www.EasyMailMaker.com

After months of hard work, the new site is finally here! We’ve slapped on a new coat of paint and added some great features and resources to help you more easily find the content that you need.

Take a look a few of the new features…
-easier navigation around
-access to our podcasts, video tutorials, articles, insights, and other great resources
-free account sign up for a free account and gain access to main powerful tools for your business including
-using our free design templates and customize for free on line

We’ve been hard at work to make a site that better meets your needs.
We’d love to know what you think. Please feel free to reply to this
email and let us know what feedback you have (good, bad or otherwise).

The goal of the site is to provide you quality content and a
community to associate with other small business direct mail enthusiasts. Things will
continue to grow and change, so your input is valuable.

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Easymailmaker.com

We’ve been hard at work and the release of our new direct marketing web-site is fast approaching. Our official release date is next week but I wanted to write and share some interesting points that I’ve learnt of the last few months.

Keep it Simple.

There is so much clutter out there that when your customer do make it your webpage they can breathe again. Make sure they can find what they want and that it doesn’t take too much work to find.

Video Tracking

I’ll be monitoring my new sight and the traffic by installing a free service called www.clicktale.com

What they do is you install html code at the top and bottom of each page you want to track and it records a video of the users that go on your web-site. You see their mouse movement and it can really help you understand the way your clients think and what areas are “hot spots” Another neat tool about that is they do heat maps where people click and hover their cursor….another great way to measure where the hot zones on your page are.

Outsourcing

I’ve used an outsourcing agency to design and develop our web-site. I used www.elance.com which I highly recommend. Especially for real estate agents. What they are is a governed web-site which acts as a auction for your projects that you post. You review the professionals that bid, pick one, make a deposit to elance and then when you are satisfied and the project is complete you release the funds. A great way to not get ripped off. Long story short, keep it legit and by elance governing everything it is the best solution. My developers are in India, highly skilled, great communication and the best thing is that I give them the tasks to do in the evening and they work all night as it’s their daytime. Amazing concept.

Web 2.0

There is lots of talk of web 2.0 which is basically going to be the next wave of internet search. There is so much junk that the web 2.0 will be lean mean searching machine. If your website isn’t 2.0 worthy you will no longer be part of the new search.

We took this in mind and have integrated our blog, podcasts, news releases, articles, and video tutorials to really promote this.

Mark it in your dayplanner to check out www.easymailmaker.com to take advantage of all these great new resources dedicated to helping realtors build their business
We really do want to hear from you. Just hit comment and jot in a few
thoughts and hit send. You will get our usual auto-response, but
rest assured we read every email.

Easymailmaker.com Announces Release Of Marketing Podcast Increase Your Direct Marketing Knowledge

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Postcard Marketing Group
Tel: 866-790-MAIL
Email: info@postcardmarketinggroup.com

EASYMAILMAKER.COM ANNOUNCES RELEASE OF THEIR PODCAST
Boost Your Knowledge On the Direct Marketing Industry

Postcard Marketing Group who manages the website www.easymailmaker.com and helps small businesses and realtors take control of their direct marketing campaigns ve just announced the release of their podcast. The podcast can be listened through Itunes later this month and through most major podcast directories.

Travis Batting, CEO of Postcard Marketing Group says “Everyday small businesses lose money with the marketing material they send out. Our job as a printer and a direct marketer is to educate others on the most effective way to market themselves with the combination of quality, copywrite, mail lists, and technology. Our podcast helps small businesses that wear multiple hats day to day to be able to learn what they need to compete with large companies. Our free marketing analytic tools on our web-site allow companies to measure the ROI on their marketing, which even many large organizations don’t know. This gives us small companies a definate edge.”

www.easymailmaker.com allows users to sign up for a free account to create, design, customize and order products such as postcards, business cards, flyers, brochures, automatic postcard newsletters, and more. They also educate clients on the use of combination marketing and combining direct mail with PURL’s(landing pages) which dramatically boosts ROI. They use marketing analytics to help clients understand how effective their ROI is and what they should improve.

People can now view their podcasts through ODEO

………………………………………………………………………………………

If you’d like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Travis Batting, please call Kecia McLaren at 866-790-MAIL(6245) or email info@postcardmarketinggroup.com

What to Expect from Direct Mail

Direct Mail is NOT for everyone. That is direct and I have just saved some a few bucks. This article will help you decide if Direct Mail is for you and your business. Like anything one should think about the steps he/she will preform in the capaign and ensure that their are steps to carry each of those out. There are a number of things that one must consider and no cost isn’t the number one thing.

1. ROI
2. Market Niche
3.Wording
4. Cost
5. Campaign Follow through.

ROI
You have to make sure that the ROI that you will get will justify your product or service. I say this because if your widget only brings you a small profit for you the % of calls you need to cover the costs are going to far exceed what a typical direct mail campaign will bring. There are many variables that will help increase your ROI and boost your sales. The truth is that a direct mail piece will only bring in a 1-3% ROI. I will speak briefly on a few things that will increase this but encourge you to read my other articles on PURL’s and Variable Data Pritning

Want upto 30% ROI? Yes, then a PURL or GURL is for you. A PURL Stands for a Personalized URL. A URL is a web address like http://www.easymailmaker.com. A PURL would look like http://www.start.easymailmaker.com/ASiddiqui A GURL is a more standard landing page and an example is http://www.start.easymailmaker.com See how the PURL pesonalizes the web page to that individual. It is also very focused on a specific product or service that you advertised in the direct mail piece. I’ve seen landing pages(or a Generalized URL-GURL) not be specific or not carry a common theme from the direct mail piece and results have been poor. These methods combined with direct mail will boost your ROI because it is using multiple marketing methods to touch your clients. It is prooven that upto 75% of households have a mail moment everyday and spend time reading the mail. It is also prooven that the majority of people prefer to respond to direct mail through the use of the internet to respond and with internet users increasing by the millions this is a sure sign ROI will be up. We have seen combination marketing boost ROI upto 30%

Variable Data Printing is similar to the personalized URL where the direct mail piece is personalized to the person your sending the piece to. If you were John and you received a Direct Mail piece with the headline “Worry no longer about money”or “John, Worry no longer about Money”which would get more of your interest to keep reading?

Market Niche

40% of your success is through the mailing list and who your target audience is. This ties into the ROI factor because if your sending farming supply direct mail to city folk, best of luck to you but no results for you. Some people choose the insert marketing method into the local flyers. This is fine for Business to Consumers businesses but you are reaching a very broad market that may have no interest in what you do.

You can purchase mail lists that are really targetted to your specific consumer or business. You’d be suprised how detailed they can get. I often refer to a story I heard about a customer that was using postcard marketing to get his information out to about a sale on carpet cleaning. Their logic was they were close to their office and that will save on driving costs and time. They didn’t know what the Pyscographics of the neighbourhoods they were mailing to. They got poor results and they wondered why. If you were to take a drive through the neighbourhood you would soon find that it was lower income neighbourhoods were the last thing on their mind was to clean their carpets. Fine tuning your mailing list is an ongoing thing and we can help you do thing

If you want to learn more about the other 2 factors, please sign up for our newsletter at http://www.blog.postcardmarketinggroup.com/wordpress

Travis Batting founded Postcard Marketing Group in 2005 with a vision in creating an ease of ordering for customers and driving ROI. The company has quickly evolved and offers clients above average tools to be a leader in the industry and brings knowledge to keep the customers on top of their business. Start your campaign today at http://www.easymailmaker.com

Get postcard marketing results at http://www.easymailmaker.com

What the heck is a PURL?

It’s simply a Personalized web-site (URL) that is customized to the person visiting the web site. It is often used with to further increase results with Direct Mail campaigns. On the direct mail piece there would be a web-site listed that would encourage the recipient to log on to the PURL.

How does it personalize it?

When the direct mail recipient logs onto the PURL, the information from the database is used to tailor the web page experience to that person. Moreover, once the individual logs in, the Web site can track the respondent’s activity and continue to tailor the information based on his behaviour. This information can also be used to further tailor future print and Internet communications.

Okay…..Interesting, but why would I need this?

Well, the more you can communicate to your customers in multiple channels the better. The PURL’s often capture information that can be used to help you understand your clients but also the value of your marketing money and what is being effective to drive you results. Also, once information is captured on the PURL you can have the information relayed to your cell phone or blackberry, allowing you to get in touch with your client right away.

So not only are you capturing valuable data and communicating with your clients on more than one direct mail level, you are virtually able to increase dead air time and touch base with them without delaying their buying process. Definitely they’re to increase your results and improve your professional image.

By combining both media, marketers can take advantage of the comfort, tangible appeal, and quality of commercial print, plus the immediacy, tracking, and instant response of the Internet.

A PURL is powerful because it creates a comfort in the user because it relays little effort on their part (no mail order or phone call) just simply going to the web site to relay the info. That’s all….simple steps. Simple works. It’s well known that the longer the process, the lower the results meaning lower response, money and knowledge flowing through the person mailing the campaign.

In the Numbers

Doing some research it was hard pressed to find other companies numbers to show the success rate. There was a bank that was not succeeding on getting clients to switch over to electronic banking with their direct marketing approach. They switched to Variable Data Printing combined with the PURL method to help get users switched over and show them the benefits and the security information. The bank increased enrolment from .4 percent to 2.5 percent, an increase of 625 percent over its previous marketing methods. Of those who went to the site, eight out of 10 enrolled.

Combining your Postcard Marketing Campaign along with the PURL’s is affordable for your business. Our company specializes in bringing this all together for you to help you succeed. There is nothing better than your success story to compliment our business. An account is free with us to start building your CRM to launch your next multi touch campaign.

I’ve been busy working on our recent teleseminar for the live courses at http://www.point2.com I’m speaking on combination marketing and using one of the most standard marketing channels(direct mail) combined with a media channel(the internet) that allows us to capture our new clients information and buying habits without being forceful.

It’s a soft method that
allows you to capture important data from your clients(contact info, sign up for newsletter, etc)
allows you to track this data
quick follow up
Here is an article that shows the effectiveness and helps explain PURL’s a bit more. As you can see this is a fairly new marketing channel that I can’t believe hasn’t caught on more. In the past only large companies were able to use it do to it’s complexity but now it’s affordable for small businesses and more importantly realtors who can use this to boost their business.

http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/story/print.bsp?sid=77952&var=story

Here’s an example of what would happen:
1.You work with http://www.easymailmaker.com to send out your direct mail campaign
examples of a campaign
front
http://www.ballantine.com/img/mhpostcardfront.jpg
back
http://www.ballantine.com/img/mhpostcardback.jpg
2.You then get http://www.easymailmaker.com to help build a landing page which you can do very affordably. You’re thinking but I’m spending money on the direct mail already. Check my stats out later on in this article example PURL
http://www.RyanCote.militaryhistoryoffer.com
3.Mail it
4.People visit and you capture their information(leads get emailed to you directly for quick follow up)
5.Track it:
EasyMailMaker.com ties everything together with easy to read graphs
What’s better is any information captured on the landing page automatically gets emailed to you and inputted into your free accounts client management program software and used for your next campaign

Picture of a easy to reac track from your different marketing campaigns
https://www.easymailmaker.com/webimages/editor/images/ScreenHunter_05_Oct._14_10.41.jpg

Okay, here’s some stats: |Mail out of 21000 postcards
The military mailout gained 8.75% capture to the webpage. That’s 1838 clients visiting the page.
Direct mail typically will get 1-3%(with good copywrite, focus, mailing list)(would have been only 630 clients if they only used this method)
The big stat here is that 80% filled out the form on the page. That’s 1470 clients
INCREDIBLE NUMBERS

The key to combination marketing is to
stay focused! Have a nice flow of graphics, copywrite and messages that transfer from the direcdt mail piece to the PURL
make sure the landing page looks credible and helps build your brand and trust image in your client

Hopefully this gives you some confidence going forward to build your business with combination marketing

We are an approved vendor for Point2 Technologies and they really are amazing. If you’re a realtor they help you set up a web-site for free. They also provide you with many other powerful tools. Since 2003 they have 177,530 Members, 85 countries, and 1 National Listing Service.

Not only are we an approved vendor, Travis Batting, Founder of www.EasyMailMaker.com will host a 1 hour long teleconference call with agents to educate them on Combination marketing, marketing analytics and the Power of Purl’s. If you don’t have a web-site through them you should check it out at www.point2.com

We will be on air on April 21st at 12pm eastern time through their live learning section. Check it out!

A little about Point 2

Podcast

defintion

This is the 1st of 10 lessons to help build a successful postcard marketing campaign. This is the first and a very important portion of a campaign because it describes a very important ingredient that will give you the edge that most forget or are too lazy to do.

1. An operation or series of operations energetically pursued to accomplish a purpose: an advertising campaign for a new product; a candidate’s political campaign.
2. Military.
   

   a.	military operations for a specific objective.

   b.	Obsolete. the military operations of an army in the field for one season.

What’s the main thing that pops out when reading those? It’s focused, direct, and repetitive to reach it’s object.

The military is a perfect example as they have a mission, they understand what they are fighting for and are very focused & repetitive in their drills. It’s too bad we don’t have a drill Sargent that disciplines us when we get off track or don’t do our “routines”when it comes to marketing. That’s why it’s up to us to ensure that we have a military like way of doing things when it comes to campaigns

What does all this have to do with postcard marketing.

If you’re only prepared to do one mailing, stop reading. You’re not fitting the definition of a campaign and will be fail no matter how good the images, copywrite or mail list is.

The easiest way to understand why you need to do more then just one is simple.

2000 cards go out………………a few calls the first week………….a few call the second week……..then

Option 1: don’t mail and let the few trickle in after the 2nd week

Option 2: Send another mailer

Another 2000 cards go out in the second week…………….. now you have a slight increase in calls in the 3rd week……….4th week

Another 2000 cards go out in the 4th week………and by then you have 3 mailers all with objectives, all informing and influencing your customers to do whatever you are asking them to do with an overlapping campaigns. You can almost alter the famous saying from the movie Field of Dreams to “If You Mail It, They will Come!” or “Patience, Young Grasshopper!”

I just recently listened to a podcast from Guerilla Marketers. Jay talks about patience and an interesting marketing research that lets you understand the number of times you must penetrate your customers mind to make an impact with them.

Marketing is a funnel effect and you one mail piece will not touch all the personalities that you mail to. We all respond differently to different things which is what makes the world of marketing a science and an art. We’re going to break down some of these differences and show you how to market to the differences in the coming articles. The next part of this course is to know what you want and what to expect.

Intro to Postcard Marketing

How can a little 5.5”x 4.25”piece of paper bring you money? Hard to believe but it is true. There are so many gadgets and flashy web ideas out there to spend money on that we forget about something that is so simple and relates to people.

Think about it. We all grew up just receiving mail from the postman. Not e-mail, not a web card, just good ole fashion mail. If you relate to that then I know your customers will too. There is a certain comfort level when you reach into the mail box because it’s a ritual that you’ve grown up with. That’s why Postcard Marketing is a big hit and can get the job done.

Not so fast, I don’t want you to get ahead of yourself. It takes time, repetiveness and a bit of money to get the postcard train rolling. I want to walk you through the process but am going to break it up so you can really get a grasp and go in with the right mindset. If you’re going to do it, let me learn from my mistakes and I’m going to pass the knowledge of the right way to do it.

What are we going to cover in this course:

1. Definition of a Campaign

2. Know what you want & to expect

3. Copywrite Headlines

4. Pyschology of Buyers

5. Mailing List

6. Design

7. PURL’s/Landing Pages

8. Tracking

9. Tidbits & Snipits(Great Resources)

10. Feedback and Success stories

I’m excited to walk you through this as it can be a really exciting thing to start to see the effects of your work prosper. Enjoy and please don’t hesitate to reach me at travis@postcardmarketinggroup.com or call us at 866-790-6245 as I’d love to answer your questions on direct mail. Visit us at www.easymailmaker.com for your free account.

Check out our latest Podcasts on Direct Mail

Food For Thought

3 Part Harmony