Now, your marketing budget can go further than you ever thought possible.
Do you include tear-off response cards or other forms in your direct marketing pieces? If so, do you send them blank, or do you pre-fill them with information from your database?
If you are sending forms blank, you are leaving money on the table. Why? Because the more steps recipients must take to respond to your offer, the less likely they are to do it. Conversely, the easier you make it for them to drop the card in the mail, the more likely they are to respond.
Pre-filling your response cards is really a “no brainer” because it’s likely that you have all of the information in your database already. After all, you used it to mail the piece. So pre-fill your response cards with as much data as you have—the recipient’s name, address, company and other information they might need to register for an event, request information or whatever else you are asking them to do. By doing so, you remove one of the barriers and your response rate goes up.
One marketer had been promoting its customer education seminars with a self-mailer that included the dates and details of upcoming workshops. The mailers included a detachable reply card for registration. After more than two years, however, the marketer was frustrated that most of its registrations were still coming through its Web site or sales reps, not the direct mailers it was paying for.
To generate more responses, the company decided to switch gears. It freshened up the design and moved to a heavier coated stock. It also ditched its static response forms and began pre-filling them so all that recipients had to do was add the stamp and drop the forms into the mail. It received such a bump in its responses that it had to add an extra seminar session!
The sky is the limit!
Would you like to get a quick and easy boost
to your response rates? If so, and you are sending out any kind of form or response card, it might be as easy as doubling up
on the
data you’re already using.
