Direct Mailers aka Customer Connection

This program is one of Toyota's attempts to help us poor dealers send our customers a monthly or whenever we feel like it, service mailer. It's really a brain trust from Gulf States Toyota and after years of trying they are now only a few years behind the commercial Direct Mailing companies.

We poor souls are so hopeless that Toyota feels they have to force (okay encourage) us to support their choice for this vendor. I am not saying that you won't get results from their mailers but if you don't know the little secrets, you may be not mailing to enough of your customers or possibly too many.

They do most of the set up by the internet and if you know where to look and what to check off you can actually come away with something that really is not too awful.

Lets start where they do and that is who is actually going to get the mailer.

If you let then just mail to your UIO then only the address and names that Toyota knows of will get a mailer. You really have to let then dial into your database and get those names from your system. You can then choose to use only your list or the UIO or combine both. Combining both is the best way to go.

Then you get to choose how the names are used. Choose only one qualifier when you see the many choices. I thought that if you choose all then it would really reduce the chance for errors. WRONG! The wizards at Gulf States look at that this way: unless all the qualifiers are met then you really did not let them all get a hit and they all get mailed something. In some cases households got 2-3-4-5 mailers, regardless of what brand of vehicle they have. Select the bullet to mail only one mailer to a household and you will get the best results.

Then you get a chance to mail to owners of different makes. I know this is a "Toyota only" mailer and we are Toyota dealers and this is a Toyota co-op product, but that's where they fool you again. If you were me and got to this page where a long block shows only TOYOTA you assume that they mean choose only Toyota vehicles from my database. Here is the secret, you have to click on the word TOYOTA to choose only Toyota vehicles, otherwise they all get mailers.

Then you get to add the coupons. They have a nice book they send with many coupons, some say the same thing 2-3-4 times, but at least you get a choice. You can also "design" your own coupons. This does work but it takes a while to figure out how to do it and you wind up calling it in most of the time anyways.

You then think you are done, but still you have to approve the mailer design. Now if you have some custom coupons you may not see them until you get the mailer so you kind of take them at their word that it will be correct and what you want.

Then the big day arrives and the mailer gets dropped at the post office, usually 4-5 days later than expected but hey it's the best they can do.

Now a look on the other side - the real world so to speak. You contact your favorite Direct Mail vendor. You trade some stories about business and what you are trying to accomplish. In about 3 days you get some proofs, you make some corrections and in about 4 days total you have what you are looking for. They dial in for your names and addresses, they get run through the new processes for accuracy and the zips are chosen.

You send them a check for the postage (some forgo this step), some want payment up front (this is pretty much a thing of the past) and in a total of about 12 days the piece is in the mail.

How hard is that yet Toyota insists on making it a big slow deal and both mailers cost the same and get the same co-op.

Let me know your stories and who you use so that we can sort out the good from the bad in this business. I still miss Picture Perfect, they just did things right for years.

Contact me at jack@yotarepair.com