R.I.P. 11x17 tri folds

I wore black today in honor of our old friend, the 11x17 self mailer, tri-fold.

People, I'm just going to be blunt--this thing is DEAD.

This is more of a public service announcement than advice to our current clients as most of them have known this for quite some time.
Here's the deal-we have this very cool, fresh technology that tracks all the traffic at mail sales. Over 90% of our sales have this tracking tool now so we know exactly how much traffic is walking through the doors off of different mailers.
.49% of people that receive an 11x17 tri fold (with a scratch off and a prizes, etc) will show up
2% will show up for a jumbo postcard with a key - that's an average not a "best sale" or the average of the good sales
So you have to do almost ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND 11x17 tri folds to get the same traffic you would off of 20,000 jumbo key mailers.
Don't skimp and think you are getting more because you are getting a higher quantity--with times as they are I know you all need to be spending as wisely as possible. The data speaks for itself

Recent Successful Sales

In the midst of everything that's going on in the automotive industry and the country in general--I feel very positive right now. Now, more than ever, I feel like Direct Mail & one to one marketing (emails, purls, etc) is helping car dealers bring in more traffic and sell more cars. We have a higher response rate now (actually double from 1.5 years ago) than we've ever had-an average of 1% across all mailers and an average of up to 2% on several specific products. The national average for mail is .5%. Here are just a few stories from sales in the past few weeks...

• In Elizabeth City, NC one dealer sent out 30,000 mailers at the end of April and had 866 people in-that's 2.9% foot traffic.
• In Kansas City, MO a large Metro Chevy dealer sent out 43,000 pieces and had 599 people in the last week of April.
• In the Dayton, OH market a Dodge store had 492 ups off of 20,000 mailers.
• Cincinnati, OH a Ford dealer experienced a 3.3% response the end of April-having 660 people come in off of 20,000 pieces.

All of these stats are not guesses or estimates, they are the number of people that scanned in to MarketVision-these dealers are able to see exactly how many people have scanned in, where they are coming from and what sales person spoke to them...along with all their contact info--whenever they want on our website. PS: Yes, I know my posts are typically not "salesy" in nature...with results like this I'm getting to the point where I feel guilty for not sharing the huge successes that are happening out there. If you want more info on our mail contact me so we can help you with traffic at your store.

How to use MarketVision Part 3-Improving Future Events

How to use MarketVision Part 3-Improving Future Events

Early this year I did a post on how to use MarketVision to lower your cost & increase response, this is the way MarketVision can best impact your ROI and the total value of your mailers. Below is a Cliff's Notes version of a few things to make sure you take a look at before your next event. 1. Log on to the Tri-Auto website to access your total MarketVision report from your last sale or sales. 2. Take a look at how your traffic was spread out. Were you slammed the first 2 days and it slowed down later, or vice versa? We suggest certain things when it comes to mail drops, but every market is different. On the next sale we could look at dropping a little differently to get more even traffic throughout. 3. Check out how much traffic each salesperson handled. There tend to be a lot of variations on this part of the report. Dig in a little on closing ratio & days worked. This is a great opportunity to give positive recognition to those that took full advantage of the traffic and coach those that did not. 4. Take a look at your zip codes. Katy will put together a full Zip Code Analysis for you after a couple of sales, but just get familiar for what areas did well and which did not. This can help tremendously on increasing response for the next sale. 5. Add the lead list to your CRM. If you need help converting it to a specific file just let us know. 6. Reference your vehicles sold to the lead list from MarketVision to determine your true ROI on the sale. 7. Take the time for a 15-20 minute conversation with me to go over what you found and let's discuss ways to make your next event even more successful!