Right from the outset, new salespeople are taught a very important lesson: Ask for the sale! Prospects won’t be that quick to part with their money or their personal information. If you don’t ask for the sale, they will easily slip away. In direct mail sales pieces, the way you ask for the sale is […]
benefits, call-to-action, direct-mail, guarantee, incentives, keep it simple, testing
Over the years I’ve worked with a large number of online marketers who were very successful at finding prospects through direct mail. My experience with them has taught me a lot, and now you will benefit from it. I’m going to share with you three of my best secrets for driving prospects to an online […]
call-to-action, copywriting, direct-mail, direct-mail-marketing, sales, sales-funnel, website
Have you ever wondered if its better to give a discount based on the dollar-amount off the usual price (e.g., $50 off), or a percentage off (e.g., 30% off)? Which gets a better response? I wish I could give you a cut-and-dried answer to this, but this is really a question of psychology, isn’t it? […]
direct-mail, direct-mail-marketing, sales, testing
The whole field of marketing is strongly based in psychology. And this is absolutely true when it comes to pricing strategy. We’re all familiar with price tags that read $9.99 or $19.99. Do these really move more product than tags reading $10 or $20? What about adding the decimal and zeros: $10.00 and $20.00? Does […]
direct-mail, direct-mail-marketing, pricing, profit, testing
Your direct mail campaign is made up of a number of elements. Of all of them, the one that is most important is the list you mail to. That alone accounts for 40% of the success of the campaign. If you try to sell grass-fed steaks to a group of vegetarians, you will not make […]
call-to-action, common-errors, direct-mail, direct-mail-marketing, sales, sales-piece, testing
Let me tell you what really frustrates me. It’s when I work hard for a client, finding them tons of prospects who actually respond to their mailing and make inquiries by calling or going on line . . . and then my client is not set up to handle the calls and close the sale. […]
common-errors, direct-mail, direct-mail-marketing, get-organized, sales, sales-funnel
We are about to look at the most important 20 seconds in the life of a sales piece. And I bet you can guess what they are. It’s those first 20 seconds after your prospect sees your sales piece sitting in the pile of mail he just brought into the house, and what he does […]
call-to-action, dimensional-mail, direct-mail, direct-mail-marketing, sales
If you ever buy mail-order products … hold on. Let’s back up a minute. It should be WHEN you buy mail-order products. You SHOULD be an active direct mail buyer. Why? Cuz you get to see the entire marketing process. How the business takes your order, what the packaging looks like when it arrives, what’s […]
direct-mail, direct-mail-marketing, package-insert-programs, pips, recency, sales
If you’re like me, you’ve become addicted to reading people’s comments before buying anything on Amazon. We want validation that we’re making the right decision, and what could be more sincere than the spontaneous assessments of people who have already bought and used the product? One of the reasons testimonials can be more effective […]
direct-mail, direct-mail-marketing, sales, testimonials, website
Price is a mysterious thing. There are literally hundreds of options for how you price your product or service. You do not have to always charge the least expensive price in order to get business. In fact, I don’t think you should ever be in a position where you have to compete on price. […]
competition, direct-mail, direct-mail-marketing, price, sales