UPDATED.....New Postal Rates

A few months back I told you about the coming rate changes from the Post Office.

Welll...the new Postal Rates have finally been posted. Here is a quick summary of the three I consider most important for my work in membership marketing. If you'd like a complete grid outlining the rates, please email me at erik@marketinggeneral.com

• 1st Class postage remains at $0.44 a piece. 
• 3rd Class Bulk is going up to $0.276 a piece (.003 increase)
• 3rd Class Non-Profit is going up $0.174 a piece (.002 increase)

 

 

 

Heading off to CalSAE

Tomorrow I leave to speak at CalSAE's Annual Conference - Elevate. I'm looking forward to it and hope to see many of you there. If you are, please come by and say hello. If you can't make it, I'll be happy to send you a copy of the presentation. Simply email me at erik@marketinggeneral.com.

Reporting to you LIVE, from 30,000 feet! A Truth to Successful Marketing: Multiple Touch, Multiple Channels & Multiple Cycles

As I wing my way back from MN where I've been attending a 2-day meeting at our corporate headquarters in MN (ooooofta!), I thought it would be a good idea to write a quick editorial on a very important topic.

The offer and the list are still the most important elements of any member acquisition effort. However, the days of sending out one direct mail piece or making one phone call, and expecting that one effort to be singularly profitable are declining...if not simply over.

Today, to have a successful campaign you have to use multiple channels, email/direct mail/telemarketing/etc., multiple times during a singular initiative to even hope of  being somewhat successful. 

My experience with my clients finds that we can, on average, increase the response rate of a member acquisition program (by as much as 50%) by following up a direct mail piece with a series of emails.

We've also recommend the use of telemarketing as one of the final efforts in renewal programs, after a series of emails and letters. 

Membership Marketing it is anything but "Business as Usual!"

I was fortunate to be the Keynote Speaker for the AVECTRA Users Group Conference in Orlando, Florida, earlier this week. What a great conference and what a great community of professionals.

The focus of my presention was on the practical recommendations made by membership marketing professionals who attended a workshop I ran the day before. To set up these recommendations, I presented some pretty compelling information as to why we can no longer simply rely on one or two marketing channels and must incorporate the web and social marketing into our programs.

Here is a smattering of that information...:

• 1 out of 8 couples married in the US last year met via Social Media. 
• Number of Years to Reach 50 Million Users:
• Radio 38
• TV 13
• Internet 4
• iPod 3
• FaceBook 9 MONTHS 
• 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled on-line studies. 
• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world. 
• 25% of search results for world’s top 20 brands are links to user generated content. 
• 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as primary tool to find employees.
• January 27 2011 issue of Internet Retailer noted about Amazon.Com:
• Amazon’s $12.8 billion in 2009 North American sales represented 8.6% of the nearly $149 billion in online retail sales for that year reported by the U.S. Commerce Department.
• In the July 20 2010 issue of Internet Retailer noted:
• Over the past three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books. In its Kindle update, Amazon did not offer any comparison between the sales of paperbacks and e-books.
• Over the last 30 days, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books.
• As cited on http://www.pingdom.com/, over 72% of those people who access social netwrok sites are between the ages of 25 and 64. 54% are between the ages of 35 and 64. Most associations I work with will agree that their members fall between the ages of 25 and 64.  Therefore, we can loosely assume that HALF of YOUR MARKET (or more) are using social networks.

If you don't have a social media strategy, you need one. People are now learning to buy product and successfully administer their lives using the Internet and Social Networking. Membership marketing for membership and trade associations is not the same as 10 years ago...5 years ago...even 6 months ago. It is evolving and its being driven by the Amazon.Coms and FaceBooks of the world.

As Darwin pointed out...



Adapt or Die. Your choice my friends.

FREE TO PARTICIPANTS - 2011 MGI Membership Benchmarking Survey

For the third year in a row, Marketing General Inc. (MGI) is conducting in-depth research to benchmark the practices used by associations in recruiting, engaging, and renewing members.


Please take a few minutes to complete this questionnaire about how your association manages membership marketing. All individual responses to this research will be kept strictly confidential. No specific responses will be attributed to any individual or association without your specific written consent.


To participate please click on the following link:  http://www.linkedin.com/share?viewLink=&url=http%3A%2F%2Flnkd%2Ein%2FWhYZEt&sid=s273896269&uid=5445494192572735488&urlhash=TlnQ&redirect=&trk=sae_i_m_sd_val

To thank you for participating, MGI will provide you with a copy of our final survey report. The 2011 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report will provide valuable findings and recommendations based on results from this year’s research and trend analysis from the 2010 survey.