4 Ways To Reduce The Cost Of Inquiries Your objective in an inquiry advertising program
(the two-stepadvertising method) is to "balance" an advertising/fulfillmentcost per inquiry and an order conversion rate at levels thatresult in your profitably bringing on new customers. Since mostinquiry advertisers
fulfill inquiry requests promptly by first-class mail, the recent postal rate increase further adds to thespiraling cost burden the Mail Order advertiser must overcome inmeeting his or her objective. Here are several suggestions on
howyou can cope with inflation in your inquiry advertising program: (1) Weed out useless inquiry responses.
Testing shows thereis no real difference between postcard and letter inquiries;between handwritten and typed inquiries. Inquiries should not beignored based on differences. However, over the course of a year,you can save in mailing costs by disregarding the following typesof inquiry responses:
(a) Those which only supply initials in place of firstand last names. Here are your true curiosity seekers/couponclippers. (b) Those which ignore the ad's request for stamp or coin. Can such
"free-loaders" be expected to shell out $30-$40for the product? (c) Those which omit certain requested information, such as company name or telephone number. Never assume these areoversights of the
respondents. (d) Duplicate and triplicate responses--which canaccount for 10% to 15% of your overall responses if you advertisein many different publications and/or repeat often in samepublication. Here you will
require some type of control system toavoid mailing same offer two or three times to certain inquirerswithin a short term period. Such systems may consist of acomputer print-out of recent inquirers in zip sequence, thefiling of
inquiry request envelopes in zip sequence, or theposting of inquiry names "by State" to a log book. (2) Improve the overall quality of your inquiry requests.
There are two "old sayings" in Mail Order on the subject ofinquiry advertising: "Inquiry ads which produce the mostresponses will normally produce the most orders," and "Nevercharge for sales information, as retailers do not chargepotential customers when entering their stores." Today, onecannot necessarily abide by these one-time "pearls of wisdom."The first "saying" may not be true because misleading orunqualified ads tend to produce the heaviest inquiry response,but not necessarily the most orders. More importantly, where thedelivered cost of a decent sales package now ranges from 30c to$1 (which you do, in kind when you send out a sales package freeto anyone requesting one), most store owners would soon go out ofbusiness (as many inquiry advertisers do). The point of all thisis that inquiry advertisers are normally best served by runningqualified advertisements that tend to produce fewer, but moreinterested inquiry responses. Ads can be qualified in at leastthree ways:
(a) Be much more specific in copy when offering freeinformation. For example, did you ever see ads that read "MoneyMaking Opportunity. Free Information"? Such ads bring youresponses from "dreamers" that
have no idea, but are just curiousabout what the offer might be. If the "opportunity" turns out tocost more than $2, you can write off 99% of your responses.Instead, say in the ad, if such is the case, "Sell Business
Booksby Mail. Free Information." In this way, you will at leastattract individuals who might want to sell business books bymail. At the same time, you will eliminate many of the "dreamers"by eliminating the mystery
from the copy. (b) Request a coin or stamp in the ad. Yes, inquiryresponse will decrease. However, if your offer is clear and theproduct is unique, you will attract extremely interestedprospects, while partially or
fully offsetting the cost of yoursales material in the mail. (Many advertisers prefer requesting aSASE--self-addressed, stamped envelope--instead. Something worthtesting, but you will probably receive envelope sizes you cannotuse,
and prospects tend to be more impressed when the informationarrives in the firm's business envelope.) (c) Offer some related product sample for a $1. It shouldbe an item worth more than $1, but one that costs
you no morethan $1, in the mail along with your sales literature. This willeliminate your mailing costs while doing business with prospectsthat have no aversion to remitting a check or a bill forsomething of interest.
(3) If you are also a Direct Mailer, you can substantially reduce the cost of printing your inquiry sales package.
Mostinquiry advertisers print a few thousand of each of their salespackage components at one time, normally a two or three monthsupply of material. If you also use Direct Mail to reachprospects with a similar sales package, you can save 50% or moreon the printing of most of your inquiry sales package. Here's how: Assume you are scheduling a 10,000-name DirectMailing. For inquiry advertising, you use the same outerenvelope, sales brochure, and return envelope that go into theDirect Mail package.Order 13,000 of each of the above pieces--keeping the extra3,000 of each for your inquiry advertising program. Because theseadditional pieces are part of a volume printing order, they willcost you significantly less per unit than what you would normallypay for a separate, smaller run.
(4) Reduce the size of your space advertisements.
Generally, inquiry advertisers use too much space in display adsto bring in prospects, and consequently realize an advertisingcost/inquiry that is much too high to profit with, even afterdecent order conversion rates. Obviously, many inquiryadvertisers assume that by increasing the size of an inquiry adit becomes more impressive and attracts more attention. Perhapsso, but the added benefits of increased size very rarely matchthe added cost. Over the years, we have found for inquiry adsoffering free details:
(a) A 2-inch inquiry ad produces a lower cost/inquiry thana 3-inch ad. (b) A 1 1/2-inch inquiry ad produces a lower cost/inquirythan a 2-inch ad. (c) Two consecutive weekly or monthly inserts of a
1-inchinquiry ad produces a lower cost/inquiry than one insert of a 2-inch ad. (d) For your greatest inflation-fighter, revert toinquiry-producing classified ads wherever possible. In mostpublications, classified ads
produce a significantly lowercost/inquiry than the much more expensive display ads, withoutloss of quality. Advertisers who normally experience cost/inquiryof $1-$2 through space ads have reported cost/inquiry of 50c-75cfor similar
free offers using classifieds in the samepublication. NOTE: Testing smaller inquiry space ads, and classifieds,presents no problems for the Mail Order newcomer, small Dealer,and the low-profiled "insider" who has built
a prosperousbusiness from such ads. With advertising rates skyrocketing, thefirms that will eventually suffer are those larger Mail Orderinquiry advertisers that "couldn't be bothered" running adssmaller than 1/6 page.
Some must continually insert up to a fullpage in many publications each month. When advertisingcost/inquiry and consequently cost per customer begins to climb,those firms will try everything--test new copy, sales packages,etc.--to
improve overall results, except test ad size reductions. Browser Fixed
