Everyday we sort our legitimate mail from our direct mail. This goes for snail mail and email. 

As consumers, most of us scorn the propaganda we receive every day. We hate being at the receiving end of poorly targeted marketing. We do, however, love marketing when we are in the “market” for something.

So what's the secret to getting your message through to the person or organization that is 'in the market' for your products or services? The most important thing you can do if you are considering direct mail is to first define what constitutes success. Before you re-write your material, define what constitutes success for your effort.

In B2B, it is especially important to remember that the sales cycle consists of distinct phases: from target to suspect to prospect to proposal to customer. These phases represent the natural evoution of a target as it becomes (or doesn't become) a customer. Trying to short-circuit this natural process is difficult. It is much more productive to try to move the sales cycle forward one step at a time.

Within the past year we have successfully used paper direct marketing to inexpensively create face-to-face meetings for clients. Using a single page letter with an interesting message, we have successfully met with 23 out of 50 total prospects in Territory #1 and 38 out of 62 total prospects in Territory #2. That's 61 out of 112 or 54%!

What we can't share is the content of the letters. That's our special sauce. The Bradley Wiltjer Mojo.

What we can share is these campaigns were designed to generate face-to-face meetings with senior decision-makers. A letter and one conversation (three attempts per contact).

The AAV (average annual value) of a customer was $79K. The cost of the campaign was a piece of paper, one envelope and $.37 cents for postage. We printed 102 letters here in our office. We assigned one person to follow-up. After our creative and telemarketing fees, the first customer paid for this effort many times over.

Even with the Internet, blogs and email, highly targeted direct mail is very relevant…because it works.