Thursday, January 15, 2009

5 Tips for Creating a Direct Mail Letter

When constructing a direct mail letter, it is important to make your design attractive and catchy enough to grab your viewers' attention while being sure to prominently display all important information like your company's web address, phone number or driving directions. Read these 5 tips to help improve your direct mail campaign and increase conversions.

1. Include personalized VIP website links (e.g. CharlesNichols.EcoMail.com.) Once clicked, the viewer arrives at a website with his or her name displayed prominently. These links are also known as PURLs short for Personalized URLs and can increase leads by up to 5%. Setting up a personalized web system yourself can be complicated and time consuming and therefore, I'd recommend going with a company like EasyPurl - Note: I have not personally used this company but I would encourage all readers to try their free demo or Google "PURL" for other alternatives.

2. If you market to local customers, make sure to include easy driving directions. You need to make sure that people can find you without problems. A printed Google Map showing your company's location is a good idea especially if you end up with extra space to fill.

3. Use easy to read font. Fancy fonts might seem more attractive but the most important part of your mailing is to effectively convey a message.

4. Include coupons that can be used online. With the economy the way it is, a 20% off coupon will get people's attention. Coupons serve a dual purpose by enabling marketers to track the effectiveness of a campaign by comparing coupon redemption between campaigns. If you sell your products or services online, coupon codes are especially easy to integrate into payment processing services like Google Checkout.

5. Create a Twitter account and direct your viewers to visit it. Twitter is a rising star in the marketing world and allows users to share pertinent updates with other twitter users. Here is an article detailing Dell's effective use of Twitter as a marketing tool. You can visit our Twitter page at Twitter.com/ecomail

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Testing Effectiveness Of Direct Mail Campaigns

When launching a direct mail campaign, one of the most critical components is to develop an efficient way to measure campaign effectiveness. This will enable you to determine cost-per-lead and cost-per-sale calculations and identify how good your mailing list is.

By far, the two easiest ways to measure effectiveness are coupons and web links. For local businesses, coupons tend to be more effective however, web-based analytics a far more detailed. By using the free Google analytics suite (http://analytics.google.com) a webmaster can obtain detailed daily statistics including total page views, geographic origins of each view and time spent per page or per visit.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Are For-Profit/Non-Profit Hybrids the Future of Business?


This evening, I headed on down to Brooklyn to attend a cool workshop hosted by Green Spaces (greenspacesny.com) on "Hybrid Structures for Social Ventures" presented by Christine Rico, a social venture consultant whose job consists of helping companies find the best way to mix for-profit motives with social goals.

One interesting part of the lecture centered on a revolutionary business model called an L3C or a "low-profit limited liability corporation" that fills the gap between traditional non-profit and for-profit companies. Currently, this particular legislation only exists in Vermont. However, for companies seeking to add a non-profit component, there are other alternatives including partnering with existing non-profits as Ben & Jerry's did.

To learn more about the L3C legislation, you can visit this website

Green Spaces is a cool company that offers "work space to launch green entrepreneurs" or basically, they rent out sections of a large Brooklyn loft to a handful of entrepreneurs who in exchange for their rent get, save a bundle on rent and get high-speed internet and access to a crew of Green Spaces interns from nearby colleges (which I hope to be one of sometime in the near future!) The founders are friendly, the wine was nice and it was an all-around great workshop. Anyway, definitely check out Green Spaces at GreenSpacesNY.com.

Image: GreenSpacesNY.com
 
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