5 Tips to Boost Sales Prospecting for Rapid Results in Q3/Q4

Savvy businesses are already boosting their marketing, lead generation, and sales prospecting as the world re-opens for business. To that end, I’ve put together some tips on how to best leverage the marketing opportunities that 3D direct mail marketing creates in order to help drive sustained growth into the second half of the business year.

1. Get ready for the re-opening rush

At the risk of stating the obvious, as the bulk of businesses begin to re-open, it is going to be something of a free-for-all to attract the attention of customers who have largely stayed home for the last 12 months, which is to say that it’s going to be overwhelming for both consumers and businesses.
Marketing is about relentlessly getting your message out to your target audience in a way that resonates with them and spurs them to action. Repetition is important, but delivery methods need to be varied or the audience rapidly becomes desensitized to even hearing the message.
Finding new ways to get your prospective customers’ and clients’ attention is, therefore, critical to your business standing out and therefore being top-of-mind with your target audience.

2. Direct mail is the ultimate pattern interrupt for this moment

When it comes to sales cold calling, the most common and steepest challenge is keeping the customer engaged in a conversation past the first 5 seconds. Part of the uphill battle in generating new leads is linked to neuroscience: the human brain is conditioned over time to respond predictably to certain stimuli, meaning that consumers subconsciously shut down once they realize they’re on a cold call. In this way, pattern interrupts offer a way to change the approach and side-step the long-conditioned customer shutdown response.
A pattern interrupt is anything that cuts through the conditioned response to the established pattern of how marketing messages are delivered.
A typical cold call might start something like this: “Good afternoon, I’m Joe Sales from Big Corp—could I have a moment of your time?” This is almost guaranteed to elicit a conditioned shutdown. And while pattern interrupts can help overcome some of the shortcomings of cold-calling or email marketing, they can’t fix all of them. Thankfully, however, direct mail can implement the same principles of the pattern interrupt and in some ways is a superior format for it.
In part, the concept of pattern interrupts works so well with direct mail because the physical format itself serves as a powerful interrupt at a time when digital marketing is, to be frank, overwhelming and oversaturated. Instead of competing for attention in crowded digital spaces, consider the immense upside of being able to put your marketing message directly into the hands of customers. And unlike cold calls, which prompt customers to simply hang up, studies show that a majority of consumers still regularly open and scan the physical mail they receive. This could be in part because mail allows the recipient to review it at their leisure, circumventing the annoyance hang-up altogether.

3. Tune your messaging and delivery to best resonate with your target audience

Once you’ve captured the recipient’s attention with direct mail, it’s essential to delivering your message through clear, concise copy. As businesses nationwide move into the next phase of re-opening, here are a few important considerations for updating your messaging:

• Reevaluate the environment and customer needs – With strong vaccination efforts, promising economic numbers, and robust recovery stimulus continuing to flow to businesses, we’re already in a very different place than they we were even three months ago. As a result, messaging written at the start of the year could already be obsolete.
• Differentiate yourself from competitors – This one seems almost too obvious to include, and yet it’s too important to leave out. As businesses continue to re-open first as a trickle and then as a flood, customers will become even more inundated with messaging. As we go back to business, we’re also going back to the basics, in some ways. While you have the customer’s attention, use the opportunity to spell out as clearly as possible what you can offer them.
• Position your call to action clearly and prominently – While there is often a temptation to put as much information as possible onto the page, it’s crucial to keep your call to action clear to the reader. That means not burying it in a dense body of the text so the recipient has to hunt for it. Keeping your mailer clean and clutter-free will make it easier to absorb important info.

Spending a little time now to make sure your messaging is best tailored to reflect the current environment will pay off in the long term and improve your efforts with sales prospecting.

4. Leverage personal connections with 3D direct mail and tactile marketing

While every marketing approach can benefit from a well-implemented direct mail element, I’ve observed time and time again the way that including a dynamic, 3D element can work as an incredible force multiplier for sales prospecting and outreach. Part of what makes tactile marketing so effective is the fact that it more easily leverages the emotional side of sales to establish and grow new connections into lasting business relationships.

In part, this is because providing the customer with something tangible taps into elements of tactile marketing to facilitate personal connections. By providing something physical for customers to interact with, businesses can build connections that are:

• Memorable - As a flat piece of postage folds out into a dynamic 3D model, the recipient experiences surprise and delight, which creates a positive experience and therefore a positive association with the sender.
• Emotional - Opening a 3D card is an enjoyable “micro-experience” that will make the recipient more receptive to the messaging that follows.
• Personal – On top of the fact that consumers view direct mail as inherently more personal than email, a 3D direct mailer also offers the perfect opportunity to include a hand-written note and signature to help solidify the new connection.

5. 3D direct mail sets the stage for direct follow-up

Perhaps the greatest marketing strength of sending a customized 3D card is that it creates an organic opportunity for direct follow-up in a way that marketing emails and cold calls simply cannot.

After a prospect receives their Awesome 3D card, there’s a 1 to 5-day “honeymoon” window during which time the “emotional glue” is still fresh and therefore the recipient will be far more likely to take a direct follow-up call as opposed to a dreaded “Good evening from Big Corp” cold call. Following up during this window will help ensure that your mailer is still fresh on the recipient’s mind as the 3D card itself provides a natural conversation starter.

Now is the time to do something in your marketing that sets you apart from the competition.  Having a 3D marketing tool that create s a “pattern interrupt” with your recipient may be just what your message needs to break through the maelstrom of marketing tactics that will be vying for your target audience’s collective attention in Q3 and Q4.

Be bold!

With only months to go before business gets back into full swing, now is the time to order your 3D marketing tools to boost sales prospecting efforts and connect with customers and leads on a personal level.

Awesome 3D Cards now has a variety of ordering options from “universal” cards (no customizations and broadly applicable messaging) to semi-custom cards (customizable logo and messaging but limited to “stock” 3D pop-up models) to cards featuring a full-custom 3D model designed just for you.

To discuss how an Awesome 3D Card could be leveraged into your marketing and sales prospecting, schedule a complimentary consultation with our team today.