Thinking Outside the Mailbox

BY RITA TIEFERT

Direct mail distributors attract end users with consulting, low prices and creative features.

According to David Foster, end users often think they can produce affordable, effective direct mail without outside help. Foster, a sales representative at distributorship GBF Information Systems Inc., Portland, Maine, has proven them wrong for 10 years. "When customers do it their way, they're limited to their own knowledge base about printing and mailing," he says. "By using someone like us, they get a much better range of choices. Sometimes, you have to convince them that's so."

Selling Value-Added Features
Foster recently landed an oil company's direct mail account by brainstorming ways he could add value to it. Originally, the client wanted address labels for a direct mail project it planned to produce in house. It wanted to stuff envelopes with cards informing its clients about new payment plans.

Instead of labels, Foster suggested applying addresses with an ink jet press and adding bar codes to help the post office sort the pieces. "It lowers the cost for mailing and gives [the customer] more to spend on the actual piece itself," Foster says. Instead of cards, GBF proposed an 8 1/2 x 13 1/2-inch, C-folded mailer made of card stock with a section including check-off boxes for types of payment plans. A perforation along one of the folds allowed recipients to detach and mail the section. During interviews, Foster also learned the oil company was changing its name. He suggested promoting the name change with the direct mail project.

To produce the piece, GBF partnered with a graphic designer and a medium-sized manufacturer based in Maine. The designer created 2-color announcements, including a message on the outside of the direct mail piece that reads, "An important announcement from the people who deliver your oil and propane." GBF collected the client's address database, and the manufacturer printed and mailed the pieces.

Foster says his clients were pleased with the results. The project had only one downside: it was only 2,000 pieces large. Direct mail requires the same amount of work regardless of its size, Foster says. Obviously, larger sizes are more profitable.

To satisfy its hunger for larger orders, GBF recently added value to 50,000 direct mail pieces for a welding supplies company. "[The client] was looking at doing a black-and-white letter in an envelope with regular fonts. It was pretty generic-looking," Foster says. GBF spiced it up with 2-color letters and envelopes, unusual fonts and varied point sizes. GBF also included the company's logo and added the words "special notice" in red ink on the envelope. Foster used two manufacturers to produce the envelopes and cut sheet letters. A mail house folded, inserted and sorted the products according to postal regulations. GBF saved the client approximately $4,000 in postal costs, Foster says.

Both case studies are examples of the advantage distributors have over manufacturers in direct mail sales, Foster says. "The manufacturer is interested.in getting [the product] out the door," he says. "The distributor may be more interested in the value added for that customer," he says.

Selling Stock Mailers
Dan Sherman, president of distributorship SBF Enterprises, Kalamazoo, Mich., says he doesn't focus on value-added features. Instead, he emphasizes stock mailers-and outstanding customer service. To differentiate itself, SBF offers same-day shipping, a large inventory and fast, personable customer service. "I have had the customer on my cordless phone, called up an art file for changes and faxed it back before the conversation ended to close a sale," Sherman says. "I call a customer to personally remind them that their forms might be getting low..Sometimes, they joke that they wished they knew what I looked like from four states away, but they are happier with the service electronically than with what they were getting in their own backyard." Thirty percent of SBF's sales consist of mail-order projects for the health care market.

Direct mail poses several challenges, Sherman says. Mailing to a database can be complex, often requiring intensive relationship-building with clients. Also, direct mail often has a long sales cycle. To meet these challenges, SBF offers in-house fulfillment services. "We feel we have better control of accuracy if we manage and maintain the mailing database ourselves," he says. "It has been a great decision over the years in terms of quality control and marketing other services."

Controlling Quality
Like Sherman, Michael Bazinet, part owner of distributorship Creative Print Services in Bangor, Maine, also tries to lock in quality control-but by partnering with direct-mail manufacturer Creative Digital Imaging, which he heads. "We were uncomfortable with going outside for this work due to the complex nature," Bazinet explains, "and it was difficult finding an outsource partner who would look at runs of this size." Creative Print Services provides short run direct mail to complement its bill and statement processing, which account for 95 percent of its sales. Clients include cities, hospitals, oil companies and industrial suppliers.

According to Bazinet, distributors who partner closely with manufacturers can spot problems quickly, such as the cost of mailing different paper stocks and postal regulation concerns. "The initial call you make on your own, but on the second or third call, bring in the manufacturer as your partner to pull the details together," he advises. Then, communicate regularly with the client, he says. "Many end users are grateful to be kept in the loop," Bazinet says. "Make certain you can meet a committed deadline. Be upfront about possible problems, and help develop a workable plan with your client from the start."

Successful direct mail projects often yield loyal clients and excellent sales for distributors. "Many end users want to get away from the headache of processing their own mail in house," Bazinet says. "All you need to do is offer them relief, and they'll help you to make the sale..It's a wonderful opportunity to be a valued resource to your clients." Besides, Bazinet adds, "If you are not offering this to your clients, someone else will."

Rita Tiefert is an assistant editor at FORM Magazine. Email her your comments at rtiefert@PSDA.org.

Thanks to F.P. Horak, Bay City, Mich.; MAR Graphics, Valmeyer, Ill.; and Team Dispatch, Erie, Pa., for assistance.

8 Direct Mail Tips
Direct mail accounts for 25 percent of sales at distributorship Optimum Print Solutions Inc., Columbus, Ohio. The company recently launched a manufacturing branch to track its projects from start to finish. Lorri Whitehead, sales manager at Optimum, shares these tips for selling direct mail pieces:

1. Add on sales. Every year, Optimum does 10 to 15 direct mail campaigns for a nonprofit science center's ongoing exhibitions and events. In addition, Optimum provides the center with program guides, fliers two weeks before each event, tickets, label badges and giveaway coolers.
   
   
2. Offer post cards. "Post cards are extremely cost-effective," Whitehead says. "[Manufacturers] can gang-run several different versions of a marketing theme, then release them two or three weeks apart-or days apart."
   
   
3. Know the target audience. Some recipients are motivated by colorful pictures and appealing text; others want information. For example, a text-filled, C-folded, 8 1/2 x 11-inch piece is appropriate for advertising seminars to engineers, Whitehead says. "These are people who want every single detail-the street location and the time of day and everything about the seminar," she says.
   
   
4. Outsource when necessary. Optimum outsources database research and mailing. "There are so many companies out there that all they do is create databases and listings of certain demographics, and it's much easier to buy [the lists]," Whitehead says.
   
   
5. Understand the postal system. Clients with more than 10,000 pieces can cut costs by sending their projects as bulk mail at 17 to 24 cents per piece, Whitehead says. "Bulk mail needs up to 10 days in the postal system," she warns. "If they send it first class, it could be there within two to five days." Another way to cut costs is to keep direct mail's size-and the space available for postal bar codes-within postal regulations. Whitehead advises consulting the post office. (Visit www.usps.gov.)
   
   
6. Give clients VIP treatment. In April, Optimum educated itself and made clients feel special when it invited a U.S. Postal Service representative to the plant for a free seminar on mailing regulations. "We had an open invitation to our current clients and prospective clients," Whitehead says. "It was informative."
   
   
7. State the obvious. Whitehead says the most common problem in direct mail sales is ensuring that clients immediately understand how expensive postal costs can be. "You have to make sure the communication is clear and maybe repeated more than once," Whitehead says.
   
   
8. Be honest when troubleshooting. When one client underestimated its timeline, Optimum immediately held a consultation. Due to short notice, the distributorship advised the client to mail its pieces first class. The client appreciated the effort, and luckily, the mailing was small enough that it only added $900 to the client's cost, Whitehead says.

Better Than Distributing?
Two years ago, Sandi Boyd gave up her distributing career and opened eclipse Marketing Group/SB Inc., a marketing agency in Needham, Mass. With an agency, Boyd says, she's better able to integrate direct mail with her clients' other marketing efforts. For example, a technology publishing company ordered direct mail from eclipse, then added eclipse's web site creation, a webcast, email advertisements, broadcast faxes, online banner ads, print advertising and more.

eclipse offers complete marketing programs, including advertising tools such as web site launches, print advertising, telemarketing and lists of target audiences. "We do tons and tons of research before we launch any campaign or make any recommendations," Boyd says. eclipse even calls members of clients' target markets and asks them to describe direct mail they receive each day. eclipse's graphic designers, each of whom has at least 20 years of experience, work toward creating direct mail that stands out.

Boyd names some direct mail trends: Clients prefer projects with custom designs over ones with direct-mail templates; personalization tends to increase response rates; and clients increasingly use direct mail to make an impression rather than to solicit a response. Electronic mail hasn't pushed out direct mail, Boyd says. "You reach a saturation point with electronic mail as you do with any medium," she says. "People still want to sit down and hold something that is tactile." Also, people aren't comfortable sending credit applications electronically, she says.

Selling direct mail isn't as easy as it was eight years ago, Boyd says. "Mail recipients are much more sophisticated," she says. "We talk to people every day who stand over their waste baskets, throw pieces away and never open them." In the next five years, marketing agencies might prove to have the cutting edge in direct mail, Boyd says. "I see tons of distributors going out of business," she says.