More on mailers

In our December HME NewsPoll, we asked readers if they look outside the industry for business ideas. I'm not going to spill the results (yet), but one of my favorite topics to write about is marketing tips and techniques, mainly because they can be applied to multiple business models, in and outside of the HME industry. Of course, there are always some necessary tweaks—but the rules generally remain the same.

I recently spoke to Justin Racine, marketing and e-commerce manager at Geriatric Medical, for a story on direct mail marketing (you can read it in our December issue). I've said it before and I'll no doubt say it again, because of space restrictions, I can't always include all the bits I'd like, so here are some extra tips and hints from my conversation with Racine.

When and when not to use mailers:

“It depends on the situation, but if you have a website and you're trying to sell online and do E-commerce, I wouldn't do direct mail. However, if you're a provider and you have a physical location and you're looking to drive more people into the store, you can get pretty granular (with demographic information) when working with a direct marketing company.”

Why mailers work:

“A customer is going to see it at least one time—maybe they throw it out, maybe they don't. If they don't throw it out, maybe they leave it on the coffee table. They might walk by it five days and before they take an action. But, if you look at the number of times someone views that direct mail piece—if it's on their coffee table—they might see it five times, so the visibility rate could potentially be pretty high.”