Direct mail marketing:
How to produce
better results with your
B2B target group

B2B direct mail marketing and how you can make it work for your company

Direct mail marketing is one of the more established methods of creating interest in one's products and/or services.

Direct mailing is also traditionally used by the B2B sector as perhaps the most continuous tool for acquiring prospective clients.

In direct mail marketing, there are certain rules that govern its success. The quality and quantity of response received from a direct mailing letter depend on a surprisingly complex set of factors.

More to the point, these factors governing direct mailing campaigns are confusing because there are so many "rules" and their relative importance is not known.

Those in whose interests it is that you buy their direct mailing services, may well highlight certain principles in order to enhance the sale of their wares.

Additionally, direct mail marketing is an area where "experts abound" and it seems everyone has something to bring to the pot of knowledge. To complicate matters, some of the facts about direct mail are correct and some aren't.

So, how do you sort out all this data and maximise the yield from your direct mailing campaigns?

Well, my advice is to gather data and make up your own mind about what's what.

And for that purpose, let's go through some facts about direct mail marketing and see if we can find which elements or factors influence its results primarily and which aren't all that important.

B2B direct mail marketing, quantitative factors

The very basic rule of direct mailing — or ANY outflow originating from your company, regardless of its quality of manner — involves the QUANTITY of direct mailing letters.

The quantity factor encompasses both the size of each mailing as well as the longevity of your direct mail marketing.

The response is always marginal in direct mailing. A letter simply cannot do all that much and it is very easy to ignore a sheet of paper.

There are ways of ensuring that your direct mailing letters achieve maximal attention and produce optimal response and we'll discuss those qualitative factors further down this article... but in all fairness, the response rate will always be low.

What is a fair response rate for a direct mailing letter? Well, it all depends whom you ask, of course and/or to what type of mailing they're referring.

Ask an ad agency and they'll tell you their best response ratio was 90% plus.

But they might not come clean that this was perhaps a huge manufacturer who wanted to get a new set of chef knives into top restaurants, so 100 top chefs were sent half of the set through a courier service, accompanied with a message that they would receive the missing half if they contacted the manufacturer.

That's an easy way to obtain a high response ratio. Give away valuables and spend freely in creating the message so it is impressive (believable) and you shall receive "results."

A whole industry has been born for these giveaway gifts, some used in direct mail marketing, others in various PR events.

But if we look at nothing but DIRECT MAILING LETTERS, without any whistles and bells or bribes, we come to a figure which is around 0.2 to 0.4 percent.

Send out a thousand letters and you should receive 2-4 responses.

That's the basic figure. It can be increased somewhat but essentially the means to increase the quantity of response tend to affect the quality of it. In other words, the wider you set your spread for sake of quantity of response, the lower the quality of the average contact.

That's what those promises of 2-10 percent given by some people (selling direct mailing services) are all about. "Return this and you can win a car..." and that sort of jazz.

Thus, the professed response ratios as stated by those who earn their money from you sending out direct mailing are... well, grossly overestimated.

Because they publicize such high percentages, the end result is that even a successful direct mail marketing campaign will APPEAR to have failed. Those unrealistic expectations cause a lot of disappointments for the B2B sector.

As a result, we've lost our belief in direct mailing and tend to disregard it as a viable method of securing a continuous flow of prospective clients for our sales to work on.

Yet direct mailing can be profitable. Its emphasis should be on the qualitative aspects so that the prospects we receive are of high quality. The way to achieve this is discussed later on in this article.

Another quantitative factor of direct mailing is that it bypasses the sales department, producing sales leads without taxing the (often overstretched) resources of your sales staff.

This can be a tremendously timesaving factor, provided your direct mailing is created so the quality (and quantity) of response is optimised.

Of course, telemarketing is by far more effective in acquiring sales leads but it also cuts into the time and energy available within the sales team.

Thus it can be a good idea to free them from prospecting if you have a shortage of sales persons.

A third quantitative factor involves the continuity of your direct mailing. Direct mail marketing should be continuous but often is not. We tend to "think campaign," regarding direct mailing as something that's undertaken now and again, not as an ongoing activity.

For this reason, a lot of the potential yield of direct mailing is lost.

As discussed later, direct mailing has a limited effect on the receiver. Written words on paper cannot influence the thinking of our target person the way another thinking person could.

A single letter goes often unanswered. The QUANTITY of communication (and effects created thereby) is MINUTE in one letter. There's just not enough space for more on a page.

That's why direct mailing works best as a SERIES of individual direct mailing letters, each letter sent out in correct sequence and expanding the understanding of the receiver.

This quantitative factor is often forgotten OR we are told we should send the SAME letter several times.

A continuous direct mail marketing campaign with a sequence of letters building up and sent to correct target persons... well, the accumulating effects can be quite spectacular eventually.

B2B direct mail marketing, the innate weakness of

The effect of a direct mailing letter can be maximised with clever planning, and I'll tell you how in a minute.

The huge benefit of direct mail marketing is that it requires little or no personal time on the part of your sales team... and that's a huge advantage.

On the negative side of things comes the cost, of course.

But make no mistake about this: Direct mailing can be a tremendously profitable activity if done correctly.

However, before we get to that, we need to understand the underlying weakness of direct mail marketing. To understand the limitations of direct mailing will help us maximise its potential strengths, in other words.

So let's look at what's not so good with direct mailing.

It's really only one thing, namely its power to create the desired effect resulting in a lot of targeted prospects CONTACTING us, right?

And here's why that is:

A letter can only do so much because it offers only a one-way flow of communication.

The difference between a letter and a phone call is mainly in that the latter involves a TWO-way form of communication, from one living being to another.

To understand fully why direct mailing letters create so little action you have to understand how different YOU are from the majority of humanity in this respect.

You are an executive and as such a rare being on this planet. Only a fraction of people ARE executives and the reason is not coincidental at all.

You became an executive because you have perhaps the rarest of all abilities... you are capable of starting yourself into action without anyone TELLING you to do so.

The executive has no-one watching over his shoulder on daily basis. There's nobody who would intervene if you don't do your job. YOU have the exceptional ability to put yourself in motion, do the things you need to do WITHOUT anyone "initiating" the activity.

But that's not the reality with 99% of the populace. Most people need someone to "kick-start" them into doing something.

Any impulse to do something is basically something CREATED by an individual in his mind. For most human beings, creation is possible only when TWO persons exchange ideas.

To put it bluntly, most people do things because someone told them to do it. Of course, this "telling" takes many forms. In sales, we convince the prospect to go ahead with the deal, for instance... we cannot ORDER him to do it.

But you get the idea. A letter does NOT produce a two-way exchange of ideas. Thus, it doesn't often trigger ACTION as a result.

It has the potential to stimulate the receiver into doing something.

But usually someone else gets there first.

There are a lot of people much closer to our target person receiving our direct mailing letter... and they get there FIRST. Their influence is nearer, more extensive, and more direct than ours can be through words on a piece of paper.

While you CAN maximise those "action-impulse-initiating" elements in your direct mailing letters, the innate weakness of this one-way communication will always keep the response relatively modest.

Thus, direct mailing doesn't suit well for marketing of something whose cost and profits do not easily justify the cost.

Or, if you offer something inexpensive then it must be the first step into your main service or product, so that the cost of acquiring these initial sales is covered by the second sale to those who've bought the first (inexpensive) product or service.

If that is so then direct mailing is a very useful method of working your target group because its effects will increase with each mailing.

And there's a lot that you can do to ensure your direct mailing letters cause as much positive action as possible.

The primary and secondary goals of B2B direct mail marketing

Direct mailing has a very definite goal.

"Obtaining clients" is not the direct goal because direct mailing letters cannot sell your service, only produce response from people who are interested to hear more about your services.

Direct mail marketing must achieve its objectives or goals — two in number — if it is to secure the maximum of high-interest response from qualified prospective customers.

And that's where direct marketing usually goes awry.

The prevalent code of behaviour in the B2B sector is rather conservative. That's what it has become and that's what most of us expect to find when contacting your company.

As a result, those creating direct mailing messages — be it the B2B executive creating the message or a copywriter selling his services for the purposes of direct mail — often fall for emulating this conservatism.

They concentrate on promoting the respectability of the company, self-endorsing themselves through various (often extremely intelligently worded) descriptions on how widely their business and its products are accepted among the clientele...

You get the idea.

That's going astray and totally so.

One should not confuse the "office behaviour" of B2B industries with the message you send out in your direct mailing letters.

Conservative messages do NOT create the emotional impulses required for taking ACTION.

Direct mailing letters that do NOT create positive emotional impulses are a waste of money.

To write conservatively can be somewhat self-destructive because you're essentially paying good money / exerting a lot of effort to create a BORING MEMORY of your company in the minds of the recipients.

Different media require different type of communication. You only need to go on the set of a film being shot to realise how terribly unrealistic the acting and communication sounds ON THE SET... but on the cinema screen it looks just perfect.

That's because in person such communication is weird and pretentious but on the screen it's what we've become accustomed to. The GOAL is different, see?

Thus, you cannot "speak" in your letters the same way as in your office.

Direct mailing has a different GOAL than communication in the office.

The primary goal of direct mailing is to tempt the recipient into TAKING ACTION and that can only be achieved through creating positive emotional impulses. It has to achieve this with an extremely BRIEF message also, so there's no time for small talk... every word counts.

The only way you can create an impulse for action in a stranger with just a few written words is by ensuring that your message creates a sizeable emotional impulse leading to positive action.

While the connotation of the thing creating the impulse can be negative (as in a message "it is WRONG that direct mailing companies promise great results in advance just to get a sale, knowing that they are without any realistic means to ENSURE such results with your direct mail marketing..."), the emotional impulse created by it must propel the recipients toward POSITIVE ACTION.

So you can talk about negative things IF YOU ARE CERTAIN THAT'S THE BIGGEST PROBLEM FOR YOUR TARGET GROUP... one on whose existence they are agreeing and one for whom they've decided a definable (exterior) cause.

Now you see how RISKY it is to create good copy for direct mailing. You need to know beyond shadow of doubt which issue is the burning one, whom do they blame for it, how do they think these guys SHOULD handle it, which exact words do they use to describe the problem... and things like that.

To know these things you need to have a market research survey conducted. We won't go into that here as there's another article on this site giving insider information on market research surveys for B2B target groups and you'll find a link to it at the end of this page.

All right, so you need to create a sizeable emotional impact with your message.

That will initiate action. And action is what direct mail marketing must precipitate.

That action should be "becoming sufficiently interested in your solution to CONTACT you."

This is the primary goal of direct mailing and 80% of all effort (and cost) should be earmarked for creating emotional impulses leading to as many contacting you as possible.

And then there's just one more goal with direct marketing.

The secondary goal of direct mailing is to imprint the desired kind of an image in the minds of receivers concerning your company and its products / services. Here, visual design does play some part in it... but far less than commonly realised.

Ad agencies need a lot of income to maintain their stylish lifestyle so the visual side of things has become greatly exaggerated over the past few decades.

The same applies to copywriting in itself. Of course it's nice if the message is intelligently written... but one can easily go overboard and be "too cute," ending up proving one's own cleverness which the recipients will experience as condescending attitude.

Beware of becoming too clever for your own good in creating direct mail messages.

So, how do we create the effect of the secondary goal for direct mail marketing letters?

By making ourselves both approachable and worth approaching.

These are two separate things although they sound much alike.

Lowering the threshold of contact, planning the message such that the prospect feels he won't commit himself to anything by contacting, conveying the idea that your goal is to HELP him regardless of whether he buys or not... these are the ways to make you approachable.

The REASON why you're offering a contact is basically what creates the value of contacting you, making it worth the prospect's while.

In reality, the most effective component in achieving a positive image involves the CONCEPT of your services.

If you have a startup introductory service which offers valuable knowledge to the prospect, if that service is priced low and non-committing in nature... your direct mailing letter will definitely be saved.

And if one letter is saved then so will the next one be once it arrives.

That they keep the letters shows that your message has something they consider worth hanging onto. There's something of potential future value there.

Thus, the successful achievement of the secondary goal of direct mailing is manifested by your letters being KEPT.

It's always a sign that your direct mailing has achieved its secondary goal if you find that prospective clients (who APPEAR to come out of the blue) have saved a whole bundle of your previous direct mailing letters.

One letter is read and it has sufficient effect to be saved.

The next letter in the series arrives and it ADDS onto the previous positive effect, expanding the image of your usefulness further... and the letter is archived safely.

Third letter arrives, further enlarging the understanding of the recipient, augmenting his positive image of your company.

Fourth, fifth, sixth letter... somewhere along that chain many recipients will have received sufficient positive impulses to contact you.

B2B direct mail marketing, qualitative factors

In direct mailing, the rules of quality and quantity are actually simple.

Quantity begets quantity — the more letters you send the more response you'll receive — and similarly, the QUALITY of your message governs the quality of the response.

"Quality" here means not only "perceived as one of high distinction" but also "class of things."

CLASS of response to your direct mailing means we target it SOLELY for the decision-maker... and aim at the TYPE of decision makers you want.

That your direct mailing reaches accurately and elicits response from exactly the KIND of decision maker you want is a qualitative factor. It saves time for your sales staff and ensures more purposeful activity as various unqualified prospects are avoided in the response.

The emotional impact created by your direct mail marketing campaign is an extremely important quality factor.

The more accurately your message hits the "go-buttons" of your target group, the better the emotional impact created, which will manifest itself as an increase of high-quality contacts.

The longer the series of direct mailing letters and the better each builds up the emotional impact in the receiver, the more quality you can expect from the response.

Quality of your direct mail marketing determines the magnitude of the positive impression created at the receiving end. It also governs the longevity of this positive image.

Yet the biggest mistakes in direct mailing are made within the qualitative factors.

And for one reason only.

B2B direct mail marketing — guessing instead of conducting a market research survey

Ad agencies sell their creativity. Thus their idea is that their creative team will CREATE the go-buttons and successful elements of the message for your direct mail marketing.

Create?

How can you CREATE something that is someone else's viewpoint, already in existence?

What, are they going to REPLACE the mind of the target group and make them forget their life experience and magically agree with the imaginary inventions of the ad agency?

You cannot "create" what your target group thinks, wants, likes, dislikes... thinks and considers true!

It's really equivalent to saying "I can't be bothered to find out my PIN code... so I will CREATE it..."

Neither direct mailing nor withdrawing cash will succeed this way.

You cannot CREATE what's already there. What's there — and what your direct mail campaign must be based on if you want it to succeed — are the already-decided considerations, opinions, problems, wishes and feelings of your target group.

So "creating" these anew is really more like hallucinating or lying... it's just not true, not at all.

Now, I can understand if it is a bit much to take in at one go. After all, how could it be that these famous, award-strewn, and successful ad agencies would... well, do something so utterly silly, something that's so obviously averse to the interests of their clients... you?

Go figure. But that's how it is IF they're suggesting they "create" the message from scratch.

They'll be doing it on conjecture upon conjecture. They're guessing. Creatively.

But there are about 100 issues that need to be taken into consideration, each with ENDLESS alternative data... all of which can only be established by surveying the target group. So a hundred points, each with say another hundred alternatives... what are the odds someone GUESSES this combination correctly?

Well, in Lotto you only have to guess six numbers out of 39 or thereabouts and the odds of that happening are 15 million to one I believe. Here, you have not 39 alternatives but a lot more... and you would have to guess 100 of them correctly in the correct sequence...

You think scientifically so you figure it out. My calculator doesn't have near enough the required capacity...

So why do we believe that the whizz kids of the ad agency are psychic so they can tell what your target audience thinks and what will appeal to them?

Why not ask your TARGET GROUP what they think?

Why not let them tell you what their opinions are, which problems are the one's they want solved, what they expect from vendors in your industry?

Why let the ad agency make it all up?

With a professional market research survey you will KNOW what your target group thinks and wants.

You'll ascertain the truth with very high accuracy.

Then it's easy to build on those facts and create a direct mailing campaign that really can produce high-quality results!

If you want to know more about market research surveys, click here to read the article on our site.

If the idea of customer-need-based direct mail marketing interests you, please read the presentation of our Marketing Analysis introductory service.

And if web site presentation is more important to you at this point in time, click here to read about our Internet Marketing & Search Engine Optimization Analysis.

Use your own judgment when choosing the elements for your direct mailing... and don't buy fairytales, regardless of how impressive new clothes are worn by the emperor!

Best wishes,

Harry Kafka
HDK Consultants Ltd
32 Manning Close
Richmond Square
East Grinstead RH19 2DR
West Sussex, United Kingdom
Tel. 01342-328 116
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