Response Rate Trends Report

The latest “Response Rate Trends Report” released by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) in the US includes data from more than 1,600 campaigns covering 19 different business sectors.

The results indicate that some US Direct Marketers are surviving on some very low response rates.
Six media channels are explored:

• Direct mail
• Catalogues
• Email
• Inserts
• Outbound telephone
• Newspapers and magazines.

The report not only looks at the channels but also the types of lists used, e.g. house files vs. prospect files. While it covers US campaigns exclusively, the data can be used by Australian direct marketers for benchmarking.

Four direct marketing objectives are isolated and reported on separately:

• Direct orders
• Lead generation
• Traffic building
• Fundraising.

Among the findings contained in the latest report:

• In financial services lead generation, email house files achieved an average response rate of 3.94%.
• In traffic building, the majority of campaigns were in the B-to-C sector with direct mail achieving an average response of 5.46%

The report is very detailed and for best value needs to be studied carefully. The full report, “Response Rate Trends Report” released in October 2007 at the annual Direct Marketing Association’s annual conference sells for $US 445. See: www.the-dma.org/bookstore

Writing Tip - It's not about you. It's about them.

It's not about you. It's about them.

When people come to your site, they want to know how your business can help them. Before you start writing web text you have to focus on WIIFM – that’s the question they will be asking: What’s In It For Me?

The writer needs to:

• Identify likely visitors
• Clarify what benefits are important to visitors; and
• Explain in simple terms how the site visitor can obtain those benefits.

If you use that sort of framework for your site text, your writing will connect with prospects and you will build your business.

Online mistakes you don’t want to know about

For most businesses, the website has taken on huge importance. Yet, we continue to see some fundamental mistakes being made over and over again.

Forgetting the user or visitor is probably the biggest mistake of all. When you are building a site you have to ask, what will the prospect want? If you are not clear, then it is better to stop. And don’t proceed until you have a clear answer.

The whole point of having a site in the first place is for the benefit of the visitor. So why not develop it from the point of view of that same visitor?

And developing the site is not the end. Just the beginning. How many sites do you find that are out-of-date. If your site does not carry accurate, up-to-the-minute information, you lose credibility.

Beyond that, some other classic, and all too common, mistakes include:

1. Launching into the creation of a site, or redevelopment of one, without a clear idea of what you actually want to do. Is your website going to be used to sell products online, drive leads to your sales team, provide support or self-service, provide information or deliver online content? All these objectives are valid options. But you better know which one is right for you because they each require a different design focus and a different method of measurement.
   
2. Still in 2008, there remain many organisations with a 'build it and they will come' approach. For most businesses, you can’t overestimate the importance of Search Engine Optimisation. And you should not ignore the opportunities offered by Pay-Per-Click campaigns. If you don’t, at least, have a high level understanding of how you can benefit from search engines, you need to give yourself a good talking to.
   
3. Packing too much in is another mistake that you see every day. How many times have you left a site because the busy-ness and over-design has overwhelmed you? If you must include everything, package it carefully in lots of separate pages and bite size chunks. Make it easy on the reader.There’s lots of other serious mistakes online, but at least if you avoid these, you’ll be giving yourself a reasonable chance to fulfill the needs that are important to your site visitors.