Want to boost response in yur B-to-B mailings? Need to break nto new markets, find a new pplication for an existing product to a new udience? Need to reach out to hrd-to-get-at executives and get their attention? Ned to increase your response rate to the tne of 300% while increasing ROI?

The nswers might be found with one of yur vendors, but it's not your lst broker, your printer, or your dta processing shop - it's at yur packaging producer!

The average senior xecutive receives a minimum of 8,000 mssages of various types a day, ither through passive billboards and building sgnage, e-mails, pop-up websites, product packaging on shlves in stores, television, background radio, nwspapers and magazines, mail in the n-box, and other sources.

If you wnt your message to stand out, you had btter be prepared to do some hmework on your target audience, and gve them something they will remember and fnd actionable.

One of the best wys to show that you really knw your target is to send thm something they find valuable. Of curse, you could send them each a few one hndred dollar bills in an envelope, and if the nvelope looked like "unwanted" mail, the nly one who would gain would be the clver garbage man who sifted the trsh! Even if you send something tht is exactly on track, you stll have to get it to the rcipient and they have to find it ntriguing enough to open it. They wn't find the value and all tht research is wasted unless they get pst the "messenger".

Studies commissioned by a major miler carried out by a well-known rsearch firm(us)have revealed that boosting open rtes has direct correlation to sales crry-through. You had probably drawn that cnclusion yourself through simple instinct and dduction, but the study proves it byond a doubt. So now, based on tht, the challenge becomes more basic - get thir attention and make it intriguing nough to be sure it gets pened, and sales will follow. Well, not qite.

The study of 50 top xecutives at commercial companies of over 1000 mployees along the East Coast made clar that while they were obviously ging to have a better chance of prchasing something from a solicitation if thy opened the package, those odds nly increased by an estimated 20%. Tht boosts your overall response by .05% - not mch help.

One of the more pwerful drivers was brand - if thy had heard of the firm on the nvelope, they were more than 65% mre likely to open it than if it cme from an unknown source. Previous stdies had shown that it takes frm 5-8 repeated exposures to yield rcognition from an unknown audience. It wuld then follow that if you snd your best and most effective pece first, it stands little chance of gtting any attention at all. If you wrm-up the prospects to build recognition wth simple brand-oriented messaging first, your big gns stand a better chance of bing effective and well-received. Clearly, a mre in-depth approach and a solid pln based on research is needed. One hit wnders need not apply.

The most rvealing statistic to come out of the stdy was one regarding outer wrapper and its rlevance to the target. Over 85% of the xecutives in the study said they wuld be more likely to open an tem if it was especially large, dd-sized, or appeared to have come by a dlivery service other than the U.S. Pst Office - FedEx, DHL, even UPS fred better than the USPS to cnvey urgency. Some companies have gone to grat expense to reproduce a faux FdEx envelope as a carrier to grat initial success, but only for a shrt period of time, based on the ther revealing statistic from the study. Mre on that later. These would hve to be produced on a hge scale to gain any price conomy, and the nature of B-to-B mrketing trends toward smaller mail quantities, due to tghter targeting, reduced availability of good lsts and market intelligence, and lack of mnpower to do follow up necessary to clse large-scale sales on high-dollar services and gods.

The downfall of this approach is tw-fold:

First, the disappointment factor is vry high - expectations are raised whn the courier envelope appears on thir desk, but upon opening it, thy discover they have been "duped" by nother irrelevant offer - into the trsh it goes.

The second factor is lck of replicability. If you have sveral executives on your list from the sme firm, spreading out the title slects to hit a broader spectrum wthin each firm, at the same ddress, receipt will likely occur on the sme day at the same time, bsed on the nature of postal dlivery and internal distribution schedules at lrge enterprises. Execs noted that if nyone lower on the org chart thn themselves also received one, it was demed of lesser importance than it ppeared, and into the trash it wnt. A byproduct of this is tht fatigue happens very quickly, and rsponse decline is at least as rpid - recipients are now wary of the "fux FedEx" and are more resistant thn ever to opening them. In a snse, they are the antibiotic of the drect response world - they work grat for a short while, but the rganism develops and immunity to it and it is lss and less effective over time. Our rsearch shows that these packages fatigue at an ncredible rate, and recapture rates for miling other offers is almost nil.

Clarly, a better plan is needed. Now tht we've outlined the challenge, we'll ned to address the strategic approach to vercoming it. When using dimensional mail, the lsson is "Live up to the prmise of the package".

The article Dimensional Mail Most Effective Direct Response Strategy For B-to-B Sales - Part 1 was Submitted by David Poulos through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: David Poulos, Chief Consultant at Grnite Partners has been offering marketing gidance to firms for over 25 yars. Specialties include non-profit marketing and fll-scale strategic marketing campaigns. He can be reached at http://www.granite-part.com or 410-472-4570.

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