Sending Lumpy Mail

yup it's not cheap. But it works well once you get a good converting offer.

I did a b2b setting with a double packet of aspirin in them for the same price as an American Wedding invitation (additional 20 cents) back in 2013.

LOL... Brilliant! And you still save money.

At one time, I sent a loose stamp in each envelope mailer (as an incentive to get the person to mail back for information) and got a really good response. Even when people just kept the stamp and called the phone number or went online for more information , the little gift was well received and acted like an ice breaker.

Good point.

I disagree

I have never spent that kind of money per piece until I have a piece that I KNOW converts well.

For those that have a low budget and can't justify spending large sums for mass quantities...and I know I might get some pushback on this but...

We used emails for preliminary testing phases. (thousands of emails) I realize it's not the same but copy is copy, we could then at least make the changes needed and see SOME success. Yes email rates are low but it's a number, you can always work up from a number.

But someone on a low budget, $2+ per piece with copy that is not proven is a bad business move.

I'm sure you mean well, but I have to strongly disagree with this advice.

So far it looks like he went ahead and spent the money, with no results yet. While I agree with others who say he should follow up with phone calls, and it is entirely possible that might yield results, it also might yield nothing. We have no idea, particularly not having seen the offer.

We can't know the ROI until we know at least three other numbers; the expense to acquire the client/s, the expense to provide whatever he sold them, and the amount of the sale/s.

A fourth number critical to him which ought to guide his decisions and inform the degree of concern he has for saving upfront costs, is his budget to start with: how much can he afford to lose before he has to stop testing, should he get no results with the first one or more tests?

In keeping with the principle: "fail early, fail small, then scale up the winners", focusing on upfront costs when testing a new campaign isn't a mindset problem at all; it is the essence of a prudent approach.

If his budget is small (which the thread leads me to believe), then being casual about his upfront expenses by not looking for every opportunity to reduce them while still having a potentially powerful campaign, could be the kiss of death.

Your advice then, is that he needs to change his mindset to focus on a number that is nothing more than a dream at this point, and take focus away from the only number that is real, and under his complete control. I say the opposite is true: he needs to keep looking for every opportunity to stretch his testing dollars.

There's a very real possibility that many pieces so stamped will mysteriously just disappear and never reach their intended destinations. This is why even the post office in my small, podunk, Alabama hometown has two-way mirrored observation ports above all the sorting stations. Just sayin'...

unglued

Thats exactly what happened. My Letters would not go through that damn tool. In the end of this whole thing, I ended up paying the $2 a piece to send 50 pieces as a small test. Overall, I'm fine with it because I know my ROI will be pretty high.

Also, in the end I had to put 4 different types of stamps on each letter and to be honest...overall, the letter evoke a lot of curiosity and I'm excited in the next few days to see what response we receive.

thanks everyone for the input.

My client is getting responses same day, sometimes within minutes,
to personal email addresses.

The subject line is...

----------------
Letter for [name]
----------------

And the call to action is to request a case study
of what another member in their industry achieved.

He closed 2 this morning on follow up phone calls
to a trial of his service.

Best,
Ewen

If you really want to learn, why not post your letter here?

What did the letter say? What did you offer? What was the compelling reason to pick up the phone and call you? What day did you say you were going to call them to follow up? Did you follow up with a phone call? Almost every word in your message should logically lead to them taking some action or at the very least being prepared to take some action. You can typically triple or quadruple your response rate when you take the burden of that action off of the prospect and put it into your court(i.e. I'll call you on Thursday to setup a time to chat).

What's the next step in your marketing campaign? One off mailings very rarely work. Get off the forum, don't try to ask anyone here how to fix it. Call the businesses. Just be really honest. "Hey Bob, I messed up. Can I ask you a quick favor? I sent out that letter you probably saw last week with the dice in it. To be honest Bob it totally bombed. Could you tell me from your opinion where it bombed?". Then shut up and listen. This will be the best investment of an afternoon that you could make. I'm serious bud, get off the forum. Go do your own research. I've done exactly this, and fixed my piece and also sold some business. You're in a perfect position to do this, but only right now. If you wait til next week you will have completely wasted your money. You're not selling a .10 screw, you're selling something with value with a higher price(I hope). That might take 3-4 touches, maybe more, maybe less. I don't know, only you are going to be able to figure that out. Ultimately though, any marketing campaign that doesn't end with you or someone that works for you picking up a phone and calling the prospect is going to lose out on a ton of business. I just think of direct mail as a way to warm up a prospect before I talk to them, it's hard to get them over inertia.

Just something to think about.

You're sure the letters are getting opened? Never assume when it comes
to marketing. You have no way in hell of knowing if 20% are getting
opened let alone all.

The ONLY way to test your theory is to contact them and ask. Also, ask
why they did not take action. That my friend is how you sculpt a winner.

So are you hacking into all the security cameras to watch them all open their mail? Or do you just speak to 100% of the recipients to know that? Sorry; I couldn't resist. You probably do get 100% opens, but you also probably don't know that, unless you actually speak to every recipient.

I absolutely love the bank bags!!! I also send out trash cans and letters in a bottle to expired real estate listings (These 3D self-mailers are the last stage of a 3 step campaign).

I just started using 9 x 12 rush priority envelopes (I was using the ugly brown envelopes). We'll see how it goes.