5 Reasons You Need to Start Customer Profiling, Today

1. Not everyone needs you

This sounds harsh, but it is true. Not every single member of the public needs your services or products. In order to get your message to those that count, you need to stop trying to reach everyone and try customer profiling to narrow the search.

2. You are wasting money

How many times have you received a mailer, email, or logoed product that you didn’t need? Probably lots. You probably also simply threw that marketing product into the trash. That is exactly where your efforts are going without a targeted approach. When everything hinges on ROI, you can’t afford to be wasteful.

3. Be a better resource

The reason you are in business is to provide a product or service. By identifying your ideal customer through customer profiling, you increase your exposure to those that actually need you. You can be better about providing timely information about helpful options for them. It becomes a win-win relationship.

4. Take care of those that take care of you

Customer profiling provides the data to identify those of your current customers that give you the most business. Sometimes it is the large account, and sometimes it is unexpectedly a number of smaller clients with steady and reliable orders. Armed with the right knowledge, you can create incentive programs and better ways you can serve each other.

5. You aren’t your competition

Customer profiling can help you understand your specific niche and how to reach out to your key people. Rather than copycatting a marketing plan based on your competition, you can tailor it to your specific market, industry, or size. This helps you stand out from your competitors by giving you focus and definition.

If you would like to learn more about customer profiling from an Austin advertising agency, visit MindEcology.

5 Key Direct Mail Marketing Terms to Know

1. Bulk mail

Bulk mail is one of the tools for direct mail marketing. For those large projects that require mail to be sent to a large recipient list, the post office has a reduced fee scale. It is important to know the regulations and special steps for sending anything bulk mail, to avoid delay.  It is advisable to speak directly with a USPS representative to ensure proper compliance.

2. Call to action

No marketing piece is worth doing, unless it has a call to action. This is the part of the mailer where you let the reader know the next step they should take. They have opened the mailer, they have taken their time to read it. If they are interested, they need to know if they should go to a website, call a phone number, or complete a form. The call to action should be clear, direct, and prominent.

3. List

No direct mail marketing project can be complete without the list. It is the group of people or businesses to whom the pamphlet, letter, or mailer is to be sent. Lists can be created over time, from those that have done business or made inquiries in the past. They can also be purchased from companies or list brokers. However the list is obtained, it is an essential part of any mailing.

4. Segmentation

There is always some method by which a large list can be divided, for easier control and handling of the information. Segmentation is when a master list is divided into groups based on one of the pieces of information in each recipient’s profile. This could be zip code, gender, company size, or anything else that helps the business target a specific subset of the main list.

5. Response rate

The point of any marketing venture is to get customers. In direct mail marketing, the same is true. One of the ways that a marketing team can see how effective a campaign has been is to measure the response rate. This means taking note of how many potential customers or customers that received the piece actually made an inquiry or  purchase.

If you would like to learn more about direct mail marketing in Ausitn, visit MindEcology.