Business Data For Postal Mailings

post (resized)

For the last decade and more, social media has been the marketing buzzword. But does it really work? The free elements of Twitter & Linked-in certainly have merit, but both require a dedicated daily investment of time. Whilst paid-for advertising via many different social media channels has yet to yield well for Responsiva. With the internet being so huge there are now too many platforms to strive to be noticed on, which has diluted its marketing effectiveness.

From Responsiva’s experiences, postal mailings (of 5,000 units) have consistently proven the most productive with their return since 2003. Telemarketing a close second.

 

The Investment      (For 5,000 Posted Letters)

An investment of £1,750 with the mailing house buys the paper, printing, packing, mail-merge, envelopes, printed return address and the postage costs. All that the mailing house requires is the letter text and the business data to send it to. This equates to a cost of 35p per letter.

Postage rates decrease for larger mailing volumes, whilst the consumer posting a handful of letters can expect to pay 55p each just for the stamps. With a volume of 5,000 units the postage element of the mailing equates to just 23.7p per unit.

In addition to the investment of £1,750 there is the cost of the data element. However, data is supplied for multiple usage so can be re-used up to (realistically) twelve times. So it would be reasonable to say that the “all inclusive” costs of a 5,000 letter mailing would be around £1,850.

 

Return On Investment

The ROI will vary according to the message, target market and products & services being offered. But what can be reasonably anticipated is the volume of responders. For the last fourteen years in running postal mailing campaigns of this magnitude, the responses have always been between 0.8% and 1.2%. i.e., 40 – 60 responses.

This equates to an average £37 per inbound enquiry.

 

By Comparison

Good quality (telephone verified, permission based) cold email marketing will rarely yield more than one enquiry per 1,000 units. The cost of those 1,000 units will be more than £37.

Telephone marketing has value added services such as dated call-backs and opt-in email address harvesting. Those emails will be far stronger than the aforementioned cold ones. But the typical cost per day of calling will not usually generate a cost-per-lead as low as £37. If a telemarketer is costing £250 per day, seven leads would be required.

During 2007 – 2008 the cost per enquiry from ‘adwords’ campaigns was as low as £20 – £25. This escalated over the following years to exceed £50 per enquiry. Today the figure is closer to £100, though I concede that this cost per enquiry will vary according to the keywords and campaign.

 

So although a postal mailing of 5,000 units requires some investment, they have proven the most effective route to market from Responsiva’s experience.