Integrate Your Direct Marketing

To compete successfully, you have to go beyond traditional marketing and sales efforts. Integrated direct marketing consultantand author Ernan Roman recommends that companies combine their marketing efforts into a single package. Thecosts, he contends, are not much higher, and the payoffs can be substantial.

Roman suggests, for instance, that every direct mail piece be combined with an 800 number in the package and a carefully timedfollow-up phone call. The typical response rate for direct mail is 2%, but including an 800 number adds another 1% to 2%response, and making a phone call can tack on another 2% to 14%, according to Roman. By integrating just two marketingchannels, direct mail and telemarketing, you may end up boosting your response rate to somewhere between 5% and 18%.

"The important issue is the aggregate response," says Roman, whose company, Ernan Roman Direct Marketing, is based inQueens, N.Y. "Does it make sense to let 98 people get stone cold while you're waiting for two responses to come in?"