Direct Marketing Companies in the UK

[BrightSparke]

Dear All:

We are a small startup with a wealth of technical expertise but limited direct marketing experience.

Research clearly shows us that we should include direct marketing as part of our product launch, however, it also points to the difficulty in finding quality organisations in this space.

Ours is a quality software product designed to help people network more effectively. It is aimed squarely at ABC1s who appreciate the importance of developing this - perhaps their most valuable - asset.

Advice or recommendations very gratefully received.

Kind Regards, Peter

[10 Yetis]

Hi Peter,

Direct Marketing (DM) is a reliable marketing method (the missionary position of marketing - if all else fails then DM will get your response rates up :) ) , but its average response rate for sending out cold information runs at usually less than 5% unless your copy was written my God himself*.

Incentivised DM response rates are usually notably higher... basically, this means putting something in that encourages recipients to respond, e.g. something funny, a coupon requesting for more information, or maybe the famous old, "respond by x of September 05 and you get a free thingmewhatsit".

It is probably easier for you to think of the incentive yourself rather than pay someone to do it for you (unless you are proper techies and then you should seek help from your nearest creative person) and then just find a super dooper wordsmith to write the copy for your sales/introdcution letter... (cough, wink, whisper, wave.... guess what I do? :D ).

As I say, DM is only one marketing area you could chose, there are a few others that may better suit your business....?

*obviously can be substitued for religious figure of choice

[daveashton]

Your first call is free so if you need help please call BIZAL

[finstar]

Incentives are one way of getting a slightly better response from cold marketing, but in todays market the word 'slightly' should be emphasized.

There are many other ways of boosting up your direct marketing success rate, realistically I have seen rates of up to 25% success (from cold marketing), although my own direct marketing efforts currently enjoy a far higher rate of success, though whether some of that is dumb luck, we shall have to wait and see.

[10 Yetis]

25% response rate from cold unincentivised marketing? What do you put in the mailing? A crisp £10 note? :)

That is a great return...

[keirms]

Wow! 25%... so 1 in every 4 mailings evoked some kind of response? We just sent out 260 letters and got a measly 1 enquiry which lead to a booking (which fortunately paid for the campaign... just!).

We're not sure why it failed - the database was well chosen, the letter was well written and quite sales-y and had a call to action at the end. I even included a snappy title!

It was around the time of 7/7 and the only incentive we offered was £20 off an exercise and nutrition programme (which we put in the letter) so it could have been that.

We're about to embark on another DM campaign - this time with a different database and this time with a "FREE personal training taster session" card included. Fingers crossed for this one!

[10 Yetis]

major events can put a real dampner on campaigns...

I did one for a client around the time of a very high profile religious figures death and as everyone was talking about it, i.e. media, we had to stop the campaign and then relaunch a few weeks later.

Good luck with the new DM campaign. Let us know how you get on.