by Marc Zazeela
Are you making money from customers around the world?
As an international shipping expert, I see examples all the time of businesses selling their products in the global marketplace using mail and shipping.
These international markets are ripe for doing business, and there are lots of ways to reach and engage your target market. Individually, each medium is effective for marketing and engaging with prospects overseas, but even more so when you build a strategy using a complement of media to reach out. Using an integrated approach is exactly what savvy marketers have been doing in the U.S. market for years.
With one exception.
If you are targeting the prospect’s mailbox, your message will be more visible and memorable in the EU than in the U.S. According to a study done by Anpost (the Irish post office), U.S. households receive about three or four times the amount of direct mail that households in the UK and other EU countries receive. U.S. consumers get about 11 direct mail pieces weekly while EU countries average 2 – 5 mailings.
Talk about an opportunity to stand out.
Imagine how effective a well-crafted and properly targeted mailer would be if it was one of just a few in your prospect’s mailbox instead of one of many?
Of course, there are all the usual reasons for using mail to penetrate international markets, as there are for the U.S. I won’t go into the boring statistics and studies. Instead, I’ll share a real success story. It is a story about serendipity, innovation, and perseverance. This is about someone I know. It could be someone you know.
Valentine’s Day.
A loving husband comes home with a gift basket filled with cosmetics and other beauty products. His wife, a homemaker, while very appreciative, is also very particular and she realizes that she won’t use many of the products in the basket. Her husband suggests that she should try to sell them on a popular online auction site and see what happens. To her surprise, all of the items sell in a matter of hours — and at a healthy profit! Epiphany! She buys another basket and sells the contents, again in a matter of hours.
This is too good to be true.
Energized, the woman hatches a plan to create a small business. She can buy the cosmetics from liquidators and close-out companies and continue to sell at a small profit. She has discovered a great way to find something to keep busy and generate some walking-around money.
Huzzah!
More products purchased, more orders processed in the comfort of her kitchen (I visited her headquarters), more boxes shipped from her garage, and her business was booming.
Let’s fast forward.
Simply by chance, she has gotten a handful of orders from customers in Europe. How to get even more? Another brainstorm! Send a postcard to upwardly mobile women in France and Germany. Offer them a special deal and direct them to her website. Sell them products that they cannot buy locally. Where to begin?
Mailing list rented. Simple postcard designed and printed. Mailed to the list.
Foreign orders are streaming in. Europeans love her site and her products. In fact, they love all things American. Today, she is shipping around $3,500 worth of merchandise to her European customer EVERY DAY. More postcards, more mailings, more orders, more money, more money, more money.
Marc Zazeela is a 20-year veteran of international mailing and shipping. He says, “My customers are my friends. They bring issues to me that challenge my imagination and my company’s capabilities. Together, we can discover a unique and creative approach to international logistics.” You can find him on Twitter at @MZazeela or on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/marczazeela
