Direct Mail

 

 

Direct Mail: A Measurable Way to Get Better Sales 

 

If you want to get a new sales message to existing or potential customers,
direct mail is still among the cheapest, most-targeted and most easily
measurable means at your disposal.

 

Unlike most radio, television or magazine advertising, direct mail goes
almost exclusively to the people most likely to buy your product or service.

 

The trick is in the targeting, and in the quality of the direct mail piece itself. 
Remember, you must grab the readers' attention, build their interest and desire,
and tell them to take action (such as buying straight away, or coming to see you).

 

By crafting your direct mail, we can

• Carefully target only those who are most likely to buy
• Capture their attention, maintain their interest, and persuade them to act
• Maintain your realtionship with prospects, even if they're not yet ready to buy
• Cut your marketing costs while improving results
• Increase your profits 

And we can do all this while your time is more usefully employed elsewhere in your business.

 

Good direct mail works with anything from classified ads and Pay Per Click ads
to 20-page sales letters and corporate brochures.

 

Contact us today to learn how our skills can benefit your company’s bottom line.

 

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Further Reading

 

Nine ways to write headlines that make money.

In the June issue of Forbes magazine, Spyglass ran a full-page ad that got off to a terrible start.

Instead of using a powerful headline and graphic to pull the reader into the body copy, Spyglass squandered the space on an incomprehensible "teaser" line.

The writer of the ad could have created any of a trillion different headlines, but after careful thought and reflection bet Spyglass’s hard-earned money on:

And for your main course,
they make you chase the cow.

The visual showed someone trying to eat soup with a fork.

Sure, you could argue that the headline is so imaginative and intriguing that the reader is simply compelled to plunge into the body copy to find out what’s going on.

I say, nonsense. You can’t expect busy readers to waste time decoding a cipher. Here was Spyglass’s chance to instantly and immediately differentiate themselves from other Internet players. They could take on Netscape and make a hard-hitting case for their product line.

Instead, they approved an ad that, in my view, is self-indulgent and totally ineffective.

Yes. The headline is one of the keys to the success of your ad and you'd better have someone write you a winner!

As John Caples, the great advertising pioneer, once wrote: "If you create a good headline, your task is more than half completed. It will be a relatively easy matter to write the copy. On the other hand, if you use a poor headline, it doesn’t matter how hard you labor over your copy because your copy will not be read."

Looking for a quick guide to headlines that make money? Here are some time-tested, Caples-inspired headline approaches that get results:

1. Begin with "Introducing" or "Announcing."

Introducing a high-performance modem for just $49.95!

Announcing a whole new way to edit color images!

2. Start with "Now."

Now the hottest spreadsheet on the market is yours at half price!

Now you can try our brand new management tools risk free!

3. Start with "At last" or "Finally."

At last! A presentation graphics program with all the features you've been looking for!

Finally, remote access that actually works!

4. Start with "How to."

How to back up your hard disk in half the time.

How to slash the cost of managing your network.

5. Start with "Why."

Why you should call for a free Virus Alert Report.

Why our new software can double battery life!

6. Start with "Which."

Which monitor is really the best buy?

Which of these uninstallers can you trust with your precious data?

7. Start with "This."

This tiny chip can turn your 486 into a powerful Pentium.

This half-price upgrade is for DataKeep customers only!

8. Make a free offer.

FREE! A CD-ROM with over 650 typefaces!

Call now for free CAD software worth over $100!

9. Ask a question.

Are you making these five data storage mistakes?

Want to stop software pirates once and for all?

Ian Levison: http://www.levison.com

Copywriting Tips to Make Any Website Sell Better

 

Here’s what works best from actual results and testing on dozens of websites we’ve done the copywriting for.

 

1. Websites have one main end purpose and that is to sell your products and/or services, to move people to action, to make money. In today’s high-tech world, most copywriting on websites forgets this vital fact and that is why they don’t perform better.

2. Make the website easy to “scan” with headlines, sub headlines, boxes, sections, colors and the like that give the reader the main benefits he will get. Almost all people are “scan first” or “scan only” readers. The headlines and sub headlines should take advantage of this fact.

3. Tell the reader what he will LOSE if he does not take the recommended action. Fear of loss is a great motivator.

4. Build up excitement, enthusiasm, passion and urgency to get the reader to take the desired action right now. Yes, excitement is contagious and it sells!

5. Make a great offer to get the prospect’s email address. In today’s overcrowded environment and with spam concerns, it’s not enough to just say “enter your email address for our newsletter.” Make a great offer including special reports, bonuses and the like in addition to the newsletter to get the maximum number of qualified signups.

6. Focus the copywriting, because people want to buy from the expert specialists in a field. If the copy is too broad it will lose a lot of the best prospects. A great way to do this is to have separated focused web pages for separate types of people or industries on the website.

7. Make the website as easy to use and find things as Amazon.com (for consumers) or Dell.com (for businesses). The copywriting and organization of these sites is a key reason they are ultra-successful.

8. Start thinking like the website reader (the prospect) and stop thinking like the marketer. Work out what the prospect wants most from the products or services that they deliver, then come right out and tell him what benefits he’ll get, why he'll get them, and what he needs to do now. 

9. Compare the product or service against the competitors to show and prove its superiority.

10. Copywriting is king and queen for the website to sell the maximum number of people. The right copywriting can bring up to double, even triple or more the current results for no additional marketing cost. Hire the best copywriter the business can afford, and don’t skimp because this one-time investment can be one of the best investments.

11. Test everything, measure it, use the winner, and always keep testing. This is the key to “optimizing” the website and all your marketing. Don’t guess – test and let the only vote that matters (the prospects) decide what works best.

Mike Pavlish is a successful copywriter who has sold products and services for almost every type of business since 1978 and the author of a best-selling ebook. For information go to http://www.MegaProfitCopywriting.com

 

Jacqui Carrel & Roy Everitt & Team are your local Bury St Edmunds copywriters dealing with online and offline consultancy, courses, business writing, advertising copywriting, direct mail, newsletters and books and manuals.  We also take on clients all over East Anglia, Cambridgeshire, London, the rest of the UK and British Isles, Australia, New Zealand and the EU. Call us on Bury St Edmunds (01284) 753912, or email us.