Why I don't trust Direct Mail

[kevinfrye]

What is the problem with the picture of the letter I have below? It is addressed to my father who died over 13 years ago. I remember after he passed away, I spent the next couple years returning every letter, and letting them know he passed away, and I finally gave up. Hmmm, why wouldn't the folks running these address lists want to make sure they were as accurate as possible? Perhaps because the more names they can charge you for sending direct mail, the more money they make.

What % of your direct mail is actually going to a real person?

Are you able to see how many of these mailers are returned? I mean REALLY see how many of these are returned? And is your vendor updating their mailing list...

Call me cynical, but am I the only one???

 

[Jerry Thibeau]

When I worked at a dealership we would give these to the operator and she would cleanse the database in her spare time. With a good database, direct mail can be effective, and when you couple direct mail with a phone call the results can be significant. We should get Troy Spring on here to talk about direct mail, the guy is a genius on the subject.

 

[dvMail]

Wouldn't a simple NCOA Link data fix this problem? I mean, its not like its an expensive service.

 

[Daniel J. Mondello]

Not too mention it's difficult to measure the result so getting a true ROI is nearly impossible. Oh, and it isn't exactly cheap... My 2cents

 

[ddavis]

I have to agree with Jerry, it can be very effective. What it did for the service department always paid for it.

 

[dvMail]

And this is why you need to audit your 3rd party data before it goes out!

Dad gets OfficeMax mail addressed 'Daughter Killed In Car Crash' - chicagotribune.com

I don't recommend direct mail for consumer prospecting. Too expensive.

But this is how we've been able to make direct mail more cost effective for my dealerships.

Example:

We're working for a Subaru dealer that is trying to move a bunch of RWD niche market cars in the middle of a very snowy, cold midwestern winter. Not the ideal time to sell something like this. So here is the plan of attack using our direct mail strategy.

We will do a 3rd party email broadcast to the dealerships AOR. With customized tracking software, we can look into the post broadcast analytics and identify those who opened the email and clicked on the targeted model from the email. We will then build out a customized small batch postal mailer that will go out to those who expressed enough interest to read the subject line, open the email, click on the model and visit the dealer's website for more information. Once the postal offer has been sent, we will time the delivery so that the day the recipient receives the post card in their mailbox, they will also be hit with Google remarketing display ads.

This gave the dealer a 3-pronged approach to prospect marketing. Email for prospecting. Postal ramarketing to self-identified prospects. Display pay per click re-marketing for the increasingly more aggressive call to action.