6 Ways to Lose Money In Direct Mail

1. Dash off a letter, then photocopy it on cheap bond, and send it with a business card… and call it a direct mail campaign.

Or worse yet – photocopy your old brochure and send it with a business card and call it direct mail.  Then, when it doesn’t work call me up and complain, “Yea, we tried direct mail and it doesn’t work.”  Real direct mail letters and literature are created from scratch with their original purpose defined as “to use as a direct mail solicitation,” and the objective of “To generate a phone call.”

And BTW, a real direct mail “campaign” isn’t a single mailing of anything.  Campaign = more than one mailing.

2. Expect a response of oh, 5 to 8 percent, and the orders to pile in.

Direct mail is a game of numbers, the difference between loss, B/E, $$$ and $$$$$ can be as small a 1/4 of 1%.  If you’re lucky – you break even.  If you’re good, you make money.  If you’re really good, you do this time after time, mailing after mailing, and year after year.

Any mailing that makes you money is successful. Here are the figures you need:  If you mailed 5,000 pieces and they cost 50¢ each ($2,500) how many clients do you need to B/E?  How many calls do you need to generate to get that many clients?  Now, is that percent of response realistic?  Hint: If it’s over 2%, it isn’t.  More likely response will be ½ of 1%.  Yup.

3. Crank up your direct mail campaign and expect to get orders.

Sure, you can get lucky, but… Our profession is like a marriage – it all starts with a relationship. Then you get orders.  Well at least in my marriage…  And everything starts with a phone call.  Every relationship starts with a phone call.  And that’s what you need for your direct mail campaign to be successful: a phone call.

So ask for people to call you several times in your direct mail piece.  Don’t be shy – tell people what you want them to do: Call = success.  No call = failure.  Any questions?

4. Sell your services directly from a post card.

Post cards aren’t long enough for a selling proposition in the financial and insurance communities.  The correct – and only – objective for a post card is to “Generate a phone call.”  Then YOU close the sale.

The best way to do generate a phone call is to offer something for free.  The least expensive free product with the most power to generate phone calls is a free informational booklet.  And the title determines the number of calls.  Mediocre title = mediocre number of calls.  Awesome title = awesome number of calls.  Use the Jeff Dobkin 100 to 1 rule for creating great titles: write 100, go back and pick out your best one.

5. Just use the mamby pamby mailers from the parent company.

We all know those don’t work in these tough times.  Heck, they didn’t work when times were good.  By the time their compliance department finished ripping anything, everything out – there’s nothing left to make people pick up the phone and “call now!”

Instead send a “Thank you” letter – just thank people for their business, and offer a FREE analysis of their current policies.  Offer a FREE quote of any new business.  Send a post card saying you have 7 new products that may be of interest to them.  Offer a FREE “Performance analysis” of their portfolio.  Ot ask them to call for your new FREE INFORMATIONAL BOOKLET.   Just make the phone ring.  Any questions?

6. Tell everyone to go to your website.

No offense, but your website sucks.  It doesn’t make me order directly, and it doesn’t make me call you = lost sale.  So besides blocking any sale, putting an additional deterrent between you and the customer and creating more friction slowing down the sales process — what exactly does it do?  Better yet – just tell everyone to call you in your direct mail piece.

Because if your website worked perfectly, which it doesn’t, that’s what it would have people do.

– Jeffrey