Getting sales are good but...
 

It’s also about generating a list of prospects that are seriously interested in your products or service but are not quite ready to buy.

Here is a brief article on the large Catalog/Internet retailer, Crutchfield who sells a variety of home and car stereo equipment (annual sales of about $200,000,0000):

“Last fall Crutchfield did a test in its package-insert program (a ‘package-insert program’ is where one vendor, in this case Crutchfield, puts promotional materials in with the promotional materials sent by another vendor) with partners such as music club Columbia House and auto-parts dealer J.C. Whitney.
It (Crutchfield) split tested two cards with the rest of the promotional piece being the same. On one card the company’s URL was featured. The other card did not have the URL.

Catalog requests (remember Crutchfield is first and foremost a catalog company) were 40% higher from clients who got the card without the URL than those who received the card with the URL.

Examining the statistics revealed the obvious…those that requested a catalog were much more likely to buy than those that just frequented the web site.”

This brings out three critical points:

#1. Sales are good, in fact very good BUT many people are just not ready to buy right now for whatever reason and no matter how good your sales copy is you just can’t get them to pull out there credit card right now. But does that doesn’t mean you forget about those people that are interested but just not ready and this is where off-line marketing comes into play. It can ‘tickle’ the prospect’s memory to take action. The Internet just isn’t good enough in this area to be effective. Email and ezines you say? Most people are receiving so much and so many as to render electronic communication virtually meaningless. We just don’t have the time to go through it all AND THEN DECIPHER IT AND TAKE ACTION ON IT.

#2. Directing people to a website (even one as good as Crutchfield’s) without getting them to request a catalog first (in order to secure a name and address) will cost you money…plain & simple! I’ve noticed the same thing with the cosmetic products that I sell in daily newspaper ads. The ads that don’t contain a URL outperform those that due. Does having the URL in the ad spike the traffic to the web site? Yes! But it neither results in sales nor does it get me the names and address of many prospects. Could it be that my web site stinks? Certainly it could that’s why I hesitate using my own personal experience as an example. But it is interesting that Crutchfield is finding exactly the same thing and they do have a good web site.

#3. The soon to hit postal rate increase will make direct mail even more effective! Why? Because the bit-players and wannabe’s will drop out due to the apparent high cost of the conducting a campaign. The result will be that people will receive less mail so each received will become that much more important. Contrast this with electronic marketing. Does anyone foresee a decrease in the use of this media anytime soon? Heck no, all the do-it-for-free folks are still out there and continue to grow in numbers (with the ‘help’ of all the “Get Rich On The Internet” guru’s pushing them along). Remember when you use to get only a couple emails per day? How ‘cool’ was that? Is it still ‘cool’ sorting through 10, 20 or even 100 per day like you or I get? Most of which is garbage and considerably worse than any junk mail ever stuffed in our mail boxes.

I feel sorry for the folks that haven’t had the opportunity to work in the off-line marketing world. If you did you would know how important those numbers Crutchfield revealed actually are. Yes, sales are good but developing a qualified list of prospects is money in the bank and often the difference between profitability and profitlessness. What are your feelings and more importantly experiences?

Take care,

Mike Winicki

Apparent high costs?
 

Hi,

You wrote:
> and this is where off-line
> marketing comes into play. It can ‘tickle’
> the prospect’s memory to take action. The
> Internet just isn’t good enough in this area
> to be effective.

I couldn't disagree more.

You wrote:
> #3. The soon to hit postal rate increase
> will make direct mail even more effective!
> Why? Because the bit-players and wannabe’s
> will drop out due to the apparent high cost
> of the conducting a campaign.

Apparent high cost? I'd say outrageously high cost.

You wrote:
> The result
> will be that people will receive less mail
> so each received will become that much more
> important. Contrast this with electronic
> marketing. Does anyone foresee a decrease in
> the use of this media anytime soon? Heck no,

See, as I've said before, Internet Marketing isn't like Direct Response Mailorder. Internet Marketing is like Direct Sales like Don Alm does. People who try to do Internet Marketing like they do offline mailorder will fail, but that isn't the fault of the internet as a sales method.

You just have to use it correctly.

Hope this was helpful to someone,

- Boyd

Re: Apparent high costs?
 

> Hi,

> You wrote:

> I couldn't disagree more.

> You wrote:

> Apparent high cost? I'd say outrageously
> high cost.

> You wrote:

> See, as I've said before, Internet Marketing
> isn't like Direct Response Mailorder.
> Internet Marketing is like Direct Sales like
> Don Alm does. People who try to do Internet
> Marketing like they do offline mailorder
> will fail, but that isn't the fault of the
> internet as a sales method.

> You just have to use it correctly.

> Hope this was helpful to someone,

> - Boyd

Good input Boyd,

But do you have numbers/examples to justify the position? Heck I would like nothing more than to find good Internet only models that worked (i.e. be profitable) and not just selling a few reports here and there but doing say more than 1/2 mill per year in sales. I would consider that to be fantastic information.

As far as the cost of postage, is it higher than it was? Absolutely, but I can tell you that there are many, many direct marketers in the world making direct mail work at a cost that is far higher than what we pay in the U.S.

Take care,

Mike Winicki

Don't write them off just yet!
 

Hi Mike,

Thanks - very stimulating post! :)

> Email and ezines you say?
> Most people are receiving so much and so
> many as to render electronic communication
> virtually meaningless. We just don’t have
> the time to go through it all AND THEN
> DECIPHER IT AND TAKE ACTION ON IT.

I partly agree with you here.... Though I do think there is a kind of analogy of an ezine, with a real life magazine. An ezine is a way of building a valuable "list"....

But what you say is true too - there are a "flood" of ezines out there, in CERTAIN areas. For example, there seem to be hundreds of ezines dealing with business and marketing! The reason why is because ezines are so inexpensive to distribute!

Here's where I think niche marketing can be very valuable.... What if you produce the ONLY ezine around about keeping pet hermit crabs? Every week (or every month), you could write various tips for hermit crab owners, to help them care for and interact with their hermit crabs.

(I'm a former pet hermit crab owner myself! If I still owned pet hermit crabs, I'd certainly subscribe to such an ezine....)

Because you'd have the only ezine for this market, your list will be much more valuable, and probably more widely read by your subscribers....

So, I wouldn't write off ezines. Many ezines are quite profitable.... Naturally, the larger your list of "quality" subscribers, the more profitable your ezine could be. In the hermit crab ezine example, you could make profits by selling advertising space to makers of hermit crab products, selling your own hermit crab products, or selling other people's hermit crab products for a commission....

(Hermit crabs may not be the best area to make a profit - I don't know. Feel free to substitute Siamese fighting fish for hermit crabs. ;) )

- Dien Rice