We didn’t know there was a micro-marketing fan club out there when we wrote “How micro-marketing can deliver macro results” last month. But now we sure do.
In case you missed it, the August column touted the value of sending one piece of communication to one person (or a relatively small group), such as an old-fashioned, signed letter dropped in a mailbox. We’ve used that technique successfully, along with similar e-mail missives, and now we know we’re not alone.
“I can attest to the approach,” wrote Ron Deitch, CEO of The Burling Group, a retained executive search firm based in Chicago. In 2008 he wrote a letter to the chief human resources officer of MillerCoors, the beer company, which was moving its headquarters to Chicago. “Not only did I get a phone call from his office, but it began the process that has given our firm preferred vendor status for executive searches.”
Travelocity.com founder Terrell Jones is another fan of micro-marketing. When he owned a travel agency, Jones told us in an e-mail, he picked up 50 postcards during a trip to Moscow. His greeting, “Hi, from the Russia travel experts,” was handwritten on the postcards, which were then mailed from Moscow to senior executives of major companies in the U.S. And there was a request, too: “We’d like to see you when we get back.”
Guess what? “Because they were postcards and not form letters,” Jones told us, “they got by the CEOs’ secretary. We got to see many execs who appreciated our interesting slant on getting in the door.”
(Jones is now a principal at Essential Ideas, a consultancy he co-founded to help companies succeed in a digital world, and where he no doubt employs micro-marketing from time to time.)
Other successful micro-marketing ventures we’ve heard about employ similar principles and sometimes go beyond. Not every message can incorporate every principle, but the more the better. (For more about direct mail, visit www.productivestrategies.com/direct-mail.cfm.) Here are a few to keep in mind:
1. Make it personal. The message and the medium both count. Search firm CEO Ron Deitch wrote a personal letter to a senior executive he knew would need some extra, expert help in moving a corporate HQ to a new city. Deitch knew he could deliver value, and he said so. Travel postcards are personal in themselves. It would take an especially watchful gatekeeper to throw one out that was handwritten and mailed from half way around the world.
