mail, or online, can be risky. The customers haven’t seen the product and have only your copy and graphics, perhaps a photo, to judge the value of their purchase. If they aren’t given a guarantee of their satisfaction, they may decide that the risk of ordering is too high. In direct mail, guarantees are a must. They are by far the most important part of your offer. Don’t neglect to include one.
• Special offers for new customers. We’ve all been on the receiving end of an offer inviting us to become a new customer of some business or other and promising us a great discount or enticing bonus to do so. That’s great if we’re a new customer. But what if we’re an existing customer? What’s in it for us? While offers like this can certainly be effective in attracting new business, marketers need to be cautious that in the process of wooing new customers they don’t inadvertently upset their existing loyal customers.
• Last chance offers. A last chance offer attempts to prompt a purchase from respondents who may be motivated by the thought that they won’t have another opportunity to buy. This can be effective, but only if the last chance is real. We can all think of organizations that use the “going out of business” sale over and over again. Eventually, the effectiveness of this technique, and the credibility of the organization, will suffer.
• Varying payment options. Marketers may use a variety of payment options to influence the purchase decision. By offering quantity discounts, for instance, marketers may be able to sell more of a particular product than they might have sold at a single unit price. Consumers will feel as though they are getting a special deal and may be prompted to add on “just one more” item. This concept is quite common online, where retailers will offer free shipping for purchases over a certain dollar amount. Consumers may spend more than they might have otherwise to take advantage of the free shipping — even when the shipping costs may be less than the additional purchase.
Which offer will work best for you? It depends on a lot of things — your product and your market, for starters. Direct mail is once again beneficial here because we can test offers to determine what might work best for us.
Pew Research Center’s Home Broadband 2010 survey: www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2010/Home broadband 2010.pdf. Accessed March 18, 2011.
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