DIRECT-MAIL CAMPAIGNS INCREASE SALON EXPOSURE

Posted : 03/01/2004

IT’S IN THE MAIL
DIRECT-MAIL CAMPAIGNS INCREASE SALON EXPOSURE

by Scott Eric Barrett

Contrary to popular belief, direct mail is NOT junk mail. Direct mail is a written communication providing information or an offer intended to elicit a response. It is a precise and well-crafted offer that targets prospects and turns them into dollar-wielding customers. Salons that apply this form of advertising find it one of the best and cost-effective methods to create new customers and retain current ones.

Benefits Galore

There are several reasons why direct mail works so well, says Steve Main, national sales manager of Data Dialog Marketing, Inc. in Sunrise, Fla.

“For starters, it’s very targeted,” he says. “Mailing-list databases contain a great deal of marketing information on consumers.”

This information not only includes demographic information like age, income and homeownership status, it also includes buying preferences and lifestyle-interest information. This information allows small-business owners to target a very specific audience that most likely would purchase their product or service.

“Along with the demographic information, small-business owners also can select specific geographic locations to target their message,” Main says. “Many small businesses have a very concentrated geographic area where they work. It may be their neighborhood or it may be a particular radius around their business. Direct mail allows them to send a mail piece to a specific target area.”

Direct mail also is scalable, which means salon owners have the ability to adjust the amount of pieces it sends out based on their business cycle. For example, if a salon wants to take advantage of the spring months, they can send out more pieces during that time and scale it back during slower summer months. It’s up to the business owner to decide, based on budget, the market-area or market penetration factors.

“Because small businesses don’t have large marketing budgets like Coca Cola or Pepsi, direct mail is a cost-effective way to target their marketing communications based on their available budgets,” Main says.

“Direct mail is a good idea because it promotes your salon like no other mailing since it’s an exclusive mailing for your salon only,” says Craig Wilcox, owner of Oasis Tan in Blue Springs, Mo. “With Valpak, ValuMail and other coupon-mailing services, your salon’s ad is distributed along with many other businesses’ ads.”

Wilcox uses direct mail to promote his salon’s anniversary, several holidays and whenever he needs to stimulate some additional sales.

“The best response was received by our client database,” he says. “We spend approximately $1,800 for 5,000 pieces to be mailed. Direct mail works extremely well when designed and managed properly. The company we use to design the piece is very familiar with the tanning industry and provides us with an extremely professional design and unparalleled management of offers and mailing lists.”

This Mail Is Real

The direct-mail industry makes a clear distinction between its form of advertising, which is received via the mailbox, and unaddressed advertising known as junk mail. Unaddressed advertising differs in that it is not sent through the post office, but delivered door to door, says Jo Howard-Brown, marketing director for Direct Mail Information Service (DMIS) in London.

“Most advertising of this type takes the form of leaflets, coupons and free newspapers and is less precisely targeted than direct mail,” she says. “Direct mail is one of the fastest-growing mediums of the past 12 years, with volumes having grown by 130 percent. This growth demonstrates the continued commitment to more precise targeting and the widespread availability of sophisticated targeting tools in the execution of direct-mail campaigns.”

Junk mail, in its most universal definition, is unwanted or unprompted mail. It’s boring because it has no relevance to the recipient, while direct mail campaigns are targeted.

The Message

Salons typically focus direct-mail campaigns around customers in their database. A typical mailing will reinforce information such as the salon’s address and services, and advertise any specials or new offerings. It’s a good way to notify former clients of anniversary specials or salon improvements.

Direct-mail marketing is a very large business in the United States, and small businesses have many options available to their limited budgets. There are a number of companies that offer small businesses all the tools they need in order to plan, create and execute a direct-mail campaign. With most marketing companies, salon operators can create a direct-mail campaign from their desktop with no human intervention, or they can take advantage of marketing specialists on staff to help with each step. There also are companies that do individual components. Finally, some companies handle all the pieces of a direct-mail campaign and specialize in helping businesses that have never done direct mail before.

“A great resource for small businesses is the United States Postal Service [USPS],” Main says. “The post office is very committed to helping small businesses grow using direct-mail advertising. Businesses can go to www.usps.com and click on the ‘grow your business’ tab to get a wealth of valuable information on how to make direct mail work for their businesses.”

Along with this service is a section for authorized direct-mail merchants. These are direct-marketing companies that the USPS recommends.

Advocates of digital marketing have long claimed that e-mail and Web sites will lead to a reduction in usage of conventional media, Howard-Brown says.

“Among leading UK advertisers, however, there is no evidence of this happening,” he adds. “While some will substitute e-mail for mailshots, more will leverage the specific advantages of direct mail to support and build their online presence.”

Direct mail is the most commonly used medium to promote a Web site. In a study conducted by DMIS, 48 percent of companies surveyed included URLs in their last direct-mail campaign.

“Web sites are great response mechanisms,” Howard-Brown says. “There is only so much information that can be put on a piece of mail, but if a company can direct potential customers to their Web site, they can give them an unlimited amount of information about prices, services, specials, etc.”

Follow That Lead

Tracking results is very easy with a direct-mail campaign because salon operators already know who should have received the ads.

“Direct mail allows salon operators to easily track the results by creating a call to action. This means the customer must bring in the mail piece to take advantage of a special offer or promotion,” Main says. “You can place a code on the mail piece that requires the person to relate the code to take advantage of the offer.”

Small-business owners can put different codes on different mail pieces to indicate specific demographics of the list or different geographies. This allows the mailer to track the results accurately to determine the effectiveness of a particular part of the mail campaign or the overall campaign.

“Be sure the recipient is provided with an easy way to respond, such as a telephone number, e-mail address or business reply envelope,” Howard-Brown adds.

In comparison to other forms of advertising, especially marketing options available to small businesses, direct mail probably is the most cost-effective marketing tool available. This is because it is scalable to the budget available and there are a host of options available that affect the cost.

Direct-mail packages vary from simple postcards to fat envelopes stuffed with full-color fliers. “Obviously you can get very elaborate with direct mail and it will cost more, but you can be just as effective with a simple black-and-white postcard if the offer and audience are correct,” Main says. “Print, Internet and traditional media advertising can be expensive and require a larger budget to just get in the game.”

The cost of direct mail is relatively small, which benefits the majority of small businesses. Studies have shown that every $1 of direct-marketing expenditures generates $11 of revenue, Main says.

“Successful direct mail is writing, designing and targeting your offer and/or services in a way that makes them irresistible, understandable, credible, applicable to the recipient, and easy to respond as well,” he adds.

Small businesses are successful with direct mail because they often possess huge amounts of historical data on their existing customers, and want to leverage this data to target customers more effectively for upgrades, new product launches, etc. It has been around forever and it’s the one form of direct marketing that lawmakers aren’t trying to outlaw. E-mail, telemarketing and fax blasting are forms of direct marketing with legislative restrictions.

“New salon operators should contact a professional marketing group for help with direct mailings,” Wilcox says. “Professionals know what they doing. At first, we were hesitant about direct mail, but the company we use is great and we saw results after the first mailing.”

DODGING DIRECT-MAIL MISTAKES

While direct mail has many benefits, salon operators often make mistakes when using this form of advertising, says Gary Margol, president of Grip Marketing Group in Atlanta.

“The most common mistake is having a poor mailing list,” he says. “In direct marketing, a mailing list is not just a way of reaching your market—it is your market. The list must be as accurate as possible.”

Salon operators who try to create direct mailings from their personal computers often can’t keep track of the large number of bad addresses due to misspellings, typos, illegible handwriting and omitted data, so hiring an experienced pro often is beneficial.

When ordering a target data list, salon operators sometimes forget to specifically ask for females aged 18 to 45, says Steve Barr, owner of Express Mailink in Aurora, Ill.

“It’s common knowledge that 70 percent to 80 percent of a salon’s client base are females in this age range,” he says. “If you do a target mailing to both males and females in your area you are doubling the cost of your mailer and spending twice as much to get less than half the return.”

Once salon operators have a good list, they typically spend a lot of money to create an eyecatching mailer, then quickly ship it out without testing it, Margol says.

“You have to risk some money to test new ideas and offers,” he says. “A great example is AOL, which frequently mails thousands of floppy discs touting a special Internet service offer. This works because AOL tested this particular type of campaign and found it extremely successful.”

Margol believes this particular method of advertising would not work well for other Internet providers, however, because the consumer automatically associates the direct-mail disc with AOL.

“At the very least, people would think AOL was the leader and the other advertiser a follower,” he says. “Who wants to do business with a follower?”

Responses to a direct-mailing campaign are directly proportional to the offer salons make.To be successful, a direct mailer must sell the offer, not the service or product, Margol says.

“To dramatically improve your response, dramatically improve your offer,” he adds. “For example, ‘5 Tans for $10’ easily can be improved to ‘10 Tans for $10’, a free tan can be improved to three free tans and so on.”

Another common mistake is using an unattractive image in the ad. Using a model because she happens to be the salon operator’s sister-in-law won’t pull as well as a beautiful Ms. America contestant.

“Good offers equal good results and bad offers equal bad results,” Barr says. “You know you are doing it right if your target mailer response is 1 percent to 3 percent and your client mailer response is 5 percent to 12 percent.”

The target-mailer response, sent out to potential clients, is 1 percent to 3 percent because the indoor tanning market is so competitive.

“Some salons mail it out at the wrong time of year, and some don’t put a teaser offer on the card,” Barr says.

The client-mailer response is higher because it is sent out to current or former clients.

“It’s like training your clients to spend money when you want them to instead of when they want to,” Barr says. “A salon that does six direct mailers a year can expect about a 12-percent response. Conversely, a salon that does one direct mailer a year can expect about a 5-percent response.”

Finally, salons need to understand that they don’t have to put these mailers together themselves. “Label-on and postage-on mailings require your staff to manually stick labels and postage on your direct mail,” Margol says. “Your staff’s time is better spent making more sales. A mail-fulfillment company can provide an indicia—postage-paid stamp—for your mailing and inkjet the address-corrected addresses directly onto your mail.”