Rising Postal Rates? Don

The United States Post Office in the past had some trouble with its finances and their solution was to raise the postal rates. Whether or not you agree with this approach to trying to stay in business, like the weather and government in general, it’s something you have to live with.

Many companies have used this as a reason to send out fewer or smaller mailings in an attempt to keep their costs down. Here’s a quote from an issue of Direct Marketing News:

“Despite a string of healthy annual increases, the growth of direct mail expenditures is expected to slow over the next four years. Direct mail continued to grow in 2001 but slowed because of the anthrax scare”, the study said.

The study also said, “Direct mail will continue to expand during the forecast period but at a slower pace than in the past because of the emergence of e-mail marketing and postal rate hikes, which will force marketers to limit mailings.”

The question is: should you agree with this and follow the trend, or should you turn it to your advantage? Just think, with fewer mailing pieces arriving in your customers’ or prospects’ mailboxes, your glossy, full-color postcards are going to stand out even more and have a greater chance of producing the desired response.

When you start looking at what you have to gain by increasing the amount of direct mail marketing you do and what you have to lose by cutting back, there really isn’t a question as to which way to go.

Of course you should be smart about your mailings. Make sure they are really well targeted and put a little more thought into the design and content so as to make sure they impinge. That just makes sense.

So while others are cutting their own throats by cutting back on direct mailing, you can benefit by increasing yours and sending your postcards into a less heavily glutted marketplace where they will receive more attention. Win-win.

More Marketing Dope

Direct marketing can make you very successful, but you’ve got to understand the basics. Here are some more gems of the industry that can take you from being a diamond in the rough to the luminous bling-bling.

When advertising your product or service, honesty is not only the legal and ethical path, but also the path to the highest amount of repeat business.

Many times companies fall into the trap of trying to “lure” customers in to their store. They make claims that are technically true but are worded in a way that make them sound better than they actually are. The company may not be consciously trying to deceive their customer, but none the less if exactly what is advertised is not delivered the customer will feel deceived. This customer is not likely to do business with this company no matter what their advertising offers in the future. List the benefits of your product factually and deliver what is promised and your customers will keep coming back.

When advertising, it is best to outline the benefits of your product or service. Simply naming the features that it has may not show what it can actually do for your customer.

Example: A car company releases a new model of car that features “new indestructible porcelain brakes”. This fact is touted in all of their commercials but the cars aren’t flying off the lot. It is very likely that the customers in their target market, mostly families that are concerned about safety, have no idea what difference these brakes make in the performance of the vehicle. If they had instead advertised the benefit that the car is “equipped with brakes that can stop your car three times faster” it would have given the customer a compelling reason to be interested.

Think about what the benefit of your product or service is and focus on that. If you are a computer maintenance company your product may be “server management and database maintenance” but you will be better off saying that you can help “increase office productivity by allowing easier access to client files”. Many times your customers don’t understand your business. That is why they have to hire you. Make sure to explain to them not only what you do, but how it can help them.

When a customer gives you their email address you have one more way to get your message to them.

One of the best ways to supplement Direct Mail Marketing is Direct Email Marketing. However, unlike direct mail marketing, unsolicited email marketing is illegal. You can’t just go out and buy a list of email addresses and start sending to them. There is one way to purchase lists for emailing called “opt in” lists but this method is not recommended because the rate of people on the list that actually “opt in” to receiving your promo is very low. This is why you should always collect customers’ email addresses as you are getting their physical addresses.

Also be sure not to slam your customers with too much email promotion. I recommend not sending more than one email per week to each client. Not only will this keep you from angering your customers, it will also keep up the interest level and keep your emails from getting deleted before they are even opened.

If your company is planning on emailing specials or a Monthly Email Newsletter you will need to have this list for them to be effective. If you are not planning on contacting customers and prospects via email, you should be!

Make Your Mailing a Home Run, Not a Strike Out!

You can use great design and copy to get a better response.

When you send a mailing to your customers or prospective customers you are counting on making considerably more money in new business than you spend on the mailing, right? It is obvious that if you were not going to profit from the mailing, you wouldn’t send it out.

A little less obvious is that it costs almost the same amount of money to send out a very attractive mailing piece with brilliant copy which is more likely to produce a great response rate as it does to send out a boring, poorly designed piece guaranteed only to land rapidly in the trash. Why?

The major part of your expenditure is in the mailing list and the postage. The printing costs are about the same for a perfect card as for a mediocre one. All right. So a good design and excellent copy is going to cost a little bit more. But only a little. You send out a postcard mailing to get a response (preferably lots of responses).

The front of the card, graphic and headline, is designed to attract the reader’s interest so that they read what you have to say. In short, to attract his or her attention.

The copy on the front and back of the card is designed to get the reader to respond, either by calling you or e-mailing you or visiting you or going to your web site. A response.

If your card accomplishes that, it’s done its duty.

How do you get it to do that?

Good design. Good copy. Assuming you have sent the cards to people who are likely to be interested in what you have to sell. (There’s no point sending a postcard selling raincoats to people in the Sahara Desert. They are the wrong “public”).

It is more cost effective in the long run to hire a professional to do the design and copy for your promotion instead of spending all the time yourself to learn the software. A little time spent improving the design and copy of your postcards will result in much higher ROI (Return On Investment) for your postcard mailing.

Direct Mail Marketing Done Correctly, Cannot Fail

So how do you do it?

Direct mail marketing. When it comes to marketing your product or services there are two basic challenges:

1. How do you obtain new customers or clients?

2. How do you get your existing customers to come back for more?

Direct mail/direct response marketing answers both these challenges admirably (it’s not the only way to do it but it is a proven method that always works). You can ALWAYS rely on DIRECT MAIL MARKETING. The postcard&ndashdirect marketing’s secret weapon…

One of the simplest and most cost-effective forms of direct mail marketing is the POSTCARD. Because postcards work so well they can be considered one of the key small business marketing strategies.

“I switched from sending out a monthly newsletter to my mailing list, to sending out full color post cards.

Not only did it save me money on the cost of printing, but it saved me the hassle of having to prepare the mailings.

Feedback has been very positive from our clients and the leads have been pouring in. Plus my website hits have increased due to promotion or it on our post cards!” Kerry Fuller, Realty Executives

Direct mail marketing strategies…

To get new customers all you need to do is:

1. Get their identities (mailing lists do this).

2. Reach them (direct mail does this).

3. Attract their attention and get your message across (post cards do this perfectly&ndashyou don’t have to open them!).

4. Get them to contact you. (Your mailing piece, letter or, preferably, post card, will do that if it’s well designed and written.)

5. The rest is up to your ability to sell.

To get your existing customers to come back for more all you need to do is:

1. Keep accurate records of your customers (anyone who has ever bought anything from you) in a database and keep it current.

2. Send them frequent mailings. Postcards are excellent. You can send out a newsletter. You can send out personalized letters. But keep contacting them. Tell them about new products or services. Get them to respond.

3. Obviously you have to deliver excellent service or a great product. You will get results with these marketing techniques even if you don’t deliver good service or a great product, but it won’t last long and you won’t be able to maintain it.

4. Remember, the size of your customer base and the number of mailings to it determines how much income you make. Fact.

So, do it correctly and you cannot fail.

Postcard Marketing Done Right

Say it with a post card. A well designed, colorful, high impact postcard in the mail box of your prospect is your best ticket to a new customer. For your existing customer, a marketing campaign which includes frequent post cards is the perfect start to new sales - this is one of the key small business marketing strategies.

For the recipient:

• You don’t have to open a post card!

• You see it right away, the bright picture is not hidden from view by an envelope.

• The message leaps right out and you can’t ignore it or throw it in the trash unopened (the fate of many bulk mail pieces).

For the marketer:

• Save money. You can mail a post card 1st class for less than the cheapest letter rate.

• No stuffing required.

Postcards win out on all counts.

Check out the following case study.

Here is what one successful postcard marketer had to say:

“The immediate result was many times more than we had expected and we even had to reduce the number of postcards going out each week because we had more calls than we could handle. We’ve always heard that a 1-2% response is considered very good for a mailing but we are getting at least triple that amount!

To give you some idea, the first week’s mailing went out to our oldest customer account, most of whom hadn’t done business with us for over a year. The first week after the post cards went out we got a 3% response on those accounts. And 6 weeks later we are still getting calls from those accounts. “I also know that it takes time for the response to build and just this past week, the 6th or 7th week since we started mailing the postcards, we increased from the 23 calls in per hour average we saw at the beginning of this month to 45 calls per hour in at the end of the month.

“That’s almost 900 calls in per week more than just 4 weeks ago.”

“We’re already planning our next post card mailing and are quite certain that this was one of the best investments in promotion to our existing customers we have ever made.” Ron Nedd at Kevis Rejuvenation Programs, Inc., Beverly Hills, California

Now that is postcard marketing done right!

Find the Goldmine within Your Business

Doing a current customer breakdown can help you find the goldmine within your business by determining who you should be targeting in your marketing efforts in the future. There is a goldmine right there and you may or may not see it…it’s your customer base! But is it all of them? No &ndash definitely not. Then what the heck am I talking about?

You probably already have some great customers, probably not as many as you would like though. So how do you go about finding more of the kind of customers that make opening your doors worthwhile every day? The first step is to find out everything you can about the customers that you do have. Here’s how to start:

1. Get Accurate Sales Numbers - How do you determine what a “good customer” is? More than likely it is a loyal customer who keeps coming back to spend money with your business. This is why the first step you take should be to determine how many sales each customer has and what total income each customer has provided you.

2. Decide What You Consider “Good” - Is your product or service a one shot deal? Or can your customers come back again and again? If they can come back, you’ll want to find out their average order or purchase size in a dollar amount and also how many times they’ve purchased… You’ll see that they’ll fall into categories. Maybe 10% are big spenders but 30% purchase consistently. Obviously this will vary depending on what type of business you have. If you sell a product or service where it is unlikely your customer will need you again, figure out what range of purchase size makes up most of your income. It really varies from business to business. For instance, if you’re a Realtor you may sell many more homes between 100 and 200 thousand, but most of your actual income came from one giant purchase… Maybe a 2 million dollar home… You don’t want to ignore your bread and butter. In this case, I would recommend marketing to the “bread and butter” public. So you see, you really need to evaluate your industry.

3. Once you’ve determined which are the best customers (the kind you’d like all the others to emulate) and have gotten all information concerning their purchasing habits with you: Find out how they found you, where they live, what they do for a living and even what their level of income is (if it can be tactfully worked into the conversation). It’s good to get this information when the customers are making their purchase because they will be more likely to give it to you. If you keep customer phone numbers you could even do a short survey by phone to find out most of this info.

4. Look for Patterns - When you gather all of the information you may notice that 35% of your best customers are doctors, or 50% of them come from one area of the city. Whatever the pattern is that you notice, take advantage of it. Do specific mailings to a list that fits the same description as your best customers and you will attract more of them. A list company can find you a list that best fits so that you are mailing to those companies or individuals that are most likely to purchase.

Follow these steps and you will be able to increase you Return On Investment (ROI) from all of your marketing programs. And remember, Return On Investment is how much income you are generating from the leads you get in from your direct mail marketing campaign.

Marketing your business will help it grow, marketing your business to the right people can get your business booming. So, tap into your goldmine!

Stay in Touch with Leads and Get More Closes

How many leads have come into your business since the beginning of time that never closed? That is a salient question. Who knows how many, but I bet there are a lot.

Whether a small company or a large one with a sales force, the leads that are always best are the ones that are easy to close. But what about the prospects that were reached but never closed? They are in an abyss - The Unclosed Sales Lead Abyss, technically speaking.

What are you doing to follow up? Are you following up? Do you have a fixed idea in mind about some time frame that those leads then become dead?

What does it cost you to get that lead? Let’s look at a hypothetical analysis:

• Postcard marketing experts will tell you to send out 5000 postcards.

• It costs you $2000.00 to send out those postcards.

• Say you do that and you get 50 calls;

• That is $40.00 per lead.

The Return On Investment (ROI) of this example is as follows…

• You make $2000.00 off of every close.

• You close 20% out of those 50 calls (10 sales).

• You made $10, 000 less the 2G’s for the postcards = $8000.00.

That is decent Return On Investment (ROI), but what about the 40 leads that never closed? That is $1600.00 sitting out there on table, spent with no return.

Now ask yourself, how many of your leads don’t close per month? Take that theoretical situation and multiply $1600 by the other 11 months. That is a chunk of change that you are basically blowing.

Don’t get discouraged. Getting educated in marketing and determining your ROI is a major step in the right direction. Great ROI is what you should be going for, but don’t stop there. There is more to sniff out.

So, what are you doing to get all of those that initially reached for your product or service?

How many phone calls do you make before you decide that a lead is “unclosable” &ndash zero, two, three? Did you leave a message on their voice mail and they didn’t call back so you dropped them?

Most likely a one-man-band or a two to three-person operation is working harder than a sales force in following up on their leads. How many in a sales force are simply cherry picking their leads, so to speak, and not closing or following up with the rest? How many of these dropped leads do you have built up? Can you see the waste?

You need to follow up. Even if you didn’t get the ROI you anticipated or needed, you still need to follow up. But how? More specifically, what kind of campaign should you do to get even more ROI? Good question. Here’s the answer.

First of all, realize that these prospects reached for you, your product or service and you CAN rehabilitate that initial interest. They are much easier to close and more valuable than someone who has never shown interest in your product or service before. Build on that.

You don’t now have to send out a mass mailing of postcards again to revitalize their interest &ndash we’re only talking about 20 to 100 leads that need to be followed up with a catchy message each month.

Yes, they responded to a postcard (if that is what was sent) and will respond again if it is the right communication. The same postcard may work, but what you are trying to do is send repeat communication to those initial “reachers” and word it in such a way that they will want to reach again. Send a direct mail postcard or an email or both &ndash follow up with repeat mailings to that small cluster of people that is a different, more personal communication than what got them to reach the first time.

What would that message be? When you get calls off of your initial mailing, get as much information as possible &ndash cull the data.

Have you ever heard of “Database Marketing” or “CRM” (Customer Relationship Management)? This means getting data about each one of those customers/leads and putting them in a database.

What is it that you need to find out? All kinds of things, such as, but not limited to:

1. How they found out about you in first place?

2. What kind of product they are looking for?

3. Do they have a deadline for that need? (This tells you how hot they are as a lead.)

4. What is going to cause them to purchase or not purchase? Ask!!

5. What makes them want to do business with someone or not? Again &ndash ask!

You can find out all of this information while talking to the person on the phone when that person first calls. The more interested you are in that lead the more they will like you and will want to do business with you. It is not how interesting you are or how low your price is, or how great your company is &ndash it is how much you actually are interested in them. Your initial closing percentage will actually go up and likewise you will have simple information that can be put into a data base (or a simple Excel spreadsheet) about your leads and you’ll be able to find out what is the common denominator about those people. Then do a communication to those people based on those common factors.

By the way &ndash this is what the big companies are doing, they already know about this. If you want to get big &ndash do what the postcard marketing experts are saying and doing.

Take the information that you gathered and send out tiny little mailings. These particular mailings are for different segments of the people that have already reached for your product or service; the message is based on what they have told you.

Wouldn’t it be great if it was really easy to send out a full-color glossy postcard that was specific to that one customer, all from your own computer? Where are you going to get beautiful postcards that have variable data and can get your small mailing out? Usually you have to send out the same piece and order a large quantity &ndash companies have minimums. The reason why they have minimums is because that is the way it is cost effective to sell to you. At this juncture, though, you want to get your mailing out more inexpensively and still get results.

“Variable Data” is data that is printed on a postcard that is variable &ndash it changes from postcard to postcard and can be taken from any database. What if you could put that on the front of a full-color glossy postcard and not have to type a specific letter?

Like “John Murphy, it is time for your dental cleaning” or “John Murphy, how about that pair of sunglasses you wanted?” or of you’re doing mortgages, “John Murphy &ndash what about refinancing that house for Johnny Jr.’s college tuition?”

On the back of the postcard, you could say:

“Dear John,

Your number and information”

You can find companies that do this. Research on the internet and look for companies that allow you to stay in touch with variable data postcards. Research well and make sure they are going to do a good job for you. Get referrals, check samples &ndash will they give you a chance to try out the product and see their turn-around time?

A final tip is that different people need different amounts of communication. When postcard marketing experts tell you to hit your target list of 5000 postcards over and over again, the reason why some call after just the first time and some others call after the second time and others call after the 5th time, etc., is because people move at different speeds in life and in business.

Now, with those that have called in you have closes that are slam dunks, but others operate differently when it comes to closing. So don’t just waste those leads. Consistently put out your communication in the same way you did with your initial mailings, but with a more personalized message.

That is Database Marketing. That is how you get people to buy from you after they have reached by following up with them enough.

Put in your calendar to make three different follow up phone calls; if you get voice mail then leave a message that really communicates to them. Send a variable data postcard, send an email, but stay in touch. You will be glad you did &ndash in fact you’ll be smiling all the way to the bank.

The Importance of a Marketing Plan

There aren’t many things in life that you would get into with out a plan. Marketing is no different. Your overall marketing plan should cover about a six month period, and should be made up of weekly and monthly marketing schedules.

This is how you do it:

1. Figure out how much money is in your budget.

As we all know, marketing of any kind costs money. How much money you are willing to commit to the cause is going to determine some key factors about how that money can be best spent. Remember, you want to be economical but you also need to be realistic on what it will take to pull in the leads you need to close new and repeat business.

2. Determine your target market.

Who is most likely to buy your product? Are they married? Are they business owners? What is their income level? These are the people that you want to target. One of the most common mistakes in marketing is answering “Everyone” to the question “Who is your target market?” It may be that you have more than one target market, but there is no product in the world that appeals to each and every person. Even Coca-Cola targets different people with different messages. Decide who is MOST LIKELY to buy what you have to sell and target them. Your message to teenagers will be different than your message to housewives even if the product is exactly the same. Different markets may require different mail pieces or advertisements.

2a. Using the Right Mailing List.

In making sure that your message is getting across to the right people - people who are in the market for what you’re offering &ndash it usually comes down to finding the right mailing list.

There is a great deal to know about mailing lists. There are pointers you could follow when buying a mailing list that tell you what to watch for in a mailing list company to make sure they’re reputable. They are:

i) Get references. Talk to other people that have purchased mailing lists from that company.

ii) Do they guarantee on delivery? That means due to the inevitable number of bad addresses there are in a list, can they still guarantee a high percentage of deliverable addresses. That number should be 90% or better. People move all the time so a mailing list company cannot guarantee 100% deliverability &ndash but they should guarantee at least 90%.

iii) How often do they update their information? They should be able to answer this question and should be updating their information monthly.

You can get burnt on mailing lists &ndash it is the most expensive part of your campaign. Ask friends who own businesses. Don’t just purchase from the first person that tries to sell you mailing lists. Do your research.

3. Select what media to use. (i.e., Direct Mail, Television, Radio, etc.)

This decision will depend on both your budget and your target market. If you have not done a good deal of marketing in the past we recommend picking one media to start. This is much easier to keep track of and you will better be able to tell whether or not it is working. Also, since repetition is the key to marketing success, using one media to begin with will help you reach the same people multiple times. If you run a newspaper ad and send out a postcard, you run the risk of the majority of the people only seeing your ad once. However, if you send out the postcard twice you can guarantee that you get your message to the same people twice and you will start to build recognition.

Once you are getting the returns that you want from the first media, or if you decide that it is not working for you, you can branch out into another form of advertising. Over time you will build up a very diverse marketing plan.

4. Make a Schedule and Stick with It.

Figure out how many people you have in your target market. For this example we will use Direct Mail Marketing. If you have a mailing list of people in your target market that has 1500 names, figure out how many times per month you can mail a postcard to them and still stay within your monthly budget. Once you come up with this number, do it!

The importance of having a marketing plan cannot be stressed enough. Create one and follow it and you’ll start seeing the benefits.

6 Things I Know About Postcards That You Don

In my plethora of experience tucked away between these ears, I have managed to cull out for you what I consider the “best of the best” &ndash in other words, I took the most proven details about postcards that were significant to you starting a postcard campaign and really winning at it. So here goes the most incisive highlights about postcards.

1) I know that a postcard is better than something in an envelope.

For many reasons, the main one being, in an envelope you can’t make your potential customer see your message.

People are fast. We see and read very quickly &ndash actually much more quickly than we even realize.. Think about yourself &ndash how fast do you go through your mail and process out what you want to keep and what you don’t want to keep? Pretty darn fast. It takes fractions of seconds to go through and process in your mind “bill, bill, advertisement, bill, advertisement, letter…” And it also takes fractions of seconds to decide whether you are even going to bother giving more attention to the pieces that you designated as advertisements.

With a postcard, even if they throw it away, they already saw your message regardless of whether they think they did or not. They saw it enough to throw it away, didn’t they?

And the next time they get that same postcard in the mail, they see it again as they throw it in the trash.

Let’s face it - junk mail gets thrown away. And postcards are junk mail to a lot of people.

Although they may be junk mail, postcards get read no matter what &ndash even if thrown away without reading them, they get seen. It’s like the phoenix rising up from the ashes.

2) I know that if you are not doing repeat mail with your postcards you are flushing your money down the toilet.

Repeat mailings cannot be repeated enough. DO REPEAT MAILINGS! DO REPEAT MAILINGS! DO REPEAT MAILINGS! A one shot in the dark postcard mailing is not going to change your business, your bottom line, your life or your anything.

The long and the short of it is, if you are not up to confronting that you need to do a campaign then don’t bother being in business. Sorry if I sound a bit harsh!

3) I know that the best price is not best necessarily the best postcard.

The cheapest is not necessarily the best. The old adage “you get what you pay for” applies here. Get whatever potential postcard company you interview to send you samples. Make sure the postcard is a very good, quality, stiff card that catches your attention. Get them to give you customer references. Call those references and find out what they think of that company’s service, product, etc.

There is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes into getting your postcard done right. If they screw up printing, if they don’t get your mailing out on deadline, etc. &ndash doing it dirt cheap might not mean getting the quality service you need or want.

4) I know that although most people, if surveyed, say they like full color on both sides, the truth is black on white on the back of the postcard gets a better response.

Why? Because full color on both sides is confusing. On the other hand, if you have a very aesthetic, pleasing-to-the-eye front - with a great headline - you just want to turn that postcard over and simply get the message on the back. You want good eye trail.

Eye trail is where your eye goes when you look at the postcard. You can have good eye trail with full color on both sides &ndash but it has to be done correctly. Usually when you give people a choice to do full color on both sides they go overboard and the creative juices start flying, not flowing, flying with, “WOW!!! full color on both sides?!!” And they make it too busy. You don’t want it to be dispersing &ndash you want it to go like a trail. Have a start, a middle and an end.

Example:

Did YOU Notice this Postcard?

$389

Look at it from the customer viewpoint &ndash really look at it from their viewpoint and you can see what I mean by eye trail.

5) I know that you should promote only one thing at a time on your postcard.

Even if you sell lots of different products, you only promote one of them. It is fine to mention them on the back of the postcard bullet pointed. But your main focus on the front of your postcard needs to be one product, service, item, what have you &ndash just one thing.

Say you have a flooring store and a furniture showroom in the back. Your postcard should only talk about flooring. It is not that people who are looking for flooring are not also looking for furniture &ndash it’s just too much information on the front of postcard.

The purpose of a postcard is to get your prospect interested with one thing. You can put on the back as just a mention: “We also have a giant showroom full of furniture.”

But on the front &ndash one item! ONE ITEM!

If a company sells hot tubs, above-ground pools and jungle gyms they need to pick the one that gives them the most income and make their postcard about that.

6) And I know that a person could grow a company with no other marketing media.

With postcards alone, one could take a company from zero to over a million bucks in revenue or more. How do I know? Because I did it.

We mailed postcards every single week, and the more postcards we mailed out, the more we grew. Yes, it is good to diversify and as we grew and became more successful and had more money to try other media, we did. Some we kept and some we nixed. Postcards are a staple that works no matter what.

These six points of postcard marketing data are proven techniques of making your postcards WOW your prospective clients while at the same time being faithful to the time-honored methods that have proven to get more bang for your buck. These tips are what will put your postcard in a class all by itself.

Postcards - Picture Perfect Promotion

There is a simple but almost mystical law which governs promotion and marketing and their relationship to the amount of business generated: business will come in to the degree that you get your message out, promote, let people know you are there, advertise, write to people, call people, e-mail people and generally communicate to existing or potential clients.

It isn’t a fact that registers easily and it almost takes faith to follow this dictum until you have seen it work over and over in all sorts of different businesses and organizations (as I have).

This law transcends market conditions, the activities of your competition, acts of terrorism, time of year, the alignment of Mars with Jupiter and all the million and one explanations we frequently fall back on when business is slow. All these conditions may be present but there is still a way to rise above them: just promote more heavily and frequently and business will start to pick up again. It never fails.

It’s almost a natural instinct when times get a little tight or business is slow to cut down on expenditure. You hear people talking about tightening their belts. Too often the first expenditure companies seek to cut is their marketing and advertising dollar, and that is a serious error, a guarantee of contraction. You have to step up the promotion, not cut back. The trick is to find ways to get the maximum results with the minimum expenditure, but never to cut back and promote less. That’s suicide. Here’s one way to increase promotion while keeping costs down.

You don’t have to open a postcard!

We have found more and more brokers are turning to high quality, four-color postcards as the best form of direct mail. It’s time to pass on the information for those who haven’t yet discovered this cost-effective way of getting the word out and the business in.

This is especially timely advice as the national anthrax scare &ndash whether you give credence to it or not &ndash has resulted in a certain caution when it comes to opening envelopes from unknown sources. One great advantage of the postcard is that it doesn’t have to be opened &ndash there is nothing hidden about it and nothing to be scared of.

Quite aside from the anthrax angle, the fact that a postcard doesn’t need to be opened has another advantage: it has a chance to get its message across before it is dropped into the garbage can as “junk mail.” An envelope can be tossed in the trash without even being opened, allowing the hard-hitting promotional material inside no chance at all to get its message across.

The chances are fairly high that if you have a brightly colored image on the front of your postcard it will attract enough attention to get an initial glance. If your headline is a good one and invites further interest, then your postcard will be read and you will have succeeded in delivering your message. If the reader is even vaguely interested in what you are trying to sell, you may well get a visit or a call.

Cost-effective!

Even though it is imperative to promote more than ever when the economy is sticky or business is slow, that doesn’t mean you can’t cut costs in the process.

Many brokers are convinced that a full-color postcard with the right message on it, mailed out to previous clients (for re-financing for example) or to prospective borrowers gets the most bang for the advertising buck of any form of promotion, even when they also advertise in print, on the radio and TV, sky-writing, you name it.

You can mail out a postcard up to 4 1/4 inches by 6 inches for between 17.5