There’s a Chicken Foot Inside My Mail!!!!

Mark Ellis
Next to the Valley View Ferry

Richmond, Kentucky

   

How would you like to craft a direct mail piece that you knew for sure would get opened without a shadow of a doubt?   Not only would your prospect open the envelope, but they would read the cleverly crafted sales letter that you provided for them without question.  Would that interest you?  Would it, Bunky?   

   Well, this is where you can get creative with your direct mail pieces and actually get prospective clients to look at your stuff. (I am of course assuming that you have a specific target market, and that you know that your clients are hungry for what you have to offer them.  You don’t want to try selling shot guns to blind people or Dick Cheney.  Ha!)

   Anyway, in my last incredible blog post entitled “If You Don't Read This I'm Gonna Croak!!!” I talked about moving heaven and earth to get people to open your envelopes and some of the basic things you can do to move things along and get people to absolutely open your mail.  Today, I want to make you aware of a few more things that you can do to get people to really open your envelopes and read your incredibly researched, tested and retested message that you know will make them want to grab their credit cards, cell phones, or check book and buy whatever it is you are offering.  At least, that is the theory.  

   If you are old enough like me, you will remember back in the olden days, the wonderful snack, Cracker Jack had a dimension to their snacks that made kids go gaga.  As a matter of fact, many cereal companies picked up on the idea and before legal and economic reasons started to interfere, putting prizes into these packages was a big hit.  Anytime someone says “Free” you can bet there will be an immediate attraction to the item or event.  I can’t tell you the number of times my wife wanted to drive clear across town because she saw an ad in a newspaper that Joe’s Warehouse promised the first 100 people that came into their doors a free $5 gift card. (We probably forked over $4.99 in gas just to get there.)

OK, so let’s say that you have sent out your direct mail pieces and your prospect gets a regular, legal sized envelope and you have it addressed and prepared the direct mail piece just as we told you to in our last direct mail marketing blog post.  But, this time when your prospect gets the sales letter in the mail, the envelope feels like there is something inside of it!!!

   If you were your prospect, would you want to know what was inside of there???   So, placing an item like a magnetic calendar, a pen with your business name, address and phone number, or any three dimensional object, would get someone to open your mail.

Now, you may be thinking, yeah, but that is gonna hike up the cost of my direct mail pieces!  Yep, it sure will, but considering the usual cost of a direct mail campaign, the time or money it takes to craft the sales letter, the price of your list or acquiring it and all of the other expenses, YOU WANT TO MAKE DOUBLE DARNED SURE IT GETS AT LEAST LOOKED AT, RATHER THAN THROWN AWAY!!!!!

   So, consider the slim increase versus what you could easily lose, which is the attention of your prospect.