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205Chapter 13: Mailing Direct to Your Market

How many replies should you expect? Brace yourself: 1 to 3 percent is con-
sidered a home run with a purchased or outside list. If you use internal lists
that are full of highly qualified names, you can hope for a 5 to 10 percent
return, or sometimes higher.

Responding quickly

Don’t wait even one week to get back to your direct mail respondents.

If you don’t think you can handle the volume of responses in a timely manner,
send your mailers out in flights — groups of several hundred every three or
four days. This ensures that the responses will be staggered as well. In your
response

ߜ Enclose a letter thanking the respondent for the inquiry. Many people
forget that they sent in a card — so refresh their memories.

ߜ Enclose the item that you promised in your initial mailing, along with
a description.

ߜ Introduce your business in terms of benefits that matter to the con-
sumer. See Chapter 8 for advice on how features and customer benefits
are different.

ߜ Offer the next step in the buying process. Include an introductory offer,
invitation, coupon for service, or some other means to heighten interest
in an effort to convert the prospect into a customer.

Creating a database of respondents

After fulfilling the request, enter the respondent’s name into a database for
timely follow-up. Within eight weeks, contact prospects a second time via a
mailing, phone call, or — if they’ve invited you to do so — an e-mail newslet-
ter or update. (See the following section for information on the detrimental
effects of sending unauthorized e-mail messages.)

As you enter each name into your database, be sure to include

ߜ The source of the lead.
ߜ The date of the first and each subsequent contact.
ߜ The respondent’s name, mailing address, and e-mail address.
ߜ Any information that can help you customize future contacts (such as

the answers to questions that you asked on your reply card).

ߜ Additional space in which you can log follow-up activity.

If your business has a limited number of prospects, you can keep this data-
base manually. But if you are managing a larger number of leads, use a com-
puter program or a database management company.