Do you know who's at your seminar?

Commentary April 25, 2008 at 08:00 PM
Share & Print

When I was a young boy, playing outside with my friends, we would often refresh ourselves from the summer heat by drinking water from a garden hose. Many people wouldn't dare allow their children to drink from a garden hose today. There's too much pollution and too many impurities in our drinking water. People use filters on their kitchen sinks to remove impurities; that's also the reason we use filters for direct mail marketing pieces. We hope to eliminate registrants that are not part of our target market.

Although you may send invitations with the appropriate age and income filters, you should keep in mind that direct mail marketing is not without error. Approximately 4 percent to 7 percent of your registrants will not benefit from attending your seminar. For that reason, you should consider adding to your filters by making your own pre-seminar confirmation calls.

Confirmation calls allow you to give accurate head counts to the restaurant and also make sure the people registered are appropriate prospects. If you don't want someone showing up 30 minutes late or bringing their 12-year-old grandson, then you will want to make confirmation calls.

At Berry Financial Group, we maintain a customized database. The database allows us to keep track of individuals who have already attended our programs. If they have attended our seminar before, the database will let us know that and help determine if they're a legitimate prospect. If we can't help them, we will cancel their reservation and remove their name from our mailing list. The seminar is your water, and confirmation calls allow you to remove some of the impurities. How clean is your water?

NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

Related Stories

Resource Center