Many marketers are gnashing their teeth this week after the US Postal Service hiked postal rates.
Here’s why you shouldn’t be afraid of this price rise.
If you monitor Return on Investment (and you should) you’ll know exactly the effect of the price rise. You’ll know that it costs x dollars to send out your newsletters and on average you get y dollars back in business. If you’re a real estate agent, for example, you know that one new listing more than pays for the cost of printing and mailing your newsletters. So a couple of cents is no big deal. It’s just an inflation-related rise which is more than covered by the increased commissions generated by past house-price rises.
And then…
Other marketers (the not-so-smart ones) immediately start cutting their postal marketing — perhaps mailing out fewer newsletters — because they’re not monitoring ROI and so have no idea how much money they’re making (or losing) on their printed marketing efforts.
They’re afraid — because they imagine postal rates will be killing them — and so make a decision based on fear rather than fact.
So when they disappear, or start using other marketing methods, they’ll leave more space for you.
Print-based marketing and newsletters in particular are the best way to keep customers coming back. As you’re measuring your ROI you know that — and you’ll continue to move ahead as your frightened competitors fall behind.
(See also: How to use the postal rate increase to your advantage)