Every day when the working class of the world gets home, a terrible thing happens for direct mail marketers, something so horrible that I don’t even want to talk about it.
…the daily sorting of the mail.
It’s something that has been done since the first caveman got a postcard from his grandmother on vacation and it’s happening to your sales letters right now. It’s something called the A-pile and the B-pile.
We take our mail and put the personal letters, postcards, and things we’ve ordered in the A-pile. This is the stuff that gets opened right NOW. In the B-pile we place our bills, the catalogs we want to keep, magazines, and anything else that deserves a look at sometime in the future.
Then there is the C-pile. This is the place that all the naughty “junk” mail goes. This is the stuff that never gets opened, because it’s mail that is so clearly something that is an invasion, something that we have no interest in.
…guess where the C pile goes? Guess where your letter is? Yep, right in the trash can.
As a small business owner, the C-pile can be one of the most expensive mistakes that you will ever make in direct mail. Just think about it, 98% of what you are mailing is not ever being opened! It never even had a chance to persuade someone to buy, because they customer never felt compelled to open the damn thing.
There is a better way to get your sales letters read and in fact, direct mail can be much more successful (combined with a powerful sales letter) than email marketing, because you have the customers 100% undivided attention. With email they have 3,000 other things in front of them, enticing the customer to click away.
Here are 4 top secret ninja tricks that you can use to get your sales letters opened almost 100% of the time, breathing new life in those poor, little discarded sales letters:
1. Use a white, legal-sized envelop with NOTHING printed on the outside- This immediately makes it look like something personal, instead of a letter sent by a business.
2. Hand address the envelope- Do not use any pre-printed, pretend fonts that look like hand writing. Use the customer’s actual name, not just “head of household.”
3. Hand address the return address area with either your name, or the name of another person at your business, NEVER your business name.
4. Use a “live” stamp- This means you are going to have to physically stick a stamp on each sales letter, none of this postal machine business.
That’s all there is to it. Yes, this will be more expensive and time consuming, no doubt. However, the point of your direct mail campaign is to get the letters opened, right? So, why spend a bunch of money on automated letters that instantly go to the landfill?
Get those sales letters opened and once you get them opened, you are going to need a powerful letter in there to close the sale. One great way to do that is to find out all of the secrets in the Ultimate Sales Letter System.
Check it out here: www.sales-letter-system.com
Have you ever used direct mail with your small business? What other tricks do you use to get your sales letters opened? Also, The Underdog Millionaire is now a Do-Follow blog, so your comments will get you back-link credit, unlike most WordPress blogs.
Hey, while you’re at it, I’m sure YOUR fans would appreciate this list. Hit the Tweet and Digg buttons up top to let them know how to get their mail opened as well, thanks.
Until tomorrow,
Joshua Black
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{ 4 comments }
hey Joshua,
Great ninja tips in increasing your conversions in people taking action. I’ve heard a few of these, and I’m not sure how aware people are because they WORK.
I use to do this big time when I did real estate investing.
Have a good one,
Jerome Ratliff
Thanks Jerome,
These techniques do work, but most people avoid them because they take a little more effort, but the payoff is much greater in the end.
-Joshua Black
Joshua,
I haven’t really dealt much with direct sales but what you say make perfect sense. The little bit of extra effort that you expend in your points is worth it ten-fold for actually generating a response.
Thanks
Steve,
3/4 of the battle with direct mail is getting that letter opened and read. Since you are sending it to a pre-qualified audience, your chances of closing are pretty high… if you can just get the thing opened.
-Joshua Black
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