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How Does Your Direct Mail Pull?

Assuming you have a great graphic artist who designs your marketing materials, mailers and collateral (which is a big assumption, I know)…

Where do you go to get them printed and/or mailed? How do you know which messages will be better to use? How often should you send mail out to your list?

Many small business owners I know typically do mailings hap hazzardly, meaning they plan a promotion or sale quickly to get business in the door or plan a workshop to happen in 2 weeks and then they say «I have to get a mailer out to my list».

Does this sound familiar?

I’m suggesting you plan your mailings annually along with your sales, workshops and promotions (even holiday mailings or annual update letters). Then if you can plan the design, messages, who it’s going to, how you’ll get it printed and mailed it will not only go much smoother BUT I’ll bet you get a much higher response too!

You will give yourself time to come up with a strategy rather than throwing together quick mailings which might not:

— flow with your brand
— get a clear message across
— include all pertinent info
— make them take action

Many business owners will also go to Kinko’s or Office Depot (which are great resources for some things or really last minute jobs) for their printing and then fold, stuff, label and stamp their own mailers. NO, NO, NO, depending on the number of mailers you have it could be much less expensive and less time consuming to go through a professional printer, print broker or even online and then to go to a local or online mail house for mailing services.

You don’t have to do it all yourself.

Besides, what is your hourly rate? How much is your time worth? You would most likely be better off outsourcing these types of things rather than spending your valuable time when you could be working with a client or attaining a new client instead.

While I’m on the subject, how many people do you have on your mailing list or current database? Are you including EVERYONE YOU KNOW? If not, WHY THE HECK NOT? Everyone you know will either be a prospect for your business OR a referral source without question. They all need to know what you’ve been up to or what you’re doing now in case they need your services/products or know someone who does.

I could go on and on with suggestions on who to use for printing, mailing, and all the services that go along with doing this but we’d be here forever. So, here are —

5 tips on how to manage your direct mail efficiently:

1. Plan for large mailings.

Your lists must be large, since even good response rates may fall between 2 percent and 4 percent. If you don’t have a very large list — meet more people!

2. Choose the best format.

There are three basic types of direct mail: postcards, letters and packages. Successful direct-mail letters are complex packages and if you want to virtually guarantee your mail gets opened, you can put it in a box or some bulk mailing package.

3. Assemble your campaign.

Direct-mail marketing is rarely a do-it-yourself job. The steps include: designing and printing the creative pieces, choosing the lists, and delivering them both to a mailing house for labeling and distribution. Most mailing houses will be cost effective for a minimum of 500 or more pieces for your addressing and postage handling and some can even do printing as well.

4. Test and measure results.

Direct-mail success is measured one campaign at a time. It’s essential to test various components of the campaign- -the lists, your offers and creative approaches—in order to continually improve your response rates. The key is to test just one component at a time and make incremental adjustments until your campaign produces optimal results.

5. Contact a Marketing Expert.

They can help you put a PLAN together. You don’t need to research it all or figure it all out yourself, they love to do that part. A marketing expert can help you with the campaign itself, what the message or design will be, who to send it to, when and how. They can also find the best printing, mailing and delivering resources available based on your time frame, your budget and your quantity.

I hope for your sakes you’re doing direct mailings pretty regularly in your business for part of your follow up and ongoing marketing to your list. Email is great but it certainly doesn’t reach everyone all the time so it’s not that reliable for your ONLY source of follow up marketing.

It’ll Be All Right On The Night

There was only a week to go before the major product launch and Sara had a «concern»; a phrase she used when she was shaking in her boots with sheer panic. She had been checking with all of the presenters to make sure that their presentations were well into development, if not complete and, although she had not heard or read them all from end-to-end, she could tell that there was an unacceptable amount of repetition. The audience was in danger of walking out after the first hour if she could not convince these high-flying executives to modify their approach.

Originally, Sara, as the event organizer, thought she could avoid a rehearsal to save cost and time, she now saw that this might be the only way to rapidly convince the presentation team to «adjust» their material. «Adjust», in this case, might mean «completely rewrite» but it sounds less challenging.

Wherever possible, it makes sense for the entire event team to assemble before the event to run through the complete timetable. If this cannot be done at the venue, then find somewhere that is a close approximation to the venue in size and shape. Lay out the audience seating as you believe it will be and provide the equipment that will be available on the day. Invite along a few colleagues who can spare the time to act as the audience and provide valuable feedback.

As the event organizer, you should be most interested in the timing of each activity and, if elements of the program turn out to be too long or too short, don’t try to debate how to change them there and then. Let the entire event run its course, take copious notes about areas for improvement and then once the final words of the event have been spoken, hold a formal review meeting to discuss how the program or the timetable should be modified in order to better fit the time available.

Other review subjects may include:

• presentation content

• quality, consistency and clarity of slides

• segue design between elements

• energy levels in the audience throughout the event

If you have not run an event before, this is a useful opportunity to gauge how much time you will need to set up and dismantle everything that is to be used on the day and to plan any last minute changes that might need to be made.

Sara’s «concern» was quickly taken on board by the entire presentation team when they were given an opportunity to sit and listen to each other’s scripts during the rehearsal day and they quickly decided on a recovery strategy. As a result, on the day the event flowed effortlessly from beginning to end without noticeable repetition. According to the audience feedback, they were entertained and informed and they found the presentations to be slick and professional. Although Sara may not have been fully recognized for saving the day, she was praised for her quiet efficiency as event organizer.

How to Get Successful All the Website Traffic You Want with No Effort at all!**

In order to have a successful site you need of course a lot of website traffic. But in many cases, even if you work really hard and you create a professional web page you still do not get too many visitors and in conclusion the profit that you deserve.

First, let us review the most poplar methods of directing traffic to a certain website.

-Link exchanging — cheap method but many say that overall it drives people away from your site instead of to it. This is because adding a large number of links to your pages makes them look unprofessional and may drive visitors away. Adding only a small number of links does not have any noticeable effect. Also making link exchanges is not always so easy because you have to convince webmasters to trade links with you. I can tell you from my experience that if you have a new site this thing could get really difficult because almost no one will want to exchange links with you.

-Free ezine ads — another cheap method but it rarely does anything because there are thousands of ads out there that try to attract attention and yours will just blend in with the others.

-Search engine submissions — this may be the most effective method but it requires a lot of work and time. To rank successfully in the major search engines takes a lot of time development and quite often money. It only works well if you get a high position in the search engines, which is very difficult to do, and you can loose that position in a few weeks.

-Buying one way links to increase your link popularity and your search engine rankings could be a method but having top positions in the major search engines is not so easy. Every one knows that search engine website traffic is the best but to get it you must have thousands of good quality links, which can get really expensive. A PR5 one way link can cost 30USD+ a month.

The solution is easier than you may think.. you can buy traffic! For a small amount of money you can purchase all the website traffic that you need and boost you business profits. Without people visiting your pages you can not promote and sell your products, so if you want to increase your profits you have to get as much website traffic as you can. Therefore, the simplest, easiest solution is to buy traffic. It is not cheap, proven and with targeted traffic has a good conversion rate.

Now, a new innovative method has been developed — the redirected visitors technology. This tehnique brings, just as its name suggests, redirected visitors to your site. It works perfectly and it is guaranteed to bring a lot of website traffic to you!

People who are working with this technology purchase all the abandoned / expired domain names that had a website with good traffic on them. Those abandoned websites are listed in the search engines and they are marketed, therefore they used to be visited by a lot of people. When you enter this kind of program, your website will be scanned, and those abandoned websites will be redirected to yours. When someone searches for something in a search engine and clicks on the link that used to point to the abandoned pages, it will lead them to you instead! Unlike popups this method is not annoying for users, because what they find has the same subject as what they searched for, so they will most likely not even notice the redirection.

This way you will get all the targeted website traffic you need. Instead of working really hard you can simply buy that traffic sit back and watch the sales pour in. Furthermore, this tehnique is not a spamming tehnique and it brings real traffic to you, from 2,500+ visitors!

Iso 9001 — When are We Ready?

An effective Quality Management System (QMS) is never really “complete”, as there should always be emphasis on continuously improving the performance of the processes that make up the QMS and the products that are provided the organization. While a properly designed QMS isn’t ever going to be truly finished, it can be “ready” in terms of being an adequate, suitable and effective tool capable of having a positive impact on the operations being performed by the implementing organization.

For many organizations, this “readiness” is validated by obtaining third-party registration from an accredited ISO 9001 registrar. For organizations that new to the registration process, as the name implies, this is an activity performed by an accredited outside organization to verify that the organization has adequately documented and effectively implemented their QMS in accordance with the requirements of the ISO 9001:2000 standard.

Prior to attempting ISO 9001:2000 registration, an organization should assess their level of preparedness and degree of compliance with the ISO 9001:2000 standard. Primarily, this assessment is made through the performance of a formal, documented “internal audit” of the QMS and its related processes, performed by either qualified internal personnel or by utilizing the services of an outside contractor. The performance of an internal audit is specifically required by the ISO 9001 standard, so it must precede the registration process regardless.

For a program that is “new” – one that was recently designed, developed and implemented, I personally recommend that an additional, informal review be performed preceding the more formal internal audit, just as a means of assuring that the organization has “covered all of its bases”, so to speak (think design review). This way, an informal review determines if an organization is ready for a formal internal audit, a formal internal audit determines if an organization is ready for a third-party registration audit, and a third-party registration audit determines if an organization meets the requirements for ISO 9001:2000 registration. Whew.

The purpose of this review is not to collect objective evidence of program compliance (such as in an internal audit), but rather to ensure that the program is ready for more formal assessment. As part of such review, I would initially consider at least 10 key items:

• An adequately communicated Quality Policy

• A designated Management Representative

• A documented Quality Manual

• Documented procedures required by the standard

• Additional procedure and/or Work instructions as appropriate to the complexity of the processes being performed

• Internal training of personnel on the QMS and on the activities they are performing

• A documented Management Review

• At least one Internal audit

• Adequate historical data relating to the performance of the QMS

• Adequate analysis of process performance

There’s one more key item, while not directly addressed, is implied in each above — Implementation, Implementation and Implementation. Implementation is KEY. And remember, it never happened if there’s no record that it was performed.

The degree of documentation generated as a result of this activity should be left to discretion of the organization, but as this is an informal review, this could be considered technically as outside of the organization’s internal audit program. Being for “informational use only”, this activity wouldn’t be subject to the same documentation requirements as an audit, unless this was a requirement specified within the organization’s procedures. Again, this is an informal review, not a formal internal audit.

Documentation should however be generated regarding any issues that were identified during this informal assessment, through the Corrective Action or Preventative Action process established with the organization’s QMS. This activity will ensure that any deficiencies are adequately addressed and also serve to demonstrate the effectiveness of these two key processes. This also provides information that can be used as part of the organization’s management review.

How High is Your Business Passion for Success?

How awful you feel, after receiving the news that your job is on shaky ground, due to the slow economy, after 10 years. You decide right on the spot, to look for a business to own. Being the boss and making your own schedule has great appeal. You’re sick and tired of getting nowhere. It’s time that you do something about being on the unemployment line, while your boss takes a three week yearly vacation, with plenty of money in his pockets; yours remain empty. Although this job pays for most bills, not wanting to make any detrimental moves that would leave my dependable income, would not be a wise.

If you were to challenge your business passion today, you would see all the possible business areas to own, to improve your financial status to provide personal satisfaction. Even though your job is in jeopardy now, owning a business can be a frightening leap. The positive side, you are the boss, who calls the shots. On the adverse side,there is the possibility of failure. In fact, it’s already proven through analysis that what you want from your own business in personal terms is to become financially stable, first. How do you start?

When you are in the driver’s seat, you first want to start with a passion for your business, which brings you pleasure. Enjoying what you do, will greatly increase your success, better than in a field that is lukewarm by choice. Just think. How would you feel when your job closed its doors? Could it have been attached to a yawning line of work? You don’t want to leap before counting the cost, for any new business adventure.

Suppose you’ve a passion for cycling, what’s preventing you from opening and promoting a cycle shop? Chances are you would probably do very well online. Try it.

Your goal objective, for financial success is in the front seat, but it must be balanced with interest. Before making any decisions or plans, choose activities and subjects that fire your passion in business, to satisfy your heart and meet your financial goals. It matters very little, who or waht your interest be, with so many businesses out there,to select from that are profitable. Look out for success, when you have love for your business and compassion for sales marketing, at your heels.