There are many mistakes that business owners make that have an effect on their business. It’s my intent on delving into these mistakes so that you don’t have to do these same problems for yourself. Here’s the first mistake that a lot of business owners make:

1) Picking a poor list

When I say “list”, I’m talking about a direct mail list that you get either from a list broker or the SRDS. I can remember when I first got started with direct mail, I made the mistake of mailing out to all local business owners in my city. I was convinced on the thought that since they are local, they should be more than willing to do business with me.

Boy was I wrong.

I got no response from all of the letters that I mailed out, and I thought it was an exposure reason why it failed. So what did I do? I mailed out a second time the same offer, to the local business owners in my city again. Needless to say, I didn’t make any money at all. From all of the letters that I mailed out, I only got 1 response from this bakery, and that didn’t pan out also because I had no idea of what I was doing.

Now in hindsight, if I could do it all over again, I would focus on my list. I would go into the SRDS (found in your local library), and rent out a list here. You see the lists in the SRDS are all direct response lists – meaning that they bought something to be placed on the list. This is a far better list than what I had been trying to do previously.

Here’s another mistake that small business owners make (and it’s something that I have been guilty of also):

2) Not mailing out more than once

In direct mail, it’s all about multiple contacts. You need multiple contacts to your prospects in order to close the sale. In fact, it has been shown that multiple contacts can boost your conversion rates.

So the next time you get a lead, contact them 3 times within the first 30 days. After the 30 days are up, contact them once a month, for a full year. This constant contact will help to keep you in their mind when they choose to make a purchasing decision.

If you didn’t already know, I’m a big fan of direct mail. It’s just a fast way to get prospects and customers right away – but only when it’s done right. There tons of products on direct mail marketing on the market today, but all that you need to know is that your success with direct mail boils down to 3 crucial components:

1) Your list

2) Your offer

3) Your sales letter

I will reserve these topics for another day, but until that day, know that theses 3 components can either mean the success or failure of your direct mail campaign.

Good luck with using this information to have success in your business.

Source by Daniel Kanuck