Are you of the school that says once you close a sale with a new customer, it’s time to go find another one? Guess what? You’re “Old School,” and you’re leaving easy money on the table. You’re also making your job a lot harder than it needs to be.

Let’s say it really is 5 times easier to sell an existing customer than it is to find a new one. Then you should spend 80% of your selling time staying in touch with current customers and only 20% of your time prospecting for new business. (Oh, look…we created another 80/20 Rule!)

Unfortunately, most of us reverse this ratio, at worst, and go 50/50 “acquisition” and “retention,” at best.

Here Are the Real Sales Follow Up Conversion Stats:

• It takes 12 contacts to convert a prospect to a customer
• 80% of all sales happen after the 4th contact
• 50% of all salespeople quit after only 1 contact
• 50% of all sales leads result in a sale–for somebody!

Scariest of all…your customer is your competitor’s prospect! That means if your ratio is out of whack, everybody will be following up with your customer but you!

Now put on your “80/20 hat.” You’ve got a lot going for you already. If you are doing a good job for them, your present customers are the easiest to approach. They’ll take your call because they know you. They already think you’re the subject-matter expert in your field. Therefore, if they accept what you recommend, they’ll often do so without shopping around.

If you give reasonably good service, are scrupulously honest and sell a product or service that’s in demand in your marketplace, you’ll find current customers will respond favorably when you ask for time to show them more of your products and services.

Does this mean every current customer will buy? Of course not. But many will…and your commission check deposits the same whether you sell to new or existing prospects. And it sure beats making cold calls, spending more money on advertising or investing more time in socializing on social media. Imagine a steady stream of receptive buyers who look forward to hearing from you with your next great idea for them! That’s what you can expect from a good sales follow-up system.

There are many ways to stay in touch with existing customers. My favorite is to call up and invite someone to lunch or coffee. But depending on how many customers you have and where they’re located, that may not be feasible. So here are my next 3 favorite ideas.

3 Ways To Follow up with Customers

1. e-Newsletter, sent quarterly, bi-monthly or monthly to keep customers “in the loop” with what you’re up to
2. Automated Drip Marketing Campaign, triggered off a first sale and scheduled to send a message once a month for a year. Then, even if you get busy, your customer will still feel appreciated.
3. Exclusive Offers. Everyone in business today is looking for shortcuts, new ideas, competitive advantages and proven strategies–anything that guarantees risk reduction. A simple, personalized message with a special downloadable offer of a white paper, special report, case study involving a similar business or a “coupon” towards a next order is often all it takes to make the phone ring or to initiate an email inquiry.

This year, The Database Diva offers 2 new programs to help you gain mastery of your sales follow up to current customers.

1. e-Newsletter Training Course. If you want to learn to “do-it-yourself,” in this class we’ll teach you how to produce a customer e-newsletter that gets opened, read and responded to.  Held monthly for 90 minutes
2. Do-it-for-You e-Newsletter. We will publish a monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly e-newsletter for you, completely turnkey.  We handle your copywriting, design, list segmentation, sales call list creation, metrics reporting and flagging of your opt-outs and bounced email addresses.

For more information or a customized e-Newsletter ROI Analysis, contact Stacia Shinaberry.

Sales quotes come in all shapes and sizes. Here's one I call the "Celebrity" sales estimate. It puts your product pics on the runway (and you can add a rep's image and autograph, too.)

In the past few months I’ve looked in every nook and cranny of my business for ways to cut costs, especially the “hidden” costs that you don’t realize are adding up. Like inefficient use of time.

Turns out one of our big time sucks is sales quoting. Some of our services are straightforward and easy to quote…maybe take a minute or 2. But our really lucrative opportunities often take a couple of hours to research, price and “pretty up,” so the sales quote “look and feel” matches the value of our work.

In fact, it turns out we have been spending approximately $25 per sales estimate we create. I checked with some of my clients, and plugged in their numbers, and we got a range from $20 – $150. And as we all know, not every estimate turns into a sale. So this seemed like a great place for a re-think on cost savings.

I liked the solution I discovered so much, I decided to resell the quoting software to estimate-intensive, sales-driven organizations. Now instead of one-size-fits-all quotes going to my low-end and high-end opportunities, I can match the quote template to the project.

For example, the image on the top left is the “Celebrity Sales Quote” sales template. It puts your products’ images front and center, almost like a catalog, with complete product descriptions, part numbers, a catchy title–whatever info you have or want to show. But a Quick and Dirty Line Item Sales Estimate may be all you need if need to get something out fast and keep it simple. Finally, a third option is a formal Narrative Sales Proposal, which may be appropriate for responding to an RFP or other situations where the person presenting your products and services is not you. I did one like this years ago that was almost 50 pages. Today, I could create it once in my sales quoting software and use pieces and parts of it for any estimate, and it would only take me a matter of minutes.

On Tuesday, December 20, I’ll be holding a free 60-minute webinar  demonstrating how a sales quoting system reduces the cost of calculating estimates and gives the competitive advantage of being first bidder to respond (because you’re so fast!)

Want to find out more? Register here. If you can’t make it live, I’ll be posting the recording here after the holidays.

Creative email marketing content can be mined from hobbies and holidays.

Last year on Cinco de Mayo I published my secret recipe for frozen margaritas. This year I decided to go more historical with a great Swiftpage E-Marketing case study.

Every Cinco de Mayo, history buff, Sage ACT! Software User and Texan Les McGee gets one more holiday to showcase his email marketing creativity. Les sells 100% made-in-the-USA United States and State Flags and flagpoles for Betsy Ross Flag Girls Company Inc.

Les combines his hobby of researching history with his business need for lead generation. Before e-marketing, Les’ prospecting strategy was territory “drive by’s,” looking for flags and flagpoles on commercial properties like apartment buildings, schools and big companies. Whenever he’d find one he didn’t know about, he added the information to his Sage ACT! database.

“I’m very database oriented,” Les says. “It’s the only way I keep up with my market. The property management business is very transient. One of my buildings has had 4 managers in 8 years. Big properties may have 10-12 flagpoles. So if I don’t keep up, I miss sales.”

About a year ago, Les discovered email marketing and enrolled in The Database Diva’s Drip Marketing Camp. “I’m a huge fan of the internet, and I love email marketing. But I hate when I subscribe to things online and they try to sell me new products without giving me the info I thought I was getting. I didn’t want to do my marketing that way.”

That’s how the marriage of history and marketing was inspired. Les doesn’t try to sell flags in his email marketing messages. “My philosophy is ‘I want to share something pithy and short about our US history and remind you that we’re a local resource.’”

Email Marketing Content Inspiration

At first he thought he’d send messages quarterly, but once a month is proving to better timing, even though Les acknowledges it’s often hard to come up with a different concept each month. Some of his historical flag topics have included:

• The story of the first United States flag
• The 48-star flag (the one Les grew up with)
• Flags in the Revolutionary War

“I read books on flags, so I write about any flag having to do with the history of the US,” he says. “We share the border with Mexico and I like to celebrate their hard-working culture and religion on Cinco de Mayo.” Later this month, Les will send a reminder to his list to lower all flags to half-staff for Memorial Day.

Besides his flag books, Les relies on Wikipedia and Google Images. He finds he’s more inspired to do his writing at the end of the month because “it has to get done–I feel the pressure!”

Swiftpage Email Marketing Results

What’s the payoff for all this hard work, we asked Les? Here are some of his tangible results:

1. A pre-school in his territory reads the history lessons to its children.
2. A local radio station reads his messages on the air (he’s working on converting them to customers).
3. A principal at a local school caught a “wrong date in history” and pointed it out to Les to correct (school’s never out for lifelong learners).

That’s just the fun part. The business part is even better. “For the first 4-5 months, I didn’t get much response,” Les says. “Recently, I had 15 people email me back with orders. People are always on their computers, so they’ll receive one of my messages, open it, call me and say, ‘Les, I need some flags.’ On sales calls, many times people think they’ve done business with me–even when they haven’t!”

Les sends about 1,400 messages per month and averages about a 15% open rate. His favorite time to send his emarketing campaign is the first or second day of the month at about 10am because “the apartment complexes don’t open till 9am.”

After 8 years of “drive by” prospecting, Les says he doesn’t get in the field as often as he used to. But he writes twice as many orders as the other reps at his company, even though his territory is not in the most affluent area. “I’ll take quality when I can get it, and quantity when I can’t,” he says.

Les says there are 4 secrets to his email marketing success.

1. Prepare your database so you can do something with it. This takes time. “I had to go back and code everybody on my list with P1 for flagpoles, P2 for Flags and P3 for both, then code all my prospects and customers,” he said. “But I look forward to doing postcard mailings and email blasts, so I had to have an accurate list.”
2. Always be prospecting. “When you start out in sales, you are prospecting more than writing orders. The longer you stay with it, the more writing of orders you’ll do and the less prospecting. But you still have to keep up with everyone. Even now I still find flagpoles off the beaten path, even though I think I know anybody who’s got one. Some customers buy at the corporate level and some buy local, but they all go on my list.”
3. Be persistent in acquiring email addresses. It increases your marketing options. “In the old days, tracking business on 3×5 cards was cutting edge. Not anymore.
4. Be consistent. Schedule messages and get them out on time. “Despite not being in the field as much, people still instantly recognize the Betsy Ross brand.”

And how much did Drip Marketing Camp help Les organize his database and launch his emarketing campaign strategy? “Lori, you’re better than I thought you were, and I thought you were fabulous.”

If you have a website, a database and a good story to tell, you are sitting on a goldmine

Times may be tough right now, but if you have a website, a database and a story to tell, I bet there are at least 5 database marketing strategies you’re overlooking that if executed would fill the gaps where you’re leaving money on the table.

Since the beginning of the year, I have worked on 3 special projects that are great case studies for growing a business from nowhere to somewhere in a very short period of time. One is an internet-based business, but the others are real “brick and mortar” companies.

These projects are in very different markets. Because I am working in completely different industries at the same time, I am seeing core principles that are not obvious, but are critical to your success.

Below is a short description of the work I’m doing.

1. Training/Special Events Company – This company needed a consistent way to follow up with inquiries to its website for training and consulting. It also lacked a pre- and post-trade show follow-up system to market to all its leads. I wrote drip marketing copy they used to launch 2 campaigns. One trade show follow-up message generated a $14,000 order in a single day.

2. Business Services Company – This company sells a product that his customers “don’t know exist” so no one knows to look for it on the internet.  Therefore, search engine optimization (SEO) was not working to generate sales leads. (Yes, believe it or not, there are still MANY products and services like this in the offline world, and F2F meetings still work best to sell them.)

I recommended a more traditional marketing approach that included buying a targeted mailing list, hiring a telemarketer to capture email addresses, sending a series of educational drip marketing messages, then following up with a phone call to schedule a meeting.

Within 2 weeks of the first campaign launch, the project generated $20,000 in revenue. This formula continues to bring in consistent revenue, even as my client has expanded his business model to other target audiences. (BTW, I wrote the ad, interviewed and hired his telemarketer. Then I trained her properly to maximize my client’s sales opportunities. Every detail is strategy).

3. E-Commerce Site – This client sells a single downloadable product to a very specific niche market online. Traffic to the website was high but she believed she was not converting enough of that traffic to sales. We worked to make her site “stickier” and began a “re-marketing” initiative to give non-buyers a second bite at the apple. Sales conversions increased by 15% the first month and continue to tick upward.

The commonality among each of these projects was the story they had to tell. While not the same story, they all had laser-focused stories to tell to their target audience. In fact, their stories were so powerful when told to the right people, the products and services “practically sold themselves.”

If any of their stories have inspired you, please know that if you are struggling in your business with how to find more sales, there is always more you can do to leverage key assets you already have: your website, your marketing database and a good story to tell.

If you’d like to discuss “how,”  contact me for a free strategy session. If you have a story to tell me about how you found new business, please use the comment box below and share it.

It’s Part 4 of the 5-Part series on building lead-generation web forms on your website. Let’s get real. Today’s lesson is The Big 3 Delusions of Drip Marketing Campaigns–the next step in following up with sales leads. Here are the top 3 “no-no’s”:

1. Customers/subscribers/prospects/readers are dying to hear from you. No. They’re. Not. You must have something compelling, educating, enlightening, entertaining to say. Every time. Every message.

2. It’s all about you. No; it’s not. If you’re not solving the readers’ most pressing problem, they’re tuning you out or–worse–opting out. Be personal; be relevant.

Here’s my favorite test: Write your content. Count up the times you wrote “you” or “yours.”

Now go back and count up all the times you wrote “I,” “me,” “my,” “mine,” “we,” “our,” or “ours.”

The ratio should be 2:1. Re-edit as necessary. (I made a funny video about the irresistible urge companies have to self-promote with email marketing. Enjoy.)

3. Cram everything in but the kitchen sink so readers don’t know what you want them to focus on. Nope. Only ONE idea per message–no exceptions. If you’ve got more to say, publish a newsletter. Drip marketing is all about nurturing leads, not talking them to death. (And while I’m on “talking”…lose the corporate-speak; it’s a guaranteed delete button.) Offering too many choices is the virtual equivalent of throwing a bunch of stuff on a wall to see what sticks.

Next week is the 5th and last article in this series on building lead-generation web forms. So if you have a burning question for me, ask me now.

In the meantime, here are 2 easy ways I can help you build more compelling web forms and drip marketing campaigns:

• Drip Marketing Letters – These are 9 most-used marketing letter blueprint packages to plug-and-play into your marketing automation software. The blueprints include drip marketing campaign strategy and “done for you” sales letters. (I wrote your content for you, so you don’t have to.)
• DripMarketingCamp – The first drip campaign is the hardest one to launch. So in Camp, I hold your hand over 4 weeks to help you execute one revenue-generating drip marketing campaign of your choice. We cover it all: database segmentation, marketing automation software (doesn’t matter which one you use), content creation, customer surveys, web forms, calls to action, subject lines, metrics and testing. I guide you through the writing of each message using my proprietary drip marketing formula that has generated more than $1 million in new revenue for my clients.

Lastly, if you haven’t yet signed up to receive my free Drip Marketing Letter Blueprint for sending to new customers, download it now by clicking on the blue and white graphic at the top right of this page. (You’ll also get to see how I follow up with my own drip marketing letter campaign.)

Write messages that make visitors *want* to fill out your web forms.

Today’s post is Part 2 of 5 articles on how to generate more sales leads with website forms. But first let’s talk about sales lead form abandonment when you feel “entitled” to your visitors’ personal information.

Everyone knows that info on the internet wants to be free, right? I mean, you know that when you go searching for something, the best solution is to find something free with no strings attached.

That’s a “deal.” You feel pretty smart about yourself when that happens, don’t you? (And to up the odds, check out this Google Cheat Sheet for better searches.)

Next best is getting info you need “now” and not “2 minutes from now after I fill out a lengthy web form.”

So why is it any different when you invite visitors to your website?You have a lot of considerations when setting up website forms:

• How much personal info should you ask for beyond name and email address?
• How many qualifying questions should you ask? (Too many and visitors will abandon the form; too few and you won’t gain actionable insight)
• Should web form fields be “required?”

I’m a big believer in simplicity and common sense. Therefore, there is no canned answer to these questions (you knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?)

However, when you apply common sense to what you’re doing, it’s fairly easy to do the right thing.

For example, there’s typically a correlation between offering exclusive downloadable content (like a special report or webinar invitation)–info that genuinely helps people like no other competitor of yours ever has or ever will–and requesting more contact details (such as company name and phone number) plus a few qualifying questions.

On the other hand, if someone wants to sign up for your email newsletter, do you really need more than their first name and an email address? (Sorry, but your free newsletter is just not that valuable for new subscribers to hand over their private info.)

After the subscriber joins your list, she gets to know you better, becomes more comfortable with you and your message, and your trust factor grows. Once you’ve “proven” yourself to be a provider of valuable information that can’t be gotten anywhere else but from you, it’s appropriate to ask for a more detailed profile. Now you have a bonafied sales lead.

How do you come up with this kind of compelling content to offer on the flip side of your web forms? Check out our “done for you” drip marketing letter blueprints to see how we do it and what we recommend. The blueprints contain 17-25 “how-to” pages and includes up to 8 drip marketing messages that can be copied, tweaked and pasted into your marketing automation software.

BTW, one of my favorite books on website usability–the study of how people behave online and specifically how they behave on your website–is an oldie, but goodie called “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. Definitely one for the “put yourself in your customers’ shoes” section of your library. Usability is a big consideration for every web page, but especially on web forms, IMHO.

Next time I’ll discuss how to act on sales leads you collect from your web forms. Read Part 1 of the series on using web forms for lead generation.

One of my biggest a-ha moments in working with clients is realizing when they don’t understand the difference between their “brochure-ware” website and a website that’s positioned to generate sales leads and sales.

In fact, the new term for lead-generating websites is Inbound Marketing, coined by web marketing software phenom, Hubspot. (This link will take you to their website grader so you can see how well your website is doing. The Database Diva is a Hubspot Certified Consultant, but this is a free, unpaid link.)

A lead-generating website is a silent salesperson who’s on the job 24/7 attracting qualified sales prospects to your “door,” lets them in and gives them a guided tour, inspiring them all the while to leave fear behind and pull out their credit card because they’ve arrived “home.” Browsing is now concluded, and buying can begin.

Setting up a lead-generating website is both art and science, but it starts with the simplest of tools: a web form.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll post my short course on optimizing web forms to attract more inbound leads to your website. I’ll share a best-practice tip or tactic, so by the time my series is over, you’ll have a great punch list of action items to give your web visitors a *stickier* user experience.

I’ll start today’s lesson by covering…

Where Do Lead-Generating Web Forms Go on a Website?

The simple answer is…”everywhere.”

In fact, it’s almost impossible to optimize web pages without considering how to turn each one into a marketing workhorse that either…

• Sells a product or
• Generates a lead

If you have the kind of business that can make a sale on the first visit, great!

But if you have a more considered sales, longer sales cycle, higher ticket product or service, then the conversion goal is to get the sales lead. To do that you must have a feedback mechanism to identify each prospect and keep in touch with him over time. Here are just a few web form options that keep the conversation going beyond the first web visit:

1. Contact Us
2. Free Consultation
3. Newsletter Sign Up
4. Feedback forms or Comment boxes (open-ended forms for visitors to “talk” to you when they can’t find other appropriate places to do it)
5. Free White Paper
6. Poll of the Day, Week, Month
7. Free Teleseminar or Webinar Sign Up
8. Free Download (video, MP3, widget, checklist, sample, etc.)
9. Free Demo or Trial
10. Market Research Survey (where you share results with all who reply)
11. Free Email Course

How Many Web Forms Should You Add to your Site?

At least 5, but the more web forms you add, the more leads you’ll capture.

Set up each form with Google Analytics to track the source of the web traffic you generate. If you’re active in social media, you may want to set up unique landing pages and web forms. For example, “direct” traffic that comes from an email newsletter or because someone typed your URL directly into their web browser, may convert differently than traffic that clicks on a link to your website from a LinkedIn status update.

In my next post, I’ll tell you how to determine what questions to ask on your web forms.

A lot of foot soldiers contributed to the groundbreaking advertising created during the Mad Men era of the late 1950s and 1960s. David Herzbrun was one of them.

In his 40+ year career as a copywriter he toiled for Doyle Dane Bernbach, J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy, among others. Although creative directors and copywriters might argue the analogy, a copywriter was akin to being a back-up bass player in a good band. You were constantly joining new teams or looking for your next award-winning gig.

In between working as a hired hand, Herzbrun even attempted a solo run with his own agency. But for this true collaborative writer, nothing ever matched the electric petrie dish, creativity and mentoring environment of his first stint with DDB–even his second stint at DDB years later when he discovered that the “MBA suits” had taken over the place.

It was at DDB that Herzbrun came to work on the Volkswagon account. At the time, Americans coveted their big v8 Cadillacs and Buicks. The “Bug” was an anomaly and foreign. But the creative team decided therein lay its hook. Among the notable VW ads created during this period was one of its most famous (and award-winning). “Snowplow” essentially answered the question, “How does the snowplow driver get to the snowplow?” 

In his book, Playing in Traffic on Madison Avenue: Tales of Advertising’s Glory Years, Herzbrun recounts his copywriting gold, zingers earned by years of  practicing his trade for big and small companies, all still valuable in today’s content-driven online marketplace:

• Don’t use big, high-falutin words. A dress cataloger once “dressed down” Herzbrun’s initial copy: “I changed words our readers might not understand. You’ve got to remember our ladies are not very educated but that doesn’t mean they’re dumb. I figure intelligence happens as much among poor  as rich, same with those who go to college and those who don’t. Now you take a barely educated, intelligent lady and give her a word she don’t understand, and you make her feel dumb. That makes her feel bad. When she feels bad, she’s not in a buying mood. Make her feel dumb enough times, and she won’t read your catalog again. In fact, she’ll buy her dresses from someone who makes her feel smart.”
• “Never confuse art with technique. If museums did that they’d be filled with Rockwells and no Picasso’s.”
• Define the product’s target “persona.” On the Avis account, Herzbrun said, “We tried to define how Avis talked. It was Broderick Crawford in ‘Letter To Three Wives.’ The voice of a successful man who was very intelligent but not well educated, and who’d been raised on the wrong side of the tracks. This made it a lot easier to write the ads. Before writing I would first either cast or create the character who wouild do the (magazine) ad writing. This allowed me to write in a distinctive and appropriate style for each campaign. The characters became so real to me that even 27 years later, I can recall each of them vividly: The Scottish-born English educated New Yorker who spoke for Chivas; the Jamaican sugar millionaire whose English family settled the island four centuries ago and who studied English at Princeton; the ex-Army platoon sergeant from Newark who spent a lot of time on his feet in his appliance store and thought a lot about shoes.”

Today we think we invented “truth in advertising” with blogger reviews and bad customer service Twitter shout-outs. But there really is nothing new under the sun. During the Avis “We Try Harder” days, the pitch was, “We’ll never rent you a dirty car.” But when Herzbrun rented his Avis car, the ashtray was full of butts. He emptied the evidence into an envelope which became the inspiration for a pointed open letter of apology print ad that Avis surprisingly green-lighted.

Unfortunately, Herzbrun’s story, while filled with exotic travel, celebrities (Andy Warhol, Christo, Victor Borge) and large international clients, has a “relatively” unhappy financial ending compared to other early Mad Men who struck it rich with their award-winning creative. Living as an ex-pat while opening their international offices, there was a fluke in the DDB office org chart reorganization, and the company went public without him. Yet Herzbrun’s retained his good humor and was grateful to be “touched by glamour, sprinkled with stardust and destined for greatness.”

This is  Part 3 of my 5-article series on how to build lead-generating web forms. In this article I want to discuss the importance of relevant follow up.

Have you ever submitted a web form and gotten a canned reply that had absolutely nothing to do with what you thought you signed up for?

That’s laziness, IMHO.

(I guess it could also be incompetent technology. But the answer to a follow-up challenge is not automating your incompetency!)

If you’re on board with the whole idea of adding more web forms to your website to generate more inbound marketing leads, and then  integrating marketing automation to manage your sales leads, then you must be on board for personalizing your follow up messages.

Is it hard to do?

Well, it is time consuming. But do you want more new website-driven customers? Then you have no alternative. Because if you don’t send personalized messages based on visitors’ web form answers, you will never convert them to customers. The prospect just won’t see the connection between how they found you and what you say next.

Here’s an example of how I prepared a personalized follow up email marketing campaign to prospects who attended a recent webinar presentation.

At the end of the presentation, I invited attendees to download a special report on my website. One of the questions I asked on the web form was, “Which statement best describes the way you learn new marketing concepts?”

There were 4 answers to choose from. Based on how they answered, they received 1 of 4 email marketing campaigns. Each response received different information, all managed automatically with my database my drip marketing automation technology.

The 4 answers allowed me to easily segment attendees into separate groups. The groups  allowed me to personalize content for them effortlessly.

In my next article, I’ll share tips on how to use drip marketing to follow up on web form responses. To read the first part of this series, go here for Part 1 on how to design a lead-generating website and here for Part 2 on getting the most qualified sales leads from your web forms.

I love the TV series Mad Men. I’ve always been a fan and a student of the post-WWII, baby-boomer advertising industry which started on Madison Avenue and invented consumerism worldwide. While the show’s writers spin award-winning weekly dramatic tales, the “advertising accounts” strategized about in Don Draper’s office and during 3-martini lunches are grounded in fact from the era.

Amazingly, some of the show’s sponsors, like BMW and Clorox, have TV commercial pedigrees dating back to the early days of TV sponsorships. The show launches their commercials with a short backgrounder slide on the history of the advertiser’s TV spots. Mad Men should be required viewing for all advertising journalism students–and inbound marketers.

David Ogilvy’s path to advertising icon status predated the 1950s, but his reputation was cemented during The Golden Age of Advertising. But unlike some of his peers, David was schooled in the ways of direct response advertising, as he says, having bought his “first direct mail course from Dartnell in Chicago with my own money.”

Direct Response Ads Are Measurable

Why was this so important? Because direct response, unlike general advertising, was measurable–something we take for granted today with our Google AdWords, Google Analytics and email marketing metrics. No matter how cleverly written a pay-per-click ad is, for example, you won’t continue to throw money at it if it doesn’t produce new leads or orders. You pays your money, and within minutes, hours or days, you know if you won, lost or broke even on that investment. That’s direct response. DO (as he was known) said, “Direct response is my first love. Later it became my secret weapon.”

David was such a believer in the principles of direct response that he said, “No copy should ever be presented to a client until it has been vetted by a direct response expert.” He steadfastly believed that when you spent a client’s money, you had to show a return on that investment–not just earn a bunch of creative (“whatever that means”) awards for the agency–a lesson that still holds up today, probably more than ever. Not only is Ogilvy, the man, still revered, but his company is still one of the world’s leading advertising agencies as part of the WPP Group of London.

Homage to the Original Mad Men

In homage to the upcoming season of Mad Men, I’ll be sharing wisdom from other sages of the Golden Age of Advertising. As you look for new ways to market your business, there’s no finer inspiration than the original Mad Men. Take it from Advertising Hall of Fame Honoree David Ogilvy who says in this video, “For 40 years I’ve been a voice crying in the wilderness to get my fellow advertising practitioners to take direct response seriously. Today, my first love has come into its own. You face a golden future.”