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
There’s so much involved in either starting up a new business or entering a new phase of your existing business. It’s an exciting time. And you probably have a lot of money invested that you can’t wait to start recouping. You may have put in new phone lines, or started a new website as part […]
common-errors, direct-mail, planning, testing
There is no end to the improvements we can make to our sales materials. Even when we have a piece that works great, there are always further refinements we can make that will bump up the response rate. With my own clients, I’m always testing changes to sales pieces. You have to, because with time […]
direct-mail, direct-mail-marketing, get-organized, testing
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
Patience is a virtue – one that you should call upon when making decisions about whether or not the changes you made to your direct mail campaign worked. In this article I’ll be focusing on the changes you might make to your control piece, but the basic principles presented here should apply to any change […]
direct-mail, direct-mail-marketing, sales-piece, testing
I suppose there are some businesspeople who send out direct mail campaigns just to sell some product today, and they don’t really consider the larger context of what they’re doing, and what their actions now could mean for the future of their businesses. You’ll notice that I called them “businesspeople,” and not “marketers,” because I […]
call-to-action, direct-mail, direct-mail-marketing, mailing-list, sales copy, testing
What if there was an analysis tool that helped to shine a spotlight on all the critical aspects of a company’s situation so that an intelligent, focused direct mail program can be developed? There is: It’s called SWOT Analysis. If you can incorporate the SWOT analysis into your marketing plans, it will help you focus […]
direct-mail, direct-mail-marketing, planning, swot, swot-analysis, testing
Believe it or not, the Post Office really does know a thing or two about direct mail marketing. They provide more than just a service of sending your package from Point A to Point B. The USPS has some really helpful information that can help improve your direct mail response rates. Recently I found a […]
call-to-action, common-errors, direct-mail, direct-mail-marketing, mailing-list, testing