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It wasn't long ago that old school postcards and letter packages
turned into the pariah of direct marketing, and perhaps for good
reason. When email marketing came along it offered higher response
rates for a much cheaper cost-per-lead, and a much shorter schedule to
develop and deliver the creative asset. Not to mention the great
advances in the last 10 years in list development and real-time
reporting. In short, email became a marketer's dream. But now email
lists, even house lists, are being exhausted by an onslaught of
promotions, product announcements and company newsletters. Email
lists are dwindling in effectiveness, while the prices to rent them
skyrocket.
On the other hand, DM lists are rarely touched, especially for
business-to-business marketing. But why? Consider this - the
advances in printing technology have condensed both the schedule and
the budget for most printing jobs, making it faster and cheaper than
ever to develop and mail a postcard or letter package. Consider also
that the DM lists, long seen as the marketing step-child to the email
list, are much cheaper to rent, and less barraged than their email
counterparts.
Case Study: BtoB postcard test into the Small Business Market
I recently tested an email and postcard campaign for a client who has
long struggled in a category that is flooded with competition, and in
danger of being seen as a commodity as a result of lower-quality,
fly-by-night competitors offering inferior services. The challenge
has always been how to set my client apart as a real, quality player,
in a fairly crowded and misunderstood space. Response rates to email
campaigns reflected this marketing climate, with low response and a
high cost-per-lead. The list rental costs were skyrocketing, and the
return was low. We recommended testing a postcard along side the
email to expand our reach and test new list sources. The creative was
essentially identical in the two mediums, and the offer was exactly
the same.
The email yielded a .005% response, for a total of 22 leads. The
postcard, on the other hand, yielded a 1% response, for a total of 27
leads and counting. Here's the kicker - the email, all said and done,
including design, copy, list rental and blast, cost a total of $5,295.
In comparison, the postcard cost $6,307, including printing and
postage. That means that the postcard netted out at a $233
cost-per-lead, vs the email at a $240 cost-per-lead.
My takeaway for this client was that there is a preconceived notion
that postal mail is much more expensive. That is simply not true
anymore. Due to the shrinking cost for printing, and the rising cost
of email lists and delivery, traditional postal mail is much closer to
being the same cost as email. When you couple that with the value of
reaching a list that has not seen the kind of fatigue that email lists
have, you can see our old friend postal mail emerging as a
revitalized, effective tool.
Shelli Strand
is founder and primary consultant for Strand
& Associates, a consulting firm specializing
in marketing and lead generation. www.strandm.com
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