Drive Sales With Direct Mail

Since direct mail is easily saved and remembered better than digital, using it to drive sales is a no brainier. Did you also know that you can use your prospects and customers who receive your mail pieces to help you sell? Seriously, you really can! This is not easy and must have careful planning but, you can drive customers to sell for you through your direct mail program. It may sound too good to be true, but it’s not.

How to get customers to sell for you:

1. Happy Customers – Before you can even consider this type of plan you need to have happy customers. How can you make happy customers? Make sure you know what they want, deliver it to them plus a little extra. Your customers love it when you go above and beyond and they want others to experience it too.
2. Incentives – In order to drive the selling behavior, you need to add an incentive for customers. You can do this with discounts, giveaways, or anything else your customers will find value in.
3. Method – Make it easy for your customers to sell for you with a give-a-friend coupon cards, a tear off postcard, a buck slip or any other device you can think of for them to share with friends or neighbors.
4. Tracking – You need to be able to track who is referring you and who your new customers are. In order to do that you will need to code your pieces so that as responses come in you have the ability to match them back to your data. This will also allow you to see which customers brought you the most sales and which offers resonated the most.
5. Reward – Once you have the information on your top customer referral sales you should reward them for all their hard work. A thank you note and a small gift go a long way toward getting you continued business. This also encourages them to continue the effort in the future.

Once you have cycled in a new customer you then want to make them a part of your selling program so that they can share your services with their friends, neighbors and family. This referral program can really build into a nice revenue stream as long as you are taking care of people along the way. Happy customers are number one for a reason, without them this program does not work.

Direct mail is a great channel for this type of program because it gives real tangible materials to your customers to pass on to people they know. Make sure that you are creating pieces that are worthy of their efforts. Make them interesting and of real value. Add images, color, and even texture to draw attention. This type of program should have mail pieces that cost more; remember your overhead is less since the customer is selling for you. Use those extra funds to make fun and engaging pieces people will not only want to pass on but will respond to when they get it.

Not all direct mail is effective. The more time you take in strategic planning and really focusing on the customer and how you can help them, the better this program will work for you. Are you ready to get started?