Even with the prevalence of email, social media marketing, mobile marketing and all the other newfangled marketing tools, direct mail is still a valuable marketing tool for your camp. In fact direct mail is making a comeback. I believe camp marketers who include direct mail as part of their marketing strategy have an advantage over those who don’t.
One question many folks ask is, what’s is a good response to my direct mail campaign? Other people think direct mail marketing is “too expensive,” so they avoid it altogether.
Truth is, direct mail is only “expensive” when it doesn’t meet your goals. When it meets your goals, it can produce a goldmine of new leads and enrollments for you.
Let’s say you and I decide to send 1,000 postcards to each of our respective customer lists. Our goal for the mailing(s) is to get our customers to call us to inquire about our Early Bird tuition discounts for 2012. You’re shooting for a 1% response rate, I’m shooting for 2%.
Now let’s say 10 people respond to your mailing, and 15 respond to mine. Even though more people responded to my mailing, YOUR mailing was more successful because you met your goal of getting a 1% response rate while I fell short of my goal of 2%. You should be happy! 🙂
I guess what I’m saying is, there’s NOTHING in marketing that’s too expensive — direct mail included — when it meets or exceeds your expected return on investment. You’ll never know if your direct mail effort is expensive, successful or anything else unless you set goals for it beforehand. If you determine what constitutes a “good” response ahead of time, even a “small” 1% response rate could be HUGE for you, and there’d be nothing expensive about it!