How to Manage Direct Marketing Leads Effectively

You’ve come up with a great offer, designed an eye catching mailer and cleaned your mailing list. You’re all ready to send your direct mailshot and see the leads and orders roll in.

Well not quite – what measures have you put in place to receive all the responses the mailing is going to send you? Sounds like you may need to make sure you’ve got an effective lead management process in place before your mailshot hits the mailing house.

Believe it or not, many businesses overlook how leads will be handled, often at the expense of creating and sending a great looking direct marketing campaign. Surveys show that almost two thirds of businesses can’t even reply to general enquiries from their websites, let alone gear up for handling the response to a major mailing.

Errors in lead handling can be as simple as not providing a response mechanism that works, to not briefing the staff who’ll answer the calls, or running out of essential sales literature or products.

Here’s a simple checklist for your next direct mail campaign, to make sure you never miss out on a single lead again…

• Make sure your mailing includes a working response mechanism and it’s easy to find, not tucked away at the very end of an 8-page brochure. Then check that all the response mechanisms on your mailer work correctly, including phone numbers, address, email address and website URL.

• Brief the staff on your switchboard or in your sales team and call centre on what message or information to provide callers, details of special offers etc. You don’t want a lead being passed from extension to extension trying to find someone who knows something about the product or offer they’ve called about.

• Check electronic enquiry methods such as email addresses or website enquiry forms are working and being monitored. Also, ensure these leads are backed up somehow in case they get bounced by the receiving email account.

• Make sure leads get followed up in good time. Use contact management software or a database to store and track progress of individual leads and set sales staff a response time. If you receive a large number of leads, then put in a system of prioritising them so the best prospects get followed up first.

• With the decline in use of outbound telesales due to Telephone Preference Service registrations, exploiting all inbound calls has become even more important. Make sure your team are briefed to look out for every cross-selling or referral opportunity from new leads and prospects.

• Ensure any follow-up literature or samples are ready to be sent. Brief your fulfilment centre if you use one, so they can organise staff and resources to be in place. Now is definitely not the time to discover you’ve run out of those overprinted bespoke envelopes which go with your fancy new brochure.

• Check the timings of your campaign. If it’s going be received on a Friday, and you don’t normally work a weekend, consumers may not want to wait until Monday to get hold of you.

• If you’re a mail order business selling products through your mailing, then make sure you’ve got plenty of stocks available, along with any necessary packaging materials. If you don’t usually hold large stocks, then make sure you can get more products from suppliers, and that you can order them within your credit limits.

Generating leads and orders is the very purpose of running a direct mail campaign. So don’t fall at the last hurdle – make sure you’ve got every angle covered when it comes to receiving, managing and responding to the enquiries your campaign will hopefully generate. This way you’ll get as much value and financial return as possible from your marketing campaigns.