Direct Snail Mail recommendation

[Craig]

Sorry to tie up an internet marketing forum with some "old school" direct mail questions........it's been so long since we've done something with traditional marketing and I know there are folks out there reading that have great traditional marketers they use for things like direct mail pieces.

I need a targeted direct mail piece that delivers a message based on type of car as well as finance info for current vehicle owned. Does anyone have a direct mail company they would recommend?

 

[Alex Snyder]

Take a look at this thread Craig: http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f14/vehicle-pricing-795.html

 

[WLFGRP]

Hey Craig, saw your question. Direct mail is alive and well and reaching consumers in measurable ways every day. For your situation, mail companies will offer a "buy back" letter offering a percentage of Blue Book for a specific make or model and personalized to the consumer. The message is variable but runs along the line of "we need your (model) and willing to pay top dollar, blah blah blah. I find the message weak and over used. The old "tear-sheet" mailer has started showing up touting a stronger message, very brand loyal, personalized to the dealership instead of the consumer. Checks or vouchers are in every consumer's mail box and lose their effectiveness if not delivered to a prescreened consumer. That said, a rebate check or voucher will stimulate a consumer to move their timeframe for purchase forward, but the underlying message has to clearly communicated... "Good time, good dealer, good selection," etc. Your dealer data would obviously be the first place to find prospects, especially those in your service dept that did not purchase from you. You can supplement with Insurance or title data or better yet, use a FICO scored list with previous auto experience. My 2 cents

 

[Gina Carlton]

EDIT: Please add to the conversation with best practices - not a sales pitch. Take a moment to read the DealerRefresh rules.

 

[wweidendorf]

EDIT: Please add to the conversation with best practices - not a sales pitch. Take a moment to read the DealerRefresh rules.

 

[Mitch Gallant]

Hey Craig, we've done business with Absolute Results over the years. I personally really like direct mail. It works well enough in our market area to send out pieces every other month. There's so much opportunity to plug your dealer website that it's a great tie in with web strategies. For the $10 it costs, it pays to buy a specific URL for each campaign... for instance, we're sending a "Spring Fling" credit flyer next month and when you paste visit "springcredit.ca" it flows well and improves your direct visits to that URL, which redirects to the credit ap, and subsequently increases the impact of the flyer in general.

I know Absolute Results doesn't do exactly what your looking for but I wanted to give my and see if others are having good results with direct mail and best practices to pluging your website in that type of print ad. Any ideas that will improve our already "acceptable" penetration would be incredibly appreciated!

I like to put in bullets like

"Too many vehicles to squeeze into this flyer" or "Check out over 200 quality pre-owned vehicles online @" "Thousands of photos online" "Over 25 photos per vehicle with tons more detail"

 

[Craig]

We ended up doing a mailpiece started by and followed up with an email blast with Xspond. Very targeted message, very targeted audience, very good customer service and they had it done quickly. It was built to drive trafic to our main site which we do have landing pages set up for. Helped give us a nice finish to last month as well as start us off for this month.