Are you hard to get hold of?
How many e-mails did you receive over the last few days? How many did you delete without even reading? How many times did you answer the phone? And how does this compare with how many calls were made to you?
It is getting increasingly hard to get a hold of people via phone or e-mail. And it is only going to get worse. The Radicati Group estimates that the number of e-mails sent will increase by nearly 40 billion over the next three years.
This poses a problem for anyone who needs to market new products and services. In the printing industry, it is even worse. If you want to market your products or services to any organisation that produces print you face an extra difficulty. You also have to be able to cut through all the production e-mails and calls that swamp the average person working in print.
So how do marketing teams cut through this noise?
The answer may be simpler than you think. It lies in the medium that we promote: print. Direct mail is becoming an increasingly effective method of sharing a message. These days, receiving an interesting piece of mail is a rare event. It is much more likely to be noticed and read.
The most effective direct mail strategy has now changed. It is no longer a case of sending as much mail as possible in the hope of getting some answers. Instead, the most successful campaigns are highly focussed. They rely on sending out mail pieces that have a high unit cost to small numbers of highly targeted recipients.
Here are four tips to make direct mail to printing companies even more effective:
- Make your direct mail lumpy.
Your direct mail is much more likely to be noticed if it is not flat. Consider including a low-cost gift or a piece of chocolate.
- Address your mail by hand.
If it looks personal, your mail is much more likely to be opened. So use genuine handwriting, not a handwriting font. If possible, use stamps rather than a franking machine.
- Have a call to action.
Make it absolutely clear what you want your recipient to do. I will cover calls to action in more detail in our next article.
- Create a campaign.
Use a series of mail pieces in order to achieve maximum visibility. Ideally, each piece will form a clear series with a teaser for the next piece.
Direct Mail Is About More Than Cutting Through Noise
It is also a great way to showcase the technologies that you sell. You can use Xerox production printers including presses or entry-level models designed for both production and workgroup printing to incorporate unusual sizes, special finishes, and personalised response mechanisms. There is no better way to showcase what you offer than by demonstrating how it can be used in real life.
There is one other reason why you should use direct mail as a marketing channel. It is important that we champion the industry that we are in. If we rely purely on phone and e-mail for our marketing, we are doing print a disservice. And, of course, we are much more likely to find our marketing becomes lost in the noise.
Become a Xerox Channel Partner
Ready to become a Xerox Channel Partner? Contact your Xerox account manager or review the Xerox Global Partner Program and apply to become a Xerox channel partner today to find out how we will help grow your business.
Join our Xerox Channel Partners LinkedIn Community
Looking for more marketing tips and insights from Xerox Agents, Concessionaires, and Document Technology partners from across the globe? Join our private Xerox Channel Partners LinkedIn Group.
Share this on Twitter!
Tweet: If you sell print, why aren’t you marketing with it? Why direct mail is a marketing channel you can’t ignore: https://ctt.ac/bldRz+ via @XeroxPartners
Subscribe to the Channel Partner Connection and receive email updates when we publish a new article.[wysija_form id=”1″]
