DM Vs Email?

HebIns

New Member
5
Hello all. New to the forum.

I was curious what your thoughts were on direct mail vs email marketing?

My boss has put me on a project to find targeted email lists for commercial and life/Medicare suppl and also a company that can send the campaign for us, as we'd prefer not to do it ourselves.

We're licensed in 11 states but would start off in Texas, and just wanted your opinion about success rate. From my research it appears email marketing can be daunting and a hassle, and direct mail could produce around a 4% response rate.

I'd assume email is much smaller? Am I completely off base here? Thanks.
 
First, 99% of all email service providers won't allow you to use paid lists.

Second, ANY purchased list, whether for DM or EMM, is going to suck - because it's not targeted. You're still in the process of "interruption" marketing.

The key is to find out where your prospect hang out. You're going to have to buy traffic, whether it's from Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.

And you'll have to know your ideal customer avatar to know where they hang out.

Above and beyond that, you need to consider how informed your target market is:

  • Are they aware of their problem?
  • Do they know about you?
  • Are they actively looking for a solution to their problem?

Once you can identify those issues, you'll have to further develop a sales system to move them through each specific stage and on to the next step.

THERE IS NO MAGIC BULLET

And, interestingly enough, the process is the same for either DM or EMM.

If you want to discuss more about this, just shoot me a PM.
 
I'm currently in touch with a couple of services that sell non-targeted lists and have the add-on service of campaign deployment, content/creative design, etc. Are you referring to 99% of email service providers as in, Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, GoDaddy, etc?

If so, we have no desire to use companies like that. We'd like to utilize a service provider that has more extensive knowledge in email campaign deployment.

I understand where you're coming from though. I can imagine mailing 50-100K emails and getting less than 1% conversions on it, so I'm not sure how I want to approach this to my employer. We did a DM campaign in the past, and got about a 4% rate of conversion, so we may run a similar ad simultaneously.

I think for the most part, he wanted to try to test the waters on how well a EMM campaign would do for the term life/medicare suppl products in Texas to start. I don't know. Have to sit down with him some time and discuss more. Thanks for your input thus far.
 
I'm currently in touch with a couple of services that sell non-targeted lists and have the add-on service of campaign deployment, content/creative design, etc. Are you referring to 99% of email service providers as in, Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, GoDaddy, etc?

If so, we have no desire to use companies like that. We'd like to utilize a service provider that has more extensive knowledge in email campaign deployment.

I understand where you're coming from though. I can imagine mailing 50-100K emails and getting less than 1% conversions on it, so I'm not sure how I want to approach this to my employer. We did a DM campaign in the past, and got about a 4% rate of conversion, so we may run a similar ad simultaneously.

I think for the most part, he wanted to try to test the waters on how well a EMM campaign would do for the term life/medicare suppl products in Texas to start. I don't know. Have to sit down with him some time and discuss more. Thanks for your input thus far.

Even using a provider who will send it out, you still will have immense difficulty selling from an email that doesn't build trust first, then move those contacts through the pipeline.

1% will be a GREAT result.

I would instead drive those contacts to a landing page with some type of video where you teach something and offer a downloadable of some sort (or provide the other half of the lesson after they register).
 
The trouble is this - with direct mail, you can ensure 100% deliverability. But the call-to-action is a huge barrier. Do you expect the suspect to pick a phone number and call you for an appointment? Do you want them to find the nearest computer and check your company website? That's a tall ask.

With email marketing, the deliverability is relatively poorer. But those who read your mails can be fed with a much easier call to action. They just have to reply with 'yes, send me more' or click on your website link to express interest.

My personal experience is I prefer email over direct.
 
Here is the thing....
Direct mail marketing doesn't have spam filters. Email marketing does.

Everyone loves the idea of email marketing because they think it is highly scalable at almost no cost. Basically, very little cost difference to send 1000 emails or 100,000.

Unfortunately, email marketing doesn't scale this way. Sending a few hundred emails is simple. Sending a few thousand starts to cause problems. Sending 10's of thousands and the real issues begin. Send 100's of thousands and you will find not a single one after the first 1000 got anywhere.

If you want to do it though, I'll give you some pointers....

- Insurance email marketing is about the 3rd toughest subject to email market. The reason you don't get hundreds of insurance emails in your inbox everyday is that the spam filters work overtime to stop them. Trust me, they get sent, in droves. Don't even bother checking your spam folder, a lot get stopped before they get there.

- B2B email marketing is also extremely tough. I have lots of B2B email lists, but finding the real decision maker and having the email address that they actually read is very tough. You can't send it to [email protected] and expect it to work.

------------------

How to make this work.....

First, think of email as an 'additional contact' point, rather than a replacement. Direct mail and email work well together.

Most email campaigns get sent with what I call the hammer approach. Basically, its 'Great stuff here... click here and buy it.... oh yeah, you'll save lots of money', hitting the prospect over the head with the sales pitch. They hit the 'report as spam' button and your campaign starts going into spam folders.

Unknown to a lot of people, email servers are scored based on the quality of the emails they send out. Think of this as the servers credit score. A high scoring server will land emails in the inbox where a low scoring server will get the exact same email rejected or at least put in the spam folder.

I point this out because the ONLY WAY someone will send a non-organic email list is on a very poor server. Purchased lists have a 50%+ bounce rate which means my email server is going to be negatively impacted by the bounces. I can go into this at length, but just realize, purchased lists are difficult to work with.

To help with this, there are tricks to make things work. Mostly, make your first several emails to a list a bit more 'folksy' and less sales / spammy. Let them know who you are, what you do, why you do it. Offer them something. Ask them to click a button to 'sign up' to your newsletter. Use it to build your sales tool, rather than use it as your sales tool and you'll have some success.

I can go on and on... but just realize email marketing is tough, much tougher than direct mail. Once you master it, then its very rewarding, but think in terms of building a reputation, not a direct sales system.

Dan
 
"We did a DM campaign in the past, and got about a 4% rate of conversion"
*******************
4% eh? I would ramp that up and send out more DM. No brainer.
 
The trouble is this - with direct mail, you can ensure 100% deliverability. But the call-to-action is a huge barrier. Do you expect the suspect to pick a phone number and call you for an appointment? Do you want them to find the nearest computer and check your company website? That's a tall ask.

With email marketing, the deliverability is relatively poorer. But those who read your mails can be fed with a much easier call to action. They just have to reply with 'yes, send me more' or click on your website link to express interest.

My personal experience is I prefer email over direct.

I think so too!
 
Here is the thing....
Direct mail marketing doesn't have spam filters. Email marketing does.

Everyone loves the idea of email marketing because they think it is highly scalable at almost no cost. Basically, very little cost difference to send 1000 emails or 100,000.

Unfortunately, email marketing doesn't scale this way. Sending a few hundred emails is simple. Sending a few thousand starts to cause problems. Sending 10's of thousands and the real issues begin. Send 100's of thousands and you will find not a single one after the first 1000 got anywhere.

If you want to do it though, I'll give you some pointers....

- Insurance email marketing is about the 3rd toughest subject to email market. The reason you don't get hundreds of insurance emails in your inbox everyday is that the spam filters work overtime to stop them. Trust me, they get sent, in droves. Don't even bother checking your spam folder, a lot get stopped before they get there.

- B2B email marketing is also extremely tough. I have lots of B2B email lists, but finding the real decision maker and having the email address that they actually read is very tough. You can't send it to [email protected] and expect it to work.

------------------

How to make this work.....

First, think of email as an 'additional contact' point, rather than a replacement. Direct mail and email work well together.

Most email campaigns get sent with what I call the hammer approach. Basically, its 'Great stuff here... click here and buy it.... oh yeah, you'll save lots of money', hitting the prospect over the head with the sales pitch. They hit the 'report as spam' button and your campaign starts going into spam folders.

Unknown to a lot of people, email servers are scored based on the quality of the emails they send out. Think of this as the servers credit score. A high scoring server will land emails in the inbox where a low scoring server will get the exact same email rejected or at least put in the spam folder.

I point this out because the ONLY WAY someone will send a non-organic email list is on a very poor server. Purchased lists have a 50%+ bounce rate which means my email server is going to be negatively impacted by the bounces. I can go into this at length, but just realize, purchased lists are difficult to work with.

To help with this, there are tricks to make things work. Mostly, make your first several emails to a list a bit more 'folksy' and less sales / spammy. Let them know who you are, what you do, why you do it. Offer them something. Ask them to click a button to 'sign up' to your newsletter. Use it to build your sales tool, rather than use it as your sales tool and you'll have some success.

I can go on and on... but just realize email marketing is tough, much tougher than direct mail. Once you master it, then its very rewarding, but think in terms of building a reputation, not a direct sales system.

Dan

Dan - I have many clients who are looking for software that can help they with email marketing as many of the email services do not work well with purchased email lists. Can you recommend a software of method for my clients to use with email marketing?

I know that with Google Sheet and Gmail, you can mail merge which allows you to create and send individual emails directly to a specific email list. However, the mail merge feature only allows up to 100 emails per day. Which is great for smaller campaigns, but not on the larger ones.

Also, I know some of my clients use ACT as well which has an internal email feature for sending individual emails in a bulk format, but I have not been able to determine how many emails ACT is capable of sending.

Any tips would be helpful. Thanks.
 
Email marketing is a form of direct marketing that uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:

1. Sending emails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.
2. Sending emails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately.
3. Adding advertisements to emails sent by other companies to their customers.

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