Every sales person knows that there is a difference in prospects. Leads provided by people who love your products and services convert better than those found in the phone book. Prospects who request catalogs generate better response rates than those from rented lists. Pre-qualifying people before investing marketing resources improves success rates. The more they are vested in the buying path, the more likely they will complete the process.

Direct marketers understand this and use their skills to create a path from pre-qualification to conversion. When prospects enter the marketing stream, they are segmented by source and any other qualifying information that is available. Catalogers often charge prospects a catalog fee because it qualified shoppers and helped offset prospecting costs. A person who pays to receive a catalog is three to five times more likely to buy than one who doesn’t.

There are other ways to qualify prospects, too. Requiring email address, full name, street address, and phone number is stronger than just asking for the email address. Overlaying demographics to existing information helps target messages well. Direct marketing is a science that has been tested for years. We know that when people to invest their time and resources, they become more open to the sales message.

Now this doesn’t mean that direct marketing is a perfect science. It is quite the opposite because a 97% campaign failure rate is a roaring success for most prospecting campaigns. Yes, you read that right…a 3% response rate is a profitable campaign. This is something that has always bugged me. Nothing in my engineering background adequately prepared me for the direct marketing industry standard. It was the polar opposite of my quality control experience. Over the years, I’ve learned to adapt my expectations as needed and to always push for better analytics that deliver better results.

Direct marketing results are stellar compared to those of social media.

I never would have guessed that a channel would emerge that required more resources, delivered lower response rates, failed to generate profits without integration, and still be accepted as the new normal. But then, I’m weird that way. I believe the purpose of business is serving customers for a profit. All activities must move the company towards fulfilling that purpose. The better customers are served, the more profits.

Social media as a marketing channel was handicapped by early adopters who imagined a future of conversations driving sales. Individual participants were trained to expect free and easy access to everything. Corporate participants were promised free or low cost marketing that delivered over-the-top results. Both were misleading.

Most people don’t talk about products or services when they hang out with their friends unless there is a specific need or something extraordinary to share. Using the platforms designed to facilitate the conversations is so labor intensive that cost escalate every time there is a new update. This reality doesn’t matter to the people convinced that social is a self-supporting channel. When the occasional campaign goes viral, it is showcased as an example of what could be the standard if only more people understood social media.

Social prospecting is different from direct marketing because it is casual and unqualified. People (as in prospects) perceive activity as casual conversation between friends even when they are hanging out on a corporate page. Liking, circling, and following have the low threshold entry fee of a click. Prospects aren’t qualified by anything other than the willingness to point at a button and click. Any access to qualifying data is blocked by the platforms.

Even with the challenges, social media is a valuable channel.

It is primarily a customer retention tool, providing one-to-one relationship opportunities unavailable in direct marketing. In other words, it makes direct marketing better because the stronger the relationship between customer and company, the more loyal the customer. And, loyal customers introduce companies to friends and family.

When customers are actively participating in corporate communities, it attracts prospects too. Not to the degree promised by the early adopters, but enough to justify creating an acquisition strategy. The process that moves people from liking, circling, and following has to be carefully planned with limited expectations. Some tips to get you started:

• Create a process that starts with liking, circling, and following and ends with email address acquisition. Code all email addresses acquired so you’ll be able to track sales.
• When email addresses are given, send a welcome email followed by a series that introduces your products and services to the prospects.
• Personalize the emails to let people know why they are receiving the emails and that you appreciate their time.
• Test different strategies to find the ones that work best.
• Measure everything to create a control and benchmarks.
• Revise and test continuously.

It is much easier and cheaper to keep customers than it is to acquire them. The people who have already chosen your company will continue to support it if you keep them actively involved. Attrition rates escalate when customers are neglected. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to let people know they are appreciated. Sending cards is one way to reach out and touch your customers.

You’ve heard this from me before. It is often followed with a recommendation to let your call center team write cards while waiting for the telephone to ring. It is an efficient and effective way to improve customer retention. But, what if you don’t have a call center? Or, idle time? Good news! There is a solution for you, too.

SendOutCards.com will send the cards for you. Simply upload your contact information, choose a card or design a custom one, add your personal message and they’ll take care of the rest. This means no more complaining about not having the time to send cards to your customers. There’s a solution for everyone.

Note: I am not an affiliate of SendOutCards.com. I am an advocate of letting your customers know that you care. Sending thank you, birthday, and we miss you cards is a good business practice.