Managed services providers (MSPs) use everything from Google Adwords to Kutenda for their online marketing programs. But marketing experts like Robin Robins continue to promote direct mail strategies as well. Fortunately, a range of companies have designed direct mail templates to help small business owners — including MSPs — with their marketing efforts. One recent example: Postcard Services has designed a marketing campaign platform for small businesses.
The service sounds simple enough: First, users fill out a company profile on the Postcard Services site. Then, the system automatically drives limitless direct mail postcard campaigns. Companies can then create mailing lists, print postcards and ship items in bulk once they receive the postcard campaigns.
There is no fee to set up an account and Postcard Services says it uses the highest quality, green print on the market. Prices vary according to company size and material demand, but new customers receive 10 percent off of their printing services until the end of June 2011.
Postcard Services has more than 35,000 small business clients throughout the United States. But a disclaimer: We haven’t tried the service.
Also, you’re going to need a direct mail marketing strategy before signing up for any potential services. To potentially get started, check out this list of seven ways you can measure your direct mail marketing success.
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Posted In: Cloud Computing | Marketing | SMB Technology
Tags: Cloud computing | Google Adwords | Kutenda | Managed Services Advertising | managed services marketing | Online Advertising | Online Marketing | Postcard Services | Robin Robins | small business marketing | SMB Advertising | SMB Marketing
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Careful what marketing medium that you choose. Before just choosing a postcard and sending it, you need to ask yourself exactly WHO you’re sending this to & is a postcard really even the right marketing choice in the first place. For many MSP’s, their target is the business owner, Office Manager or COO of a small organization with 10-50 PC’s.
Ask yourself… have you ever watched the business owner of a typical 20 person firm go thru the mail? Usually they are not the first person to go thru the mail… there is a “mail gatekeeper” that sorts thru the mail & brings the “A pile” of mail to the important people in the company, tossing out all of the seemingly unimportant stuff. That great deal that you got on a postcard that was certainly EASY to send is now in your recipients trash and the person you sent it to never even had a chance to see or read it.
Easy may sometimes be a lot cheaper and easier to get going, but be careful to rely solely on the easy stuff.. you may be quite dissatisfied with the results.
-Jeff
Jeff:
I agree with you, I do not see how direct mail can be effective in this business. Think about the last you saw a direct mail and took any action based on it other than tossing it in the garbage. We do not recommend traditional direct mail to any of our clients. The cost is too high and the effectiveness is too low.
Mitchell Cipriano
http://www.demandbydesign.com
Thanks for the post. I couldn’t agree more that direct mail is still a viable option for marketing campaigns. These days we are so inundated with electronic communications or telemarketing calls it is nice to have a quiet piece of mail to open. Having something tangible, especially a magazine or postcard, really makes a difference for getting your brand to stand out. I also think making something personal, like a hand written note or a thoughtful gift adds that little extra that helps you edge out the competition.
As a marketing professional who focuses on helping MSPs market each day I couldn’t agree with you more. I believe that many of us have gotten lazy or perhaps too trusting in the way we market our businesses. Online is great and is required but as we are figuring out at the MSPU boot camp here in Seattle, it takes so much more.
Ulistic and MSPU are sharing great tips to help MSPs market their business and direct mail is crucial and very valuable.
I just started blogging today about my four-pronged marketing approach that have helped many MSPs successful market their businesses. Check it out at http://www.mspmarketing.ca.
Good post and great discussion
Stuart Crawford
Have you ever paid attention to how you go through your own personal mail?
I get insane amounts of ads in my mail (more than important mail) and anything that even resembles a marketing letter gets tossed immediately. It makes me wonder why people still send coupons and promotions through the mail.
I am the Marketing Manager of an MSP and have tried a few mailer campaigns and even offered a free Network Evaluation. I received ZERO leads from it. Granted it was a small sample size, but considering I can make a combination of 100 calls and emails and generate 3-5 leads, it’s obvious what works better.
Mike…I have learned from the fine folks at MSP Univerity that your postcard will never generate a call without a process that does followup phone calls. My personal recommendation is start small and have a qualified list, mail out your postcards and then follow up over the phone.
Combination and having all your marketing tied together is key to your success.
Stuart
Good discussion. I’ve done endless testing around direct mail in this industry, and used pretty much every available resource in terms of strategy, content, and delivery.
As Jeff suggests above, it is primarily about the Who. After you get that right, the What becomes very important.
I advocate to our partners at Kutenda that they use “lumpy mail” – something that gets attention and Robin Robins advocates – to target the small list of people that have already expressed interest to their less expensive, more broadly distributed marketing activities such as email.
Use the less expensive stuff to market to the masses and build your funnel…use the more expensive tactics once you’ve found people that seem to have some interest.
If you blindly send direct mail to lists of SMBs that haven’t expressed any interest, you will not see much if any return.
Mike Cooch
Kutenda
Mike:
As I said, I find it difficult to see how traditional mail works in today’s world. I agree with everyone that whatever you do, it has to be a coordinated effort with a call program. I would argue that if you are getting some success with direct mail within a broader campaign supported by other activities, then you would get basically the same response without the direct mail.
Mitchell Cipriano
http://www.demandbydesign.com
This is a great discussion but I’m curious as to whether your clientele that you really want is going to respond to mail or anything else from someone that they don’t know. What I mean is most clients MSPs really want are service intensive businesses that probably have ALOT of confidential client/customer/patient information on it.
So does mail really work for you guys?
I work in the financing end and just about the only inquiries I ever get from people who weren’t introduced to me by someone they know is in IT with IT leases since those clientele are tech savvy enough to search on their own for what they are looking for (and usually Soc Media savvy too) if there isn’t a vendor solution or want to work with someone who is vendor agnostic.
Curious to hear your thoughts.
Stu
p.s. Joe, thanks to you and the VarGuy for including me in your Channel Finance 25. It’s a real honor.