundance Catalog (Redford is a name associated with this one).
• Judi Jacobsen of Madison Park Greetings knows her list.