MSPs not yet using direct mail to warm up leads are missing out on a major marketing channel – here’s five ideas to get started. Also this week, do video testimonials like this to influence prospects, and how MSP owners unintentionally self-sabotage their marketing.
Welcome to Episode 349 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.
Five super smart ideas for MSPs to use direct mail
If you’re not yet using direct mail to warm up leads and find out who’s nearly ready to buy from you, then I believe you’re missing out on a major marketing channel for your MSP. Back in May this year, I was a guest at the MSP Show in London, and I got to share a stage with Ian Luckett, Darren Strong, and Mit Patel.
These are all people who’ve been on this podcast in the past. It was great to meet particularly Mit for the first time in real life. And we were talking about what it takes to grow and succeed with your MSP.
Anyway, later in the day, I was interviewed by James Steel for the GTIA on Location YouTube channel, which by the way, is well worth you looking up, there’s some great content on there. And James asked me a whole load of questions about marketing, but the one that really got me going was when he asked about direct mail.
I’m a massive fan of direct mail for MSPs, and I think it’s one of the most underused tactics in the whole channel.
So today I want to give you five smart ideas for making your direct mail stand out and actually get a response. And let’s start by asking why direct mail at all? And remember, I’m talking about stuff that’s sent through your letterbox, physical real life stuff. Well, here’s why. In 1999, yes I was alive then, I had 1000 pieces of mail come through my post box every single day. I mean, we were inundated with mail back then. Those of us that were alive, we remember what it was like. So we had all of this stuff in our post box, but we would only get three emails. And today of course, it’s the other way around, right? Everyone’s inbox is full. Their email inbox is full, their notifications inbox is full, their social media feed. It’s all ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. It’s a complete digital mess.
So our brains and our inboxes in our digital world are completely full. We’re now getting 3000 things every day digitally, but the physical post, well, that’s almost empty by comparison. In fact, just before recording this, I went out and I checked my mail. Where I live here in the UK, I have an external mailbox. I haven’t checked for a week, which shows how unimportant it is. I just went out there and I’ve got two pieces of mail that were sent to me. One’s like a bank statement that the bank can’t actually physically switch off, they don’t know which computer’s sending it to me. And then there was a letter from some company about something and three flyers for Domino’s and stuff like that. So there’s not a huge amount of physical mail. And this is good because it allows you to stand out in a space where there’s not a lot of competition.
A well-crafted piece of direct mail gets physically handled, which means it’s noticed. Notice what I just said there. I went out of my way to go and get my post. I don’t go out of my way to check my notifications or my email. It’s just something that I have to do every day and something I choose to want to stay on top of so I don’t have 67,000 unread emails, which my girlfriend currently does, which is driving me crazy I’ll be honest. But your competitors are almost certainly not doing this, right? They are not sending direct mails. And that means that the physical mailboxes, the physical postal space of all of the prospects in your area or your vertical, that could be yours.
Now this works brilliantly alongside LinkedIn. Imagine if you were hitting the same prospe...
