Some Amazing Direct Mail Marketing Statistics You May Not Know

Did you know: 85% – say they open, sort, process and read selected pieces from their mail everyday. 15% let it accumulate unopened for 2 or more days.

Did you know: 55% report ‘greater enjoyment’ from reading their regular mail vs. e-mail? This includes the 18-39 age group.

Did you know: 75% of consumers say they are examining their mail more closely in recent months for coupons and special offers that save them money?

Did you know: Close to 40% of consumers say that they have tried a new business after receiving direct mail from that business … and a70% report renewing a relationship with a business they’d ceased patronizing, as a result of receiving direct mail from the business inviting them back?

Sources: The Print Council and DM-News/Piney Bowes 2008 Direct Mail Survey and seen by this reporter in Glazer Kennedy’s No BS Marketing Letter.  

My Comments: Wow! For all the businesses struggling right now, this is incredibly powerful information. Start, or get back to, communicating with your customers, clients, and prospects. And you might find this surprising, but I’m recommending a monthly print newsletter! The chances of your print newsletter getting noticed and read, compared to that of email, are huge and potentially very lucrative. Success is never on sale.

Check out my wildy popular ‘Done-for-You’ No Hassle Newsletter program, Success Advantage 2.0 at www.NohassleNewsletters.com.

Newsletter writing is a skill that once learned can reap huge dividend for your business. Many companies make the mistake of writing all about what I refer to as ‘work stuff’ – big mistake! Producing a newsletter that gets read requires you to write about what interests your customers, not you!

If your company newsletter informs, educates, and entertains your customers, with a special emphasis on entertains, your customers will read it month after month. If you give them a newsletter that focuses too much on your business, products, and services, they will not likely read it every month, and you will come to the conclusion that newsletters are not very effective.

So what makes good content for the “work stuff” part of your newsletter? Think about the questions your customers ask you. Those answers make great copy for your newsletter. Let’s say you have a chiropractic practice. Patients have heard about carpal tunnel syndrome and ask questions about it. Patients know that chiropractors deal with back pain, so they ask you all kinds of back pain questions when they come in the door. And if you’re a chiropractor, you get questions about general health issues like keeping kids healthy.

All of those questions and concerns can be turned into articles for your newsletter. Help your readers solve a problem. Answer their questions. Conversely, say you are an accountant. Each month you send a newsletter jammed with information—about tax laws or pending legislation that Congress is considering. As this accountant’s customer, would you read it? No! That’s what you pay your accountant for—to know the tax laws and follow his industry.

Don’t make your newsletter all about your business. No matter what business you’re in, you know your customers’ problems. You know the questions they ask. That’s what your newsletter should be about. The “other stuff” is so important, and so needed, it is the reason that I created what is my most popular product to date, Success Advantage 2.0.

Success Advantage 2.0 is my monthly ‘Done-for-You’ newsletter content and ready-to-use newsletter template program. To help people create and send their customer newsletters every month, I supply subscribers with at least twenty pages of my famous customer-loving content (the “other stuff”) covering a wide range of topics that they are free to use in their newsletters. I also provide subscribers with ready-to-use newsletter templates to remove the hassle of designing their newsletter. The newsletters are provided in MS Word so that they are quick and easy for anyone to edit. So, if you want to have your monthly newsletter about 90 percent ready to go even before you write a single word, go immediately to www.NoHassleNewsletters.com.

Producing great company newsletters is not as easy as you think! Newsletter writing is a skill that once learned pays huge benefits. Many companies make the mistake of writing all about what I refer to as ‘work stuff’ – big mistake!

Great customer newsletters are written with things that customers want to read. Most customers want to read articles and stories that are interesting and informative. Sure, some articles will obviously have to do with your company, products, and services. But there is a limit to how much your newsletter should be about your company, or you risk turning it into another sales/marketing piece—and that’s not the goal of a newsletter. If customers perceive your newsletter as just another marketing piece, they will not eagerly read it every month.

I recommend you maintain a 50/50 ratio—50 percent of your newsletter focused on your business, products, and services (I call this “work stuff”) and the other 50 percent on the “other stuff.” The other stuff consists of articles and stories that are fun, interesting, and informative, and typically have nothing to do with your business.

I’ll give you a big clue—while the other stuff has nothing to do with your company, it is the real secret to the success of many customer newsletters. It is what your customers enjoy reading, and as such, they keep reading your newsletter. That builds top-of-mind awareness for you and your company.

You may be asking, “Jim, what do you mean by the ‘other stuff’?” I am talking about short, interesting, and informative articles, factoids, tips, cartoons, humor, and sometimes even puzzles. The secret is, this is what your customers enjoy reading, no matter what business you’re in. This is what they look forward to, what brings a smile to their faces.

Reader’s Digest is one of the most widely subscribed to magazines. It is largely a collection a stories on a variety of subjects, and one of their most popular categories is humor. This should not come as much of a shock when you consider that so much of what we read and hear is either bad news or negative. People appreciate reading good news. They appreciate learning something, and they particularly appreciate when you do not bore them.

As I mentioned earlier, effective newsletter writing is a skill that can pay huge dividends in terms of more repeat and referral business. Don’t make the mistake that most companies make by writing your newsletter all about boring ‘company stuff!’

If you struggle with writing newsletters that your customers, clients, and prospects actually like to read, then check out my wildly popular ‘Done-for-You’ No Hassle Newsletter program called Success Advantage 2.0!