How to boost your business with well-crafted mailings

People still read. Amazing, isn’t it? You’d think—by, say, watching the TV news or listening to the radio—that no one does it anymore. But that’s not true. You read your email. You’re reading this.
 
Not only that, people respond to what they read… if it’s truly compelling and motivating.
 
Your job, then, as a business, is to do just that: Compel, and motivate.
 
In this article, we’re going to take a look at increasing your odds of getting qualified leads and driving in new business by a method as old as the postal system (and as current as email). These methods still work. The trick is optimizing all the variables.
 
Paper or ether?
 
You might think that paper--i.e., postal—mail is dead, dead, dead. Who on earth opens letters anymore? Don’t you simply toss all your junk mail into the recycling bin, unopened?
 
As tempting as it is to say, “Next topic,” we must say that we have some clients who engage us for good old-fashioned mailings, and—brace yourself—they work. These clients have gotten some astonishingly good responses (often by email, interestingly enough), leading to well-qualified leads and, yes, wholly new client engagements. We’re flattered to have helped in the process.
 
But how? This comes back to “all the variables” we’d mentioned above. Here’s how they stack up for postal mailings (we’ll get to email in a minute):

• Your list
• Your content
• Your contents (i.e., what’s included in the envelope)
• Your offer
• Your call-to-action or CTA

 
Every one of these is hugely important. You need to maximize every one. Think of them not as variables, but rather links in a chain. One weak link, and the whole chain breaks.
 
Let’s look at each of these in a little more detail:

• Your list. Your odds of success increase in direct proportion to the quality of your mail list. If you have a list of, say, past clients and contacts you’ve made through trade shows, that’s probably pretty strong. If you rent a list of, say, “Businesses with 50-100 employees in [Area] Zip Code,” your odds are longer.

 

• Your contents. (Yes, we skipped “content”; we’ll get back to it shortly.) Whoever said a mailer must simply be a letter? If you include something of value to the prospect, you can boost your odds of success. Heck, the very act of fattening the envelope makes it far more intriguing to the recipient. What’s inside? Appeal to their curiosity; pay off their curiosity with value: Something they can really use, which your business specializes in. Perhaps a cheat-sheet of common regulatory acronyms and resources. Think: “the kind of thing they’d put on a post-it note or stick beside their computer screen.”

 

• Your offer. Don’t spend all this effort and money just to say hello. You need to introduce yourself to your prospect, but you also need to offer them something that they will already want. Remember: This is all about them, not you. It might be a free initial consultation or readiness audit—something you can afford to give away as a loss leader which conveys value, and gets your foot in the door/begins the essential dialogue.

 

• Your call to action. “Call us” is simply too vague. “Visit this page to get your free report” or “Have your assistant call this number to book your free demo right now” is closer to the mark. The more specific, and enticing, your CTA, the better.

 

• Your content. We saved the best for last. This refers to the actual verbiage in your printed piece. It needs to be clear, conversational (avoid jargon that you use, but they don’t), logical, and above all, short! We can’t emphasize that enough. If your piece was strong enough to get them to open it (and don’t forget the teaser you print on the envelope, such as “Complimentary Compliance Guide Inside”), don’t blow your opportunity by being long-winded. If you can’t tell your entire story in a way that can be read in a matter of seconds, you need to edit.

 
Emailers
 
First things first: Pay heed to the CAN-SPAM Act. Don’t get yourself in trouble. Bulk email services such as Constant Contact and MailChimp have good online guides for helping you navigate these shoals.
 
That said, many of the best practices for paper apply to email: Your offer and your CTA must be impeccably strong. Your content must be clear and arguably even shorter than what you use on paper. Think of a tiny mobile phone screen. Who wants to scroll through tons of stuff, when they’re already wary of being sold to?
 
As per “contents,” you can’t include, say, a book. But you can include, say, a link to an e-book. An interactive discovery questionnaire. And a big fat “Schedule your free demo now” (or whatever) button, which is de rigeur.
 
Some other nice things about email: It’s effectively free (no paper, no printing, no postage), and it’s, unlike postal mail, instant. So you can time your mailing to an exact day part (think of, say, 8 a.m., when your prospect is transitioning from coffee to work). You can also send follow-ups—judiciously!—with ease. Remember: You want your missives to arrive as “valuable information that could help,” not “another piece of @#$#$$ spam to be trashed.”
 
Need help?
 
We work on projects like these for our clients all the time. The very fact that they keep coming back to us for more is a tacit confirmation of the results they get; done right, this stuff delivers impressive R.O.I.
 
And now for our call to action: Learn how we can help you craft that next business-building mailing for you, whether paper or email. Contact us for a free, friendly consultation. 

---