Would you like to almost double your ROI on your next mail campaign without having to make a single call?
Messaging sweeping is a successful tactic for increasing response rates as our message sweeping team recently reported for a leading manufacturer. This manufacturer sends quarterly product mailers with an average 3.1% response rate. After working on ways to boost that response rate, the company decided to run split-run test using message sweeping for part of their mail drop tested against the control group with no message sweeping added. The group with message sweeping saw a response rate increase of 145%.
Matt Wilson over at PRDaily.com (also Ragan.com) quoted me in an article about email vs. social media. Thanks Matt.
Matthew Turner of consultancy Boston Turner Group says email wins the sales race, at least for now, because communicators can target emails more effectively. A tweet about a sale or an offer on a certain type of shirt appeals only to the fraction of the audience looking for that shirt.
Are you intimate with your prospects?
Once you’ve segmented your data, scrubbed it and grouped your prospects in your database, your work is not even close to being done. The next step is to personalize your messages to add relevance and engagement.
You never want to make your prospect work to figure out how to do business with you.
How are you optimizing your landing pages? Have you ever gone to a website that featured something you were ready to download or even buy only to have to search around for their contact us page or order form or whatever random page you thought would help? Then when you finally found that page, they wanted to collect field after field of information from you just to send you their brochure? That kind of frustration can end the relationship with your prospects before it starts; however, if your landing pages are customized and have the appropriate number of fields, you will greatly increase the odds that a prospect will complete the form and begin engaging with you.
Your customers and prospects are as individually different as the colors in a rainbow. If you understand how to target and communicate to them based on those differences, your response rates will be just as beautiful. If you try to mix your messages for the masses, the colors will run together and you’ll have a less-than-beautiful muddy mess.
Last week I fired off a post suggestion that we should all be looking at data segmentation in our lists to improve response rates. I had some great feedback on the post from readers wanting more detail, including this email from a friend:
I completely agree that segmentation will improve response rates. What do you suggest we look at as segments?
So here are some thoughts to get you going.
I’m surprised how many companies take their databases for granted.
They did a good job at one point collecting leads from purchased lists, trade show badge swipes, web hits and referrals. But then the data starts to suffer from a lack of attention, no new investment of resources or energy and just some poor data management. A lot of companies never clean the data and most companies just copy the data from a hodge podge of lists randomly into their CRM system or their email marketing program.
But a lot of the literature shows that companies who invest time and money into deduping their lists and segmenting their prospects into groups like industry verticals, job titles, job functions (which are often different than titles), associations and the like see much better response rates.
You’ve seen me mention our 8-step process for developing more prospects while increasing sales productivity–this is kind of a “cheat sheet” we use at the Boston Turner Group to explain all of the key elements of a marketing automation process to our clients. It helps us make sure we’ve covered all the bases in a leak-proof pipeline building process.
This infographic shows how we combine strategy, technology, creative and experience to engage your prospects and alert your reps with predetermined buying signals and behavioral triggers.
You can download the infographic at: