Marketing is all about building relationships.
Whether it’s to your database, or to prospects, building a relationship is necessary for success.
The starting point of building a relationship is to look at the individual prospect, not to a group of people.
Marketing is all about marketing to the individual, not a group. Here are 10 powerful steps to building a relationship that can double or triple your response rates.
To illustrate how this is done, let me use the campaign that we did for 1-800-Contacts.
1-800-Contacts is a company that markets contacts. When they came to me, they wanted to expand their marketing to prospects. 1-800-Contacts had developed an agreement with WalMart to use their employee list for 1-800-Contacts. Because there was no prior relationship, our challenge was to overcome the skepticism and create excitement in the offer.
Here are the 10 steps we took:
#1: We treated each individual as a person. Identifying as much information about the typical prospect, we wanted to have one on one communication, not speaking to a group.
#2: We wanted to identify the Unique Selling Proposition of 1-800-Contacts, and how it related to Walmart employees.
#3: We wanted to come up with a big theme or idea that created excitement around the employees.relationship marketing
#4: We used powerful personalized direct response copy that emphasized powerful incentive in the offer.
#5: We came up with a powerful offer that was irresistible to introduce them to 1-800-Contacts.
#6: We used direct response art to help maximize readership.
#7: We created a powerful direct response landing page specifically for the campaign.
#8: We created an email campaign that emphasized helpful information and content as well as sales.
#9: We created a powerful direct mail piece with quality personalization of the envelope and the letter using Walmart’s employee data to strengthen response.
#10: We took an old, stale offer and made it into a powerful, exciting direct response offer. Critical throughout the campaign was using high quality personalization on the direct mail piece, both on the envelope and in the letter, and on the value added piece and on the order form. The direct mail piece consisted of a letter, response device, lift note, and a value added piece.
Part of the campaign was to talk about the importance of their flexible spending account (FSA) to be able to use it to buy their contacts, and since we were specifically going to Walmart employees, we made it clear of the bridge between 1-800-Contacts and Walmart.
The result of this type of relationship building is powerful. In this case, we helped 1-800-Contacts solidify its Walmart relationship with the company and its employees, increasing sales and generating new customers for 1-800-Contacts.
By applying the greatest in direct response tactics, we motivated Walmart’s employees to take the offer because of CDMG’s expert strategy.
If you would like to discuss your marketing strategy, give me a call at (310) 212-5727 or email Caleb at [email protected].
 
Here are the rest of this week’s articles: