Response rate to letter-mailers?

Well you never know until you try :-)

When I used to send direct mail, I used to follow up with a phone call - I cannot stress the importance of following up!

I'd say to the gatekeeper I want to speak to X about a letter I sent them, used to get connected directly with no questions asked. If they did ask what was the letter about, I'd say it was confidential and I can only discuss it with the owner/decision maker.

When I introduced myself, I would say I sent them the pink A4 envelope and they would instantly recall who I am.

However, often I would still have to close them on an appointment using a bit of NLP closes.

The very first appointment I got using direct mail a couple of years ago, was with a lawyer.

He said he received my package and 'wasn't interested.' My natural rebuttal was 'are you not interested in getting more customers with no effort on your part?', to which any sane person would answer 'yes!' and within a 2 minute call we had an appointment booked.

SHAME that I didn't pre-qualify him BEFORE I met him at his office! He was a one man band and only spending £100-£150 on Pay Per Click advertising and getting enough work to survive.

Experience is a great teacher. I knew I should pre-qualify prospects, but I was too cocky confident to follow elementary advice - Big Mistake!

On the follow up, you want to set a 15 minute phone interview to ask them a couple of questions - how are you marketing? do you have a fixed budget? what's working, what isn't? if not marketing proactively, then are you open to investing in new ideas? yadda yadda

Coming back to your lumpy mail, the niches I targeted NEVER called me back just from the letter - they were often busy 20+ employee orgs.

So YOU call them back, get past the gatekeeper and QUALIFY them before you go into their office like a hotshot! That should increase your response rate dramatically. I don't see this as cold calling because I know they've read my letter, all I want now is their verbal response to it.

Good luck

Abul

I have tried doing your method and it surely didn't waste my investment.
But we know that what works for some may not work for you. So try it out to know yourself.

I've had a pretty good response rate with direct mailing. I actually used the flyers I have in my sig. It was for a campaign offering web design services so they might not work for an SEO campaign. But feel free to download them and have a look. I think the problem with direct mail is that it's difficult to get people to open them since they receive so much marketing material. And unless it has the owners name on it the gatekeepers or whoever else is working likely won't know what to do with it and throw it away (I'm speaking from experience lol).

Pre-qualifying and targeting...finding out what your prospects' hot buttons are before writing the copy are your big issues.

Sending an untargeted, unsolicited letter that doesn't specifically speak to your audience is a great way to shoot money into the garbage can.

1 - 2% response would be average, 5% would be very good, and 8%+ would be fantastic.

You bump these rates with the depth of preparation and skill of your copywriter.

I am mailing something that costs about 1.50 between postage and the booklet and this weekend I e-mailed 20 people and 2 wrote back today (sunday) saying they wanted to meet when I came to deliver it. One even sent his direct phone number. I found their e-mails on the staff pages of their sites.

Not sure how this would work for seo prospecting but you could send an e-mail with a short analysis of ways they could improve online optimization. In fact, one person I wrote to I mentioned a few local directories that he wasn't listed in (when I checked on getlisted).

I do think when you mail something there is a risk that it will be kept if it gets into the wrong hands. Of course, if you don't hear back from an e-mail it's hard to know if it's the right/wrong person or if it went into spam filter or if there is no interest.

Debbie