Tech Marketing Blog

I am a firm believer in the various social media marketing efforts in the technology space. Having said that, I also believe that technology marketers tend to rely on the social media activities to a point of exclusivity. There are other impactful means to deliver effective marketing that can be measured and provide a smart ROI. Direct mail is one tool that I believe is underutilized in the marketing mix, specifically in the last two years when the easy option has been to deploy aggressive email efforts to control costs.

I think we are at a point where a smart, relevant direct effort may actually standout from the clutter in boxes in the tech buyers email account.

These are my top reasons why a tech marketer should consider direct mail as an effective lead generation

• Direct mail: Written well, can present your technology solution consistently and substitute as your best presentation over and over again without the sales force having to be present.
• Targeted Mass: If your sales force is actively pitching their account one at at a time, the scope of their effectiveness is limited. Send out thousands of relevant direct mail pieces and your best sales pitch is being presented to thousands of people simultaneously.
• Precision Targeting: Direct mail allows you to pinpoint the decision makers. It buyers and C-level influencers can be targeted with precision expanding your reach within an organization. Technology decisions are purchased or influenced by many in an organization. Typically, the sales force is limited to talking with the it buyer only.
• Immediate response: Once you send out your direct mail piece it doesn’t take long to get a response. Within one to two weeks you’ll receive about 80 percent to 90 percent of all those who are going to respond. If your campaign works, you’ll know about it quickly.
• ROI can be measured: Yes the cost of direct mail may be more expensive per piece than an email campaign, but the bigger cost per acquisition in technology selling should be considered. With this economy, no marketing department can afford to waste a single penny on wasteful marketing. With direct mail marketing you can code your mail pieces to determine the exact number of responses you received from each campaign. With proper follow up mailings, you can immediately optimize your messaging in your mail piece to increase your response and hold your marketing dollars accountable.
• It gets one-on-one attention: One of the best things about direct mail is that it gets one-on-one attention from your target prospect. Direct mail is opened one piece at a time and read one piece at a time. It gives you the best chance of catching your prospect’s attention and keeping it for a period of time.
• It’s something you can touch and feel—it hangs around: Direct mail is something that you can hold in your hand. It’s not made of electrons that can be deleted with the twitch of a finger. It is physical. It is something that can hang around for a period of time. It has “lingering” marketing effects.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 1:57 AM and is filed under Tech Lead Generation, Tech Sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.