B-to-B Insights : Getting 
a Leg Up

Five ways to boost B-to-B direct mail response rates

When you want to mail to a particular industry or market segment, resist the temptation to simply call the leading trade journal in that industry and rent its subscriber list. Instead, call a list broker and ask for mailing list recommendations.

You might feel certain the trade journal subscriber list is the best and only list you should use, but more often than not, this assumption is wrong. List brokers can find lists reaching your market that you didn't know existed and that might outperform the subscriber list you were certain would work best.

2. Test Multiple Lists
Lists that seemingly reach the same group of prospects can vary wildly in response rates. Once, for a B-to-B software publisher, we tested the top two trade journals in its niche market—two publications that, to me, looked and read almost identical. Yet when the mail results came back, one publication's subscriber list generated three times the response of the other—proving that you must test.

For most B-to-B offers, assuming an average response rate of 1 percent, you can get a statistically valid test result mailing to a minimum of 1,500 names in each list. Response devices must be key-coded so you can track results.

3. Understand the Importance of Offers
When I started in B-to-B marketing 30 years ago, the majority of ads and mailers I saw didn't even have offers—just the advertiser's address and phone number. Today, B-to-B marketers know the importance of offers, which is important because I've seen one offer outpull another offer for the same product at as much as tenfold.

The most effective method of increasing the response rate of a lead generation campaign is to use a "bait piece." The term bait piece refers to free information the advertiser offers in its mailing or e-mail to generate a higher number of inquiries. The word bait is used because the free content is given not just to educate the reader (as the reader is led to believe), but to "hook" the reader by generating a response or inquiry, which then can be followed up by telephone or field sales personnel.

4. Emphasize 
Offer, Not Brand
Many B-to-B marketers focus—perhaps excessively so—on branding and messaging in their communications.

The wisdom of stressing the offer in advertisements has been known for well more than a century. In 1902, three years before he wrote his groundbreaking paper on the theory of relativity, a young Albert Einstein ran newspaper ads offering his services as a tutor in math and physics. The ads prominently offered a "free trial lesson"—showing that free offers really are a smart marketing tactic.

5. Develop a 
Powerful USP
The idea of the unique selling proposition (USP) was originated by Rosser Reeves in his book "Reality in Advertising."

Reeves wrote that to sell your product, you had to clearly show how your product is different or better than the competition, and how this advantage benefits the buyer. In addition, the advantage and its benefit must be significant, not trivial—strong enough to get prospects to buy your product over others. According to Reeves, the best way to do this was with a strong USP.

I heard a great story the other day about a USP for auto insurance. An insurance agent told parents of teen drivers that, if they bought auto insurance from him, he would give them his home phone number. If the teen ever was too drunk to drive, he could call the agent at home, and the agent would come pick him up and drive him home to ensure his safety. No other agent offered this advantage in his market, so it was the major selling point, or USP, of buying auto insurance from this agent.

Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 75 books, including "The White Paper Marketing Handbook" (Racom). You can find him on the Web at www.bly.com, e-mail him at rwbly@bly.com or phone (201) 385-1220.

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