Secret to Successful Dimensional Mail

I gotta tell you, I’m so excited about this week’s marketing e-tip!
And I know you’re just going to love it too.

Now, I realize when you think of direct mail you probably think of
postcards, boring sales letters and all the other junk you open over
your trashcan. I’m betting you don’t read more than 3 words before
tossing those mailers. In fact, you probably only read those 3 words
as it begins its plummet to the dark recesses of your trash bin.

Which means you probably don’t put a whole lot of faith in direct mail, but
today is a new day my friend. I am going to share with you two examples over
the next two weeks of some incredible creativity, ingenuity and most
important PROFITABILITY with direct mail.

Case Study #1: Rekindling Old Relationships

This campaign was conducted by a physician’s office that sent 4 direct mail pieces to 250 inactive patients. That means people who were once patients, but hadn’t visited the doctor’s office in a year or longer. Here’s how it went:

Mailing #1: The first letter starts out, “Bob, remember the happy times you had as a child? Here’s a simple way you can relive them…”

Enclosed is a 4-pack of crayons. “So what?” you ask. “Aha!” says the savvy marketer, because this “dimensional” mail piece just got the reader’s attention. Think about it. How many times do you get crayons in the mail from your doctor’s office? But let’s assume you’re a busy person so you laugh at the clever idea, toss the crayons to your kids and promptly forget about Dr. WhatsHisFace.

Mailing #2: The second letter starts out, “Bob, do you think this broken, used crayon is just as good as the new box I sent you a few days ago…”

Mailing #3: The third piece, a postcard, has a picture of the doctor looking out his office window, searching in vain for a sign of this patient in the parking lot with the lines, “Bob, where are you? We’ve been looking everywhere…”

Mailing #4: The fourth piece, also a postcard, has a picture of the doctor looking at his waiting room with a puzzled expression on his face and the words, “You weren’t in the parking lot and you aren’t in the waiting room either…”

What’s smart about this? Well, even though I haven’t disclosed the word-for-word copy that helped deliver a return of more than 15 times his investment on the first mailing alone, you can see the principles at work behind this effective direct mail campaign.

• The vendor is touching his prospect multiple times over carefully timed, but closely spaced intervals.
• He is re-establishing a relationship with the prospect by talking to him, not at him, and entertaining him.
• After forging a tentative bond, he begins appealing to the prospect’s sense of duty and/or guilt.
• Last but not least, he shows he cares.

What Were The Results?

This doctor invested $2 per patient for 250 patients for the first piece and received more than $6,000 in revenue from patients who read the letter, called and made appointments. His second letter delivered a 4% response rate, his third a 2% response rate and his fourth a 3% response rate.

In the end, he invested $1,500 and got an 8.5% ROI…in other words about $13,100 in total revenue. And that’s not including the lifetime value of this renewed patient!

Pretty powerful stuff, huh?

Committed to your marketing success,
Lina Penalosa
July 5 , 2006