Direct Mail and P.R.

Posted October 25, 2006 by Margie Zable Fisher

I get Dan Kennedy’s newsletters and e-mails about marketing, which I love.

I just read something interesting he wrote regarding direct mail. Dan says, “no matter how good the offer is, a single exposure to a given group of prospective customers will have minimal effect. But multiple repeated exposures will have a positive effect disproportionate to the number of exposures.

Here’s one example - say you’re doing a neighborhood mailing of 5,000 people. From one type mailing you might pull anywhere from as low as one quarter of 1% to 1% response. Maybe twelve to sixty responses. The variants between the twelve and the sixty may depend on the effectiveness of the offer.

But if you’ll mail to those same 5,000 prospects six times over a four month period your overall response might be 3% to as high as 20%, 150 to 1,000 people. That’s about twelve times the response from the single mailing not just six times.”

I couldn’t help but notice the similarity between direct mail and P.R. Lots of folks think that once they get one P.R. exposure (through a publicity story, speaking engagement, etc.), they will get a great response. Similar to direct mail, however, repeated P.R. exposures result in a much higher response.

Something to think about, when you’re considering your P.R. efforts.

Yours in Success,

Margie Zable Fisher

www.zfpr.com