With direct mail you can target the exact prospect you want, at their exact address with the ONLY MEDIA THAT GUARANTEES a 100% OPEN RATE and the highest attention rate of any media. Isn’t that the holy grail of marketing, being able to target the exact prospect  you want, at the exact time, with the exact message, and guarantee that they SEE IT.

This is exactly what direct mail delivers and just two of the many reasons that make direct mail so powerful when done right. Let me repeat that, when done right as there are so many things that will kill a direct mail campaign before it even begins. Furthermore, for most industries, direct mail is one of the easiest media to track response rate and ROI. Therefore, you can take if from does direct mail work to this is exactly how well it worked for my business.

With all that said, the reason behind asking the question “Does Direct Mail Work.” Boils down to either one or a combination of the following 6 reasons.

1. I have tried direct mail in the past and it just didn’t work.
2. XXXX told me direct mail doesn’t work. Often this comes from a digital marketing company trying to sell the direct mail or could be a friend or colleague has told them that direct mail doesn’t work.
3. I just don’t really understand marketing in general and/or do not understand the capabilities of direct mail and how it really works.
4. I just don’t think it will work for my business.
5. Let’s really break down each of these reasons and bring some transparency to the heart of the questions.
6. I’ve tried direct mail in the past and it just didn’t work.

If this is you, here are the important questions that need to be asked.

Do you know who and where your mailers were sent to?

There needs to be a sound strategy behind selecting the right areas and prospects to target. Nothing will kill a direct mail campaign more than a bad list and sending your mailers to the wrong prospects in the wrong areas.

Do you have a copy of your last mailer?

This is an easy checkpoint to identify If your direct mail marketing was designed properly both from an aesthetic perspective and content perspective.

If your direct mail marketing wasn’t easy to read, easy to scan, did not have a strong call to action, a compelling offer, contained technical jargon and did not include strategic ad copy that would resonate with your prospective customers, you might as well toss your money down the toilet.

How did you track and/or gauge the effectiveness of your direct mail response and ROI?

Tracking your marketing efforts and determining how customers are finding your business is arguably one of the hardest parts. This becomes even more difficult when deploying a multi-channel marketing approach.

I often hear that call tracking was used to a client’s direct mail response rate. Unfortunately, in 99.9999% of all cases call tracking is NOT an accurate method to track direct mail response.

The reason being is that many prospects who receive your mailer will go online, read reviews and call from the number on Google or your website. The minute a call is made from any number other than the call tracking number on your mailer, you have lost all accuracy.

Although call tracking will show some results and does have some merit, It will only show you those that called from the number on the mailer and is not inclusive or indicative of all calls made from the number on google or your website, thus making it grossly inaccurate.

However, for businesses such as Home Services, HVAC, Plumbing, landscaping, Power Washing, Construction, etc. Auto Repair, Dental Practices, Fitness Centers, Insurance, Financial, Education, etc. etc. etc. that acquire their customers address when they become a customer, it is very easy to attribute ROI.

This is done with a very simple report called a match back report. The match back report takes the new customers your business acquires after your direct mail marketing has been sent out and compares It to the list of prospects who have received your direct mail marketing matching back a detailed list of every new customer acquired that was targeted with direct mail.

Of course, it cannot tell you if your direct mail was the only reason,  they became a customer. For example, the direct mail got their attention but your website and google reviews is what pushed them over the edge. The latter you will likely never be able to solve for at scale and you could spend a decade determining if you want to consider it first, touch last touch, etc., but it surely does give you the ability to  attribute direct mail as one of the touches, if not the primary touch that got them to become a customer at your business.

For other types of business such as restaurants, retail, etc. that are not able to acquire a customer’s address at time of purchase, it is likely you will never know your exact response rate. In these cases, the best you can do is count coupons or try and track special offers with unique codes to tie them back to an offer directly from one of your mailers. Many suggest look at sales as a determining factor. As intuitive as those sounds, I have seen a customer who are getting a response and have declining sales due to operational issues.

XXXX told me direct mail doesn’t work.

First, we must ask, who is providing you with this information. If it is a company trying to sell you another form of marketing and they are bashing another marketing channel, then you should probably just disregard it and/or ask them to provide you with fact-based evidence to substantiate their claim as opposed to what they think or what they say they are seeing. I’d be willing to be they can’t provide you with anything accurate.

If it is a friend, family member or colleague, it can only have come their opinion or from an experience they have had in the past with direct mail. If it is opinion based and not fact based than it can be disregarded. If it is based on previous experience, ask them the questions above addressed above to uncover if they executed their direct mail campaign properly and/or accurately tracked their direct mail campaign results to substantiate their feedback.

I just don’t really understand marketing in general and/or do not understand the capabilities of direct mail and how it really works.

This is a fair concern. Most business owners and managers aren’t marketing experts. Even those business owner managers that do understand marketing or have some expertise may not be the authority on a specific channel of marketing like SEO, Direct Mail, etc. Therefore, it’s always a best practice to find an expert in that field and rely on them to help you.

The key is finding the right expert which is the biggest challenge. Fortunately using google can help make this process much more efficient. I recommend by starting by looking for companies that have expertise with your specific industry and have the google reviews to match.

I just don’t think it will work for my business.

You may be right about this concern. Direct mail may not work well for your businesses, or it may work, but you may be able to

get a much better ROI using another form of marketing. This can only be determined by consulting with a real direct mail expert.

For example, let’s assume you owned an auto body repair shop. I would not recommend direct mail as the best use of your marketing dollars and the most viable way for your business to acquire new customers.

The reason being is that the need for auto body repair cannot be determined by someone’s demographic or where they live and there is no direct mail list you can buy that breaks down vehicle owners that may need auto body repairs. A vehicles owners need for an auto body repair will typically be determined by a recent event or immediate need they have to repair  their vehicle.
A better use of an auto body repair shops marketing dollars would be better deployed to channels like local SEO, optimizing your google business profile, executing PPC. These channels will ensure you are optimized so that when a prospect has a need arise and they head to google to find a local body shop that yours is at the top of the list.

In summation, direct mail is extremely effective when executed strategically for the right type of business.

To learn more about how Best4mailing can help your business strategically acquire and retain more customers the right way. Contact us today.

The post Does Direct Mail Work? appeared first on Best4mailing.

As a direct mail marketing professional, I know having a strong offer on our client’s direct mail marketing in the form of a coupon or special is a major catalyst to entice new customers to try their establishment for the first time as well as getting current customers to come back and become loyal repeat customers. 

However, when speaking to many of our clients, it can be difficult for them to understand that offering a small discount is well worth it when comparing the discount amount to their customers lifetime value. Your customers lifetime value is the amount of money a customer is expected to spend at your business during the entire time they remain a customer. You can easily google “customer lifetime value” and read endless articles on the topic. 

Furthermore, there is still a misconception as to who uses coupons. For example, we often here from our clients in areas with higher incomes, that wealthier people aren’t looking for coupons or that their clients wouldn’t be interested in a coupon. 

 Of course, we know this is not the case based on previous data and many studies that have been done in the past. However, we wanted to refresh the topic with current relevant data and find out how many wealthy consumers use coupons compared to those with lower incomes. Furthermore, we wanted to see if and how these numbers changed based on the product/service being offered. E.g., Are more consumers using coupons for pizza than for auto repair service, HVAC services, etc. etc.  

Therefore, we decided to take four industries (in no specific order) Auto Repair, Pizza/Restaurants, General Dentistry & Home Services (HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical) and conduct our own research to get the answers and provide updated current data to the old question. 

Below we will cover our key findings by industry. If you would like to dive deeper into our survey methodology, how we conducted our survey, parameters to be included in our survey as well as more details regarding these and many other key findings, we have provided a link at the bottom of this article to each specific consumer research and insights report entitled “Cracking The Code.” Cracking The Code is our full industry specific consumer research and insight report that answered these questions to consumers in addition to many others.  

Home Services (HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical) 

We asked 5,818 homeowners: 

 If you received a coupon/special in the mail from a reputable home services provider offering a discount on services and/or product you need, would you use it? 

Results based on income:

Dental: 

We asked 5,842 consumers: 

If you received a coupon/special offer in the mail for dental services that you need, how likely are you to redeem that offer?

Results based on income:

As you can see based on each industry we analyzed, the consumer interest in coupons is high regardless of income and in many cases, those with higher incomes have reported they would use coupons more than those with lower incomes.  

The only outlier to this happens to be in the restaurant/pizzeria industry. Although over 50% reported using coupons for their favorite restaurants, this is the only industry analyzed where respondents with higher incomes reported less usage of coupons/specials than those with lower incomes. 

So quite simply it appears that some of the wealthier demographics are more interested in using coupons where the savings are greater. All in all, the answer to our original question is a resounding YES consumers use coupons and YES consumers with higher incomes use coupons. The challenge for you now is to develop a strategic coupon campaign that will appeal to the market you are targeting.  

Below you will find links to each industry specific consumer insight report that not only contains the details of our coupons research above but is chalk full of other key insights that will help you better understand the consumers you are targeting as prospective new customers.  

 Josh Davis, CRO 

The post Who Uses Coupons? appeared first on Best4mailing.

Whatever the reason, the main source of these treasured takeout menus is – you guessed it! – direct mail. Customers receive these handy little menus and other mailers directly in their mailbox, and then stash them away for a later evening.

But stocking up customers’ menu drawers isn’t the only advantage to a direct mail strategy for your restaurant. These assets can also help you tell your restaurant’s story, bringing a more personal and humanized element to your brand for your local audience.

Give Them A Taste With A Menu Mailer

The first asset that we recommend for our restaurant customers is the classic Menu Mailer. This product allows you to showcase the most important part of your business – your menu. And this Menu Mailer is always completely customized to reflect the logos, branding and images of your business. Visual menu mailers don’t just give customers an idea of the types of cuisine you serve and the services you provide (carry out, delivery, catering, etc.) – menus are also the perfect first asset for a direct mail campaign. Give your customers the complete picture of what you can offer them, alongside photos of your food that will feel so real, they’ll almost be able to taste your dishes.

Showcase Your Value With A Postcard

Once you’ve shown customers what you can do in your kitchen through a menu mailer, tell your story in terms of value through a postcard that includes a great offer, or discounted deal. Think about it this way: A menu will entice your customers and get their taste buds ready to try what you’re offering. Following this up with a postcard that offers a special value is what will get them through the door.

But don’t just take our word for it: According to the Food Institute, people visit restaurants much more often when they have a coupon in hand, and about 77% of all diners said they’ve used coupons at restaurants in the recent past. Overall, people with coupons dine out an average of two to three more times per month, compared to non-coupon users. And what about telling your restaurant’s story? Offering a special discount or value through a direct mail postcard that includes a discount or deal shows that you not only care about your customers’ tummies – you care about their wallets, as well.

Support The WIIFM Factor

One of the most important, but often most overlooked, elements of direct mail is the WIIFM factor, or “What’s In It For Me?” You’ll likely tempt a good portion of your target audience to give your restaurant a try with a menu mailer followed up by a coupon. But some potential diners may still be skeptical, and may need a little more of your story first. This is where the WIIFM factor comes in. Direct mail allows you to let your customers know exactly what’s in it for them through your direct mail messaging. Highlighting the benefits you can offer in addition to enticing their taste buds is an ideal strategy, but it’s important to put yourself in your customers’ shoes here. Instead of “we have the best pizza in a tri-state area,” try something like “Our unique flavors and fresh ingredients are something you can’t find anywhere else.” Your food is a rare commodity, and direct mail helps you showcase that.

Make Special Announcements And Target Your Audience

One of the best things about direct mail is that there are so many different products and programs to choose from, ensuring you can find the perfect asset at the ideal price for your direct mail campaign.

While things like menus and postcards are absolute classics, consider telling your story in other ways, through products and messaging like:

• Postcard magnets that include a seasonal element. These are perfect for including a team schedule or other seasonal theme. Best of all, customers will keep these up for weeks, or months at a time – so your business is never far from your customers’ thoughts (and your phone number is right there on their fridge.)
• Get their attention with plastic postcards: These are heavier and more sturdy than the traditional postcard, and will stand out from the rest of recipients’ mail. You can even include a pop-out key tag for a company loyalty program.  
• Interactive products like scratch-off postcards. These assets are fantastic because they don’t just give your customers something to look at, they also give them something to do. Customers can scratch off a latex sticker to reveal an exclusive discount, or exciting gift. Best of all, assets like this make an impression, and help your restaurant to truly stand out.

You can also consider strategies like making an announcement with a postcard – say, for instance, you just joined a delivery app in addition to your regular carry-out options. Your customers will want to know!

Cater To Your Customers With Direct Mail

These tips are only the beginning – connect with us at Best4mailing today to learn more about how you can tell your story through direct mail. We’re happy to send you a portfolio of samples so you can see and feel our products for yourself.

The post How A Direct Mail Strategy Helps You Tell Your Restaurant’s Story appeared first on Best4mailing.

In order to increase the likelihood that you will benefit from the pizza obsession sweeping the nation, why not try some proven pizza shop promotions? Below are five marketing ideas for pizza shop owners that have turned out to be great revenue generators.

Send Out Pizza Box Toppers With Magnets

Are you using your pizza box as an advertising space? A pizza box topper that includes a refrigerator magnet is an outstanding way to ensure that your name literally “sticks around” in a household. People are accustomed to popping magnetized menus and pizza shop information onto their refrigerators as a convenient reminder.

Best of all, it can be economical to send pizza box toppers with magnets because you simply have to attach them to each box before it’s given or delivered.

Offer Limited-Time Coupons

Coupons for pizza shops are great, but have you ever sent some out only to get relatively few back? The problem might have been that you didn’t add a deadline. A coupon with an expiration date creates immediacy. After all, the pizza lover wants to use the coupon before it’s out-of-date. Always make sure that any coupons you send through bulk mail or give to customers is a limited-time offer.

Oh, and make it a stellar offer, too! A five percent discount isn’t enough. Choose two-for-one offers, or something similar, instead.

Choose Direct Mail to Saturate the Community

Direct mail is a great way to saturate your neighborhoods and build brand recognition. Direct mail pieces can be sent a variety of ways, from saturation bulk mail to direct mail using specific lists. If you feel that your pizza shop has just not connected with all the potential patrons within your service area, direct mail can be a huge benefit.

Just be sure to have your direct mail marketing pieces delivered on a consistent basis to ensure long-term success.

Advertise Promotions

Are you planning an impressive promotion, such as the unveiling of a loyalty club that will allow customers to acquire points or get free pizzas and other items? Don’t assume that a banner in your pizza shop will do the advertising for you. Instead, advertise your promotions with bulk mail flyers, postcards or other marketing pieces. A big promotion that’s ongoing for a short time can boost sales immediately, and assist you in creating brand loyalty for the future.

Have a Full-Color, Professional Menu

Is your pizza shop menu a little boring or bland? Is it outdated because you’ve changed your prices or removed/added items? Your pizza shop deserves an upgrade. A full-color, professional-quality menu can help set you apart from your competition. It also gives people a tangible list of what they can get at your pizza shop, from pizzas to sandwiches and appetizers.

Also, don’t forget that coupons can be included as call-to-action pieces to get your phone ringing and your ovens working overtime.

When your pizza shop is ready to try new marketing ideas, feel free to contact Best4mailing through our online form. Pizza shop owners deserve to leverage all their options in order to grab as much of this $38 billion dollar industry as they can.

The post Five Marketing Ideas for Pizza Shop Owners appeared first on Best4mailing.

Pizza carryout boxes are unique because they provide you with an unbelievable opportunity to sell more pizza in the future to current customers. However, too many pizzas are sent out with a generic message or logo on the pizza box. This is a missed chance at revenue.

Instead of delivering pizza boxes void of sales materials, you should consider adding box toppers for pizza business improvement.

Why Pizza Shop Box Toppers Work

You’ve probably seen pizza shop box toppers before. They are the marketing materials attached to the top of the pizza box. With a slight tug from your patrons, the pizza box toppers can be removed and held for discounts or specials on later orders.

Box toppers help you advertise your business, and provide you with a vehicle to capture the interest of your patrons. People who have already ordered from your pizza restaurant once are more likely to order from you again. So, it’s imperative that you give them an incentive to pick up the phone, visit your shop or order online sooner rather than later.

Styles of Pizza Shop Box Toppers

When pizza shop owners work with Best4mailing, they usually start by developing their preferred type of box topper. Box toppers can be as simple as leafs of high-quality paper printed with advertisements. They can also be magnets or even full menus. However, all pizza shop box toppers need to have a call to action. This ensures that people are driven to buy more pizza from the same restaurant, rather than go elsewhere.

Some of the box topper calls to action that work for pizza shops include:

• A limited-time offer, such as a coupon. In the pizza business, you have to consider incentivizing your customer base with significant offers. An offer for a mere 10 percent off the next order won’t cut it. Instead, consider two-for-one, or half off. Those motivate people more.
• A request to become part of a loyalty club. This works if you’re building a database of customers. Ask your customers to join your exclusive mailing list. You can see who goes to your landing page and fills out the form. After you’ve captured their information, you can sell to them in more ways.
• A suggestion that they follow you on social media. This will be harder to track, but could broaden your reach. If your customers begin to talk about you at popular social media platforms, their friends will be exposed to your pizza shop. Over time, this assists in building brand recognition.

Now that you know why you should use pizza box toppers for your pizza shop, it’s time to fill out a contact form and discuss your revenue goals with us. It can only serve to increase your revenue and get you closer to your shop’s objectives.

The post Why Your Pizza Business Should Be Thinking on Top of the Box appeared first on Best4mailing.

For most pizza shops, NFL football season is great for sales. Compared to other times of the year, pizza restaurant owners often experience increased sales during football season.

As the owner or manager of a pizza restaurant, it’s crucial that you capitalize on getting as many orders as possible during football season. How can this be done? By strategically marketing your pizza shop at the right time with the right methods.

Best4mailing has worked with thousands of pizza shops across the United States. We understand the pizza business and know pizza shop owners are always looking for new ways to promote and get an edge on the competition.

With the first regular season NFL game scheduled for Thursday September 4th, 2014, now is the time to start developing your pizza marketing game plan for maximizing football season sales. In this blog post we are going to share with you three marketing tactics that will not only help increase your sales during football season, but all year long.

Tactic #1 – Direct Mail Postcard Magnets Featuring your Team’s Schedule

Postcard magnets are extremely effective. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) in their DMA Statistical Fact Book reported that “A postcard with a magnet attached is read at least 51.9% more often than a traditional postcard.”

Postcard magnets typically end up on the refrigerator. This is great news for postcard magnet marketer. The kitchen is one of the highest traffic areas of a household! Having your advertisement on the fridge will significantly increase the visibility of your message.

You can take postcard magnet marketing to the next level by adding your local team’s game schedule. An eye catching design, combined with a local football schedule and strategically developed coupons, is a winning combination for keeping your postcard magnet on the fridge for a longer period of time.

Best4mailing just released brand new designs for the 2014 NFL football season. Below are a few examples.

For additional designs or to find out how many addresses are in your area, we encourage you to contact our team directly for a free consultation.

Tactic #2 – Box Topping

Our second football season pizza marketing tactic creates repeat orders by strategically targeting customers that have already been in your store. Quite simply, pizza box topping turns every pizza box into a marketing vehicle that will help generate future orders from previous customers.

Pizza box toppers are inexpensive and provide a great return on investment. For less than $0.04 cents per piece, you can turn every pizza box into a sales person for your business.

Power Tips for Pizza Box Topper Advertising

• Be creative and differentiate yourself from the competition. One way to accomplish this is through creative graphic design. Consider designing your box topper coupons to look like the actual football tickets from your local team.

  You want your marketing efforts to be fresh, creative, and most importantly, stand out from the competition.

• Consider a monthly box topper program. We encourage pizza shop owners to update their box toppers every month with a new design or coupon offers. This will keep your pizza box topper marketing fresh, creative, and consistent.
• Print only what you need. We advise not to order a large quantity of box toppers towards the end of football season. You run the risk of having leftover box toppers with an outdated message.

Box toppers are an inexpensive way to consistently market your business to existing customers. Learn more about Best4mailing’s box topper printing and monthly box topper marketing programs.

Tactic #3 – Door Hanging

Door hanging yields great results. It’s high visibility, low cost, and extremely effective. Door hangers are stand-alone products that are not combined with other marketing materials or mailers.

What’s great about door hangers is the homeowner must look at it before they enter their home. Most people bring the door hanger inside before they decide what they are going to do with the advertisement itself.

Door hanging is laser targeted. Not only do you choose the houses but you also control the time period that your door hangers are delivered. Game starts at 4pm? You can have your team start placing door hangers at 1pm to gain maximum exposure before the game.

Door hangers are so effective, many owners/operators choose to door hang all year round. However, if you are new to door hanging, there are a few strategies to consider before starting your next door hanging campaign.

In all scenarios we recommend printing a smaller quantity (5,000) of door hangers to ensure that you are getting a proper return on investment before committing to a larger print order.

Create football themed door hangers to be used specifically during football season. Distribute the door hangers as close to game time as possible. If you are not in an urban area, an easy place to start is apartment complexes since you can distribute a large quantity of door hangers in a short amount of time. Once distributed, track the results and determine if you want to expand your efforts to include homes and businesses.

If your pizza shop offers delivery, provide a bundle of door hangers to your drivers and have them door hang a few homes around their deliveries. This is a quick and easy way to distribute your door hangers without interrupting operations or adding significant costs.

Power Tips for Door Hanger Marketing

• Make sure your employees are properly representing your company. The people distributing your door hangers should be well dressed and act respectfully.
• Do not door hang at night! You run the risk of scaring customers. Always door hang during daytime hours.
• Do not door hang the same houses too frequently or your potential customers will get annoyed. Would you want to receive a door hanger every few days from the same company?
• If you have left-over door hangers, you can always re-purpose them as pizza box toppers. Customers rarely notice the small half-moon die cut at the top.

Best4mailing has the lowest prices on door hangers. Visit our door hanger printing page for a quote and free samples.

In Conclusion

Hopefully by using the three tactics above, you will see increased sales for your pizza shop during the 2014 NFL football season.

If you have questions about postcard magnets, pizza box toppers, or door hangers, we encourage you to contact our team today for a free consultation.

The post Football Season Marketing Plan for Pizza Shops appeared first on Best4mailing.

Hello and welcome to a case study presented by the marketing team at the Best4mailing. Today we will be showing you a creative way to integrate the use of QR codes on to a menu, magnet, or postcard.

For those of you who do not know what QR code is, a QR code is short for “Quick Response Code”. If you scan any QR code over smartphone, you will gain quick and easy access to the content that the advertiser is directing you to.

For example, instead of typing in http://demo.themenushark.com/sharkspizza to get to our online ordering demo site, you can simply scan this QR code for instant access. I’m sure you have agree it is much easier than typing in the URL!

So everyone agrees that QR Codes are a great way to deliver immediate content into the consumer’s hands, but how can you creatively use a QR code to give your ad more exposure and get people excited about your message.

Well, that’s the exact question we asked ourselves. So, we rolled up our sleeves and developed a strategy to do just that.

Step 1 – The Concept

The test subject was Leoni’s Pizzeria postcard. Our concept was to leave a coupon space open to put a QR code in it. Once scanned, it would take their customers to a secret coupon. The “secret” aspect of this offer will intrigue the consumer to want to take a closer look at the advertisement.

Step 2 – Create Your Landing Page and Secret Coupon Offer

For this case study, we used a free website platform www.webs.com at no additional cost and created the website, http://leonispizzasecretcoupon.webs.com. We then uploaded image of our secret coupon offer which, in this example, was a buy one get one free wrap.

Step 3 – Integrate, Produce, and Distribute

The next step was to have a graphic designer integrate the QR Code on to the postcard. Next we produced 10,000 6″x9″ full color postcards and direct mailed them to local addresses by mailing 1,000 per week over a 10 week period from November 21st, 2011 to January 30th, 2012.

Step 4 – Track the Results

Our QR Code software allows us to track how many unique scans our QR Code has received. As you can see here from the time period of November 21, 2011 to February 29th 2012, which is one month after all the postcards have been distributed, our secret coupon QR Code was scanned over 550 times. All in all, we received a 5.5 scan response rate for the mailer and that does not include the even higher response rate from the surrounding coupons on the piece.

In conclusion QR Codes are not only a great way to get information into the consumers hands, but when used creatively, can get your surrounding coupons an ad more exposure.

We hope you found this case study informative. For more information about how the Best4mailing can help drive your sales for your business call us today at (610) 621-2994.

The post Should You Use QR Code Coupons for Direct Mail? appeared first on Best4mailing.