Mail Still Works Great - IF You do it well.

Unfortunately, the stereotypes around direct mail have clouded people’s vision in modern times. Many companies see it as this outdated form of marketing that no one pays attention to anymore. Of course, it is true that fewer people utilise direct mail than a few decades ago, but that is not an indicator of how well it works. If done correctly, direct mail can have a huge impact and you have far less competition due to the misconceptions around it. It’s all about making your direct mail fun, unique, and creative. While your traditional letter or postcard may have a part to play in certain situations, a modern direct mail campaign looks, feels, and acts differently.?

The bottom line is that when it comes to marketing, it doesn’t matter if you're doing online, offline, direct mail, smoke signals, or anything else, you have to be seen, heard, read, and listened to. You have to command attention. Therefore, the kind of direct mail you send out should really command that attention, forcing the mail to get opened in a way that most mail does not. The things we hear time and time again are ‘I can’t do this’ and ‘that doesn’t work’. You can do this. And if it didn’t work in the past, it’s because you were doing it wrong. But we are here to explain exactly how to do it right.?

In our experience, financial advisors are horrible at marketing. They are very clever people and are extremely good at their jobs, but they often fall short when it comes to marketing themselves to new and existing clients. We find that most of them just get stuck in one-on-one, asking everybody for referrals and working through their circle of influence. That is an extremely limited way of marketing yourself and you are only tapping into a tiny percentage of the potential clientele you could be reaching.?

When we talk with people in the industry, they often brag about their 10% annual return and want a gold medal for beating the market by two points. Then we explain how we are hitting 200%, 300%, 500%, even 1000% return on investment – not annually, but every 90 days or so. Financial advisors tend to have strong residual income and strong client retention year-over-year. Yet it is amazing how hard it is to get them to see that. So, any advisors see marketing as an expense and nothing more. If you look on a P&L at the little number next to marketing on day one, all you are going to see is an outgoing cost. You have to open your mind to what that outgoing cost can bring in at a later date. For example, spending $1000 on marketing on day one may seem like a lot, but if you have brought in $10,000 by the end of the month as a result, that $1000 seems tiny. Marketing is not an expense; it is an investment.?

Even marketing that does not work is still an investment in your business. When you try something and it doesn’t work, you can think about it in two ways. Either ‘that didn’t work’ or ‘it’s an investment’. Just like putting money into a 401(k) or an IRA, it's an investment. You put money down now; often you can see instant returns, and certainly over time, with almost any marketing that is done properly, you see great returns over the long haul. We can’t tell you how many times we have gone to seminars and events to give talks, only to feel as though the return was not that great. But that was only the initial return on day one. One, two, six months down the line and we start to see the clients coming in from those events. That $10,000 expense to go somewhere and take part in an event has suddenly ballooned into $50,000 and it only goes up from there. You have to think about it in terms of investment and, when things don’t go well, it’s all about trying out new things, finding out what works, and then closing in on what does. If you have to spend a bit of money before you reach the winning formula, it will still be worth it over the long-term investment. When you work in marketing, you are always going to experience things that simply do not work, but that is part of the process. It’s about where you go from there and what you learn from those failures.?

As some famous marketer in charge of spending billions of dollars once said: "Half my advertising doesn't work. If I knew which half, I'd be in great shape."

Working out whether a campaign works or flops is about looking at measurements where we're asking ourselves whether it's online, how many views, how many clicks, how many opt-ins, how many conversions to appointments, how many sales, or if it's direct mail, how many pieces do we mail out, what was the list, how many of them raised their hand, what was the conversion from there? A lot of people do not think this way. They often think: “Well, I'm out there getting my name out in the community.” That’s all well and good but it isn’t really marketing, that’s more about branding. Branding is a wonderful thing; however, you would like to have sales and be able to track back how you got them.?

In the modern world, people get stuck between two polar opposites. Some think that everything that they do has to be their own labor, so it becomes all labor-intensive, holding meetings, asking for referrals, working through their circle of influence, etc. Or they go to the other side of the spectrum and think the only viable marketing is digital. Just because digital marketing is there doesn’t mean it is always the best option and doesn’t mean you can use it in the same way. For example, if a company shifted to cold contacts on LinkedIn as their primary strategy, we would likely say to them: “Why don't you just go to that neighborhood over there with three-car garages that sits on the golf course, and just knock on doors?" It would likely be much more effective. You could cold contact 50 people on LinkedIn or you could knock on 50 doors and you would probably see a much higher closing rate when somebody opened the door.

This fixation on everything having to be digital nowadays often leads people to tell us direct mail does not work anymore and is too expensive. The first stat we always give them is people get less than four pieces of mail in their mailbox every day, and they get more than 200 emails in their email box every day. Not to mention the fact that email has deliverability problems and you can get stuck in the spam folder. Let’s face it, hardly anybody ever prints out an email and puts it under the magnet on their refrigerator. But with direct mail, you receive it, it ends up lying around, and if you don't respond immediately, you think about it tomorrow or the next day.?

So don’t believe what some people will try and tell you. Direct mail is very much alive and well. You may hear people say: "Well, the volume of direct mail is down," and that is correct because 15 years ago, on the first of every month, you would go through and start writing checks to the water company, the credit card company, the electric company, etc. You would put stamps on those letters and send them off. Bill paying was mostly done via mail.??So, yes, the volume of mail is down because we're not sending bills anymore, we're not sending birthday invitations, we're not doing any of that kind of stuff.?

However, the flip side is that marketing mail is actually up. It took a dip from 2008 to 2011, which was to be expected, and then it ratcheted right back up until last year before it took a dive again. Since then, we are seeing it rise once more. So, marketing mail is every bit what it was 10/12 years ago. Personal mail may be down, but that doesn’t really speak for marketing. In fact, it just removes a little more competition in the mailbox or on the welcome mat. Despite this, marketing mail being up means we have to do some unique and creative things to get noticed.

When it comes to financial advisors and the kinds of people they want to get in front of, digital marketing drops off a cliff. These types of prospects are not going to open an email, they are not going to be on LinkedIn, and they are not going to be engaged in other digital things. They may have a digital presence, but the general rule of thumb is that the higher up the financial ladder you go, the less likely people are to click on Facebook ads, to engage in email, and to do any other digital things. At the same time, you are much more likely to trust and engage with something that comes in the mail. If you're going after business owners and CEOs, 60% of them still prefer tangible stuff in the mail. So, if you're telling them to go to your website or if you are trying to email them a PDF, they are either going to ignore you or delete the email. There are all kinds of psychological reasons behind this, including trusting and respecting someone who has gone to the effort and cost to send something with a stamp on. Instantly, that stamp adds value to whatever is inside.?

You want to aim to always have what some call the Parthenon of marketing, meaning you have 20/30 different things going on at all times to drive traffic. If you have one marketing strategy that is working and you completely rely on that, your business will fall off a cliff if that strategy suddenly stops working. And it does happen. We used to use fax a lot to market to people, but that is a dying technology now. If we hadn’t found other streams of marketing, our business would be dead too. It’s all about diversifying your marketing portfolio.?

One thing that happens with online digital marketing is that once you get good, your competitors know about it pretty quick. There are plenty of websites where you can go and look at every single ad and see how much a company is spending, as well as their click-through rates are. There is 100% transparency with this stuff, which is really good if you want to go and rip somebody off, but really bad if you've got an ad that's working and don’t want people to steal it. However, with direct mail, you control who sees your message. That way, you don’t get any of this peeking behind the curtain to see what you're doing because you control the curtain. With direct mail, the chances of your competitors seeing it is pretty low unless a client literally takes it to them.

When it comes to sourcing and buying leads, you don't want the cheapest leads available, you want every lead that's going to give you a positive return on investment. You want every sale that's going to give you a positive return on investment. Too often, we hear people say: "Well, we're getting pretty good results from email, so we're just going to do emails." However, instead of sending out 100 emails, these businesses could send out 10 pieces of direct mail and potentially double, triple, quadruple the efficacy of conversions. Let's say you have a prospective client and you know that he has 50 million to invest. You might have a 10% chance of getting him to sign with you. Would you be willing to spend 100 bucks on that one person to get someone who you know is going to return $5,000 a year for 20 years? It’s hard to argue against that kind of logic.

We always start with our qualified prospects when it comes to lead-generation marketing. People who have already given you information, raised their hand and are obviously interested. Sending them a few emails is not enough. We have three or four things queued up to send someone as soon as they raise their hand. We even send out popcorn and big boxes of books for them. If they are really highly qualified, they get Mrs. Fields cookies. Even though we may have spent $100 on one person, why wouldn’t we if we believe they are worth a lot more than that to us?

While it may not come under the bracket of lead generation because you already have them on side, the very top of the list should be your current clients. If you've got new product offerings, new services, or anything else, direct mail to your existing clients should be a no-brainer. Just because you may have a relationship with them doesn't mean they are guaranteed to open your emails, let alone read them. Every time you have something new and fun to announce, it should be going straight in the mail to these existing clients. In fact, you should be keeping in touch with them even when you don't have anything to announce, with monthly newsletters, etc. Right before Valentine’s this year, we received a little box of heart-shaped candies with the writing on it saying: "Just wanted to keep in touch. We love our customers. Call us if you have any issues." That is a fun and unique way to keep in touch and stay engaged with your clients. Don’t just contact them when you want to sell them something new, send out mail to stay in touch and make it clear that you care.?

To put this into financial advisor terms, foreclosures just went away, which was a big issue for some attorneys. That's a big chunk of change for them that just went away. However, they still have lists of people who are in limbo and know they are going to be in foreclosure eventually. So, our advice to them was to keep them in the loop and keep sending them good, timely information about their current situation. The same goes for financial advisors. No matter whether the market is up or down, it is always a good time to send out some helpful information. In fact, your clients need to hear from you even more during the dark days.?

Keeping in touch also keeps you are the forefront of their mind when it comes to referrals. Some businesses think they have a great relationship with their clients because they provide a great service and send out birthday cards. However, when the client is out on the golf course or at the restaurant, and they are talking to somebody who has a need that you could fill, you will likely not be at the front of their mind. They are not thinking about you and the opportunity comes and goes. However, if you keep regular contact with them via direct mail, you are always on the tip of their tongue. You have to plant the seed for the referral in order to see it grow. Educate your clients on how to communicate and how to pass somebody along. Remember, they are not as good at selling your services as you are.?

Someone once told us that when they get someone on their lead list, they send out really personal emails for 29 days to try and hook them in. If at the end of the 29 days they have not replied or shown interest, they would remove them from the mail list. While the initial plan was right, you should never ever remove them from the list. You could reel them in within 29 days, but sometimes it can take years. The day you remove them from the list is the day you guarantee they will never contact you. Not only this, but email should not be your only point of contact. Email them, call them, text them and… send them direct mail! Send them your book in the post. Send them newsletters. Send them gifts. Send them really unique direct mail to stick in their mind. Your frequency may slow down after the 29-day mark, the six-month mark, the year mark, but you should always be there. If you know details about them and think they would be worth a lot to your business, that becomes even more true. Stick at it!

Don’t worry about these multi-million or multi-billion-dollar businesses trying to blow you out of the water with their national TV adverts and the like. You can always think smarter when it comes to marketing. Let’s pretend you want to target dentists to offer them financial advice. Let the big boys do their stuff, but when it comes to using your marketing budget, instead of running national ads, you could get a list of the home addresses of all the dentists who have a net worth of a million dollars or more in the three counties surrounding you. Then you can run that very targeted list and aim only to the dentists. Then maybe the next month, you could do the same exact thing, but only to people who own construction businesses. Then the next month, you might do the same thing but to veterinarians. Each piece of marketing can be specifically designed for the group of people too. The content of your financial advice book may be the same, but the cover the dentists receive has a dentist on the front, for example. It makes you seem like an expert in their niche and that creates trust. There may be 380 million people in the United States, but you will see a much better return targeting niches than you will ever see targeting the full 380 million. Find a niche, target them, talk their language, and watch the results. Don’t worry about only being known for one thing either. You can target more than one niche. You may be known as the dentist financial advisor in the dentist community, but you will also be known as the vet financial advisor in the vet community and so on.?

All Facebook has done is taken the direct response mailing world and put it into their own Facebook algorithms. They get demographics, geographics, and more real-time information. Let's say you are thinking about remodeling our home and you click on an ad for paint somewhere. Now they have real-time information on you. All they have done is taken direct mail direct response list-building and brought it into the 21st century. All they've done is completely rip off the direct mail people. You couldn’t do this kind of marketing online, you would go broke. Facebook would take your money if you allowed them to. You wouldn’t be able to buy enough stamps to mail everybody that could be your customer. Niche that down and your returns become far more attractive. And if they walk through the front door and realize you’re not just the dentist guy, it doesn’t matter. They are already through the door, and you can look to close a deal. It’s all about getting those appointments.?

For example, we have one client who knows a lot of people in the tech industry, so he wants to go after more clients in the tech industry, more specifically C-suite people. That is a list you can generate easily. You can take the top 500 tech companies and mail them regionally, which becomes a very valuable list. Are you willing to spend 10 bucks to mail to the CEO of Vonage, for instance, as opposed to you're just mailing people who happen to be in your neighborhood? The cost vs reward is completely different. As we said before, marketing is an investment.?

Imagine you hold an event and three days later you send out direct mail marketing to a load of the people who didn’t make an appointment. “Hey, you were at my event, we can really help you with this. I thought I'd give you one more chance because here's all the reasons you didn't come in and all the reasons you didn't schedule right away.” You could send out thousands of these and still get a payout if just one or two signed up for an appointment and became a client. You can even make the direct mail fun and unique. We’ve seen people send a dollar bill with every letter to stand out. We’ve seen people send the million-dollar letter in which they say: "I want to talk to you about a million-dollar opportunity. We’ve even seen people send a message in a bottle. If a piece of paper in a bottle washed up in your mailbox, there is zero chance you’re not opening that. Something along the lines of "Is your current advisor leaving you stranded?" And around 60% of people are actually thinking about leaving their current advisor.?

The idea is to convince the person receiving the mail to open it and read it. There are a few ways of doing this. A message in a bottle or a message in an aspirin bottle is going to get opened. Quirky and unique stuff gets opened. Letters with a grabber, like a dollar bill and a catchy headline, will get opened. And bulky packages that have something interesting inside will get opened. A lot of us have gotten the pen solicitations, but you know what it is and you tend to open it and just take the pen. So, the idea is to make the receiver think: "What the hell is this?"

It is also worth mentioning cold mailing. This is when you direct mail people who are not clients and are not prospects who have shown any interest. They just fall within the niche of people you think might be interested in your services. Of course, with cold mailing, it does not make as much sense to spend big on each person, especially if you don’t have much information on them. However, you can actually send non-priority mail for around 55 cents. We once had a list of 400 contacts and send 200 priority mail envelopes which were around $9 a pop, vs 200 cheap versions. The cheap ones won. So, you never know until you test it.?