Advantages to Direct Mail

Advertising is required for any business. You have to reach out to your potential customer base in order to get them to knock on your door and see your better mouse trap. Most attorneys advertise in the Yellow Pages. A few actually have turned to television commercials. There are always billboards and radio to turn to. Perfect for sending your message out there to everyone in the world.

One of the best ways to market your firm is through direct mail contact. It presents several advantages some of which are outlined below.

Your letter will also represent a difinitive article that your potential client will bring into your office with them. It represents a coupon for free consultation, or free credit report review, whatever it may be. They have to present it in order to claim it. You now have a direct and immediate measuring device to show that your advertising is effective. Other forms of advertising are assumptions. You make an assumption that the advertising works if you see an uptick in business the following week. Direct Mail operates with precision.

Because direct mailing is measurable, it is also able to be fine tuned. You can tweak your mailings to see what works or doesn't work. Once you have your mail program dialed in, you will be able to count on the results you generate.

When you advertise on a billboard or in the Yellow Pages, you are casting a wide net and hope that you will catch a few of the fish who will happen to venture into it. With direct mail - you are paying to get the message out to people who are truly interested. They are the demographic you are attempting to attract. It is precision v. shots in the dark.

As you improve your direct mailing message, the results will improve. As you analyze the results of your previous mailing campaign, you can tweak your message to generate a greater return on your investment the next time around.

Bankruptcy is such a niche market. We reach out to people who may not know they need help. In this instance, your target audience is in desperate need of help. They are going to lose their home. They are looking for anyone to throw them a line and show they the way out. Your message must capture this. It can be customized for exactly this audience. If you took out a foreclosure focus yellow pages ad, you would not have much success with all the other people who are thinking about bankruptcy. With direct mailing you are creating a message for customized demographic and only that demographic. This allows you to focus on that potential client.

Direct mail programs put you in charge of when your message goes out and to whom. Are you busy this month with lots of cases coming in? Scale back your advertising campaign so you can catch up. Business slow? Send out additional mailings and expand your market. You get to turn the tap on and off. One of the biggest complaints we have as attorneys is that we are subject to seasonal expansions and contractions. When you are in control of the marketing you are doing, you are the one who controls the amount of business you have.

You know you do it. When the Yellow Pages book comes you open up to the advertising section to see if they printed your ad correctly and to see what everyone else is doing. That is how we keep track of our competition. While we are all a friendly bunch, we go to the Sec. 341 calendar to see what other attorneys are always there. I peruse the online schedule from time to time to see who is filing the most cases. Why are they doing so much business I wonder.

Direct Mailing allows you to keep your advertising to yourself. Establishing a direct mail campaign is a private communication between you and your potential client. No one else is going to know about it, especially not your competition.

Aside from your State Bar Rules, there is nothing to stop you from being as creative, or uncreative, as you like. Some of our most successful direct mail campaigns have been with unconventional methods. I used to send out letters that looked like checks. It got the end user to open the letter and the check was really a free consultation coupon. I have always linked my direct mail letters to a special landing website for clients to learn more about my services. You can draft a stodgy letter or you can increase your mailing campaign with color, new and different fonts, whatever you can put together. There are no limitations to you except for your advertising rules promulgated by your State Bar.

Almost all advertising is passive. Yellowpages, Radio, Billboard, Television, all require the customer to do nothing. If they are not receptive to your message, they are not going to pay attention to it. Your direct mail campaign reaches a demographic that is ready to listen to your message. That timing is everything. It gets them from being passive, to being active. They are going to reach to pick up the phone or go online because they need to hear more about what you can do them. This is the person you want to be your client - a person who is ready to hear your message.

There are a few downsides to this specific type of mailing. People who are facing foreclosure proceedings have not paid their mortgage debt in some time. With the increasing number of lenders who are experiencing a larger percentage of nonpaying debtors, there is a backlog of foreclosure proceedings. This is a dilemma because we don't know about the foreclosure until the borrower has not been paying for several months. They may have already left the home and moved on. This is a problem in that the home is no longer a viable lead. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing this. Chances are, you will get some letters back with no forwarding address. This is simply an unfortunate by product of the market we are trying to reach.

The other dilemma we face as direct mailers to foreclosure victims is that debtors, as you are well aware, will sometimes bury their head in the sand when they are overwhelmed. This is not as insufferable problem as the one above for you can deal with it by creating a message that offers hope and is clear and easy to accomplish. "Come to my office for a free consultation and I guarantee you will walk out feeling better than when you walked in." That gives people hope. But we have to be able to get them to take their heads out of the sand. We're not marketing to prospective buyers of cars, we're marketing to people who are overstressed, undereducated, and scared.

You have to seperate yourself from every other foreclosure rescue scam and realtor out there. Your letter must create a one stop shop to handle all of their problems. Until the legislature acts, we don't have a way to rewrite the contracts of the Adjustable Mortgages. Sometimes, walking away from the home or selling it is the only solution. We strongly suggest (as we learned from experience) that you have a realtor and mortgage broker you are closely connected to so you can refer the debtor on if you can't help them with a Chapter 13 home saver plan.

Your message has to articulate a reason to face their own guilt about a foreclosure. Many of our clients view bankruptcy and foreclosure as their fault. They should have made more money, not been taken advantage of, whatever. This is a misplaced perception, but we have to deal with it nonetheless. Articulate your message to overcome this perception.