Direct Mail - Getting You Envelope Opened

If you use direct mail it's in your best interest to get as much of it opened and read as possible. You may have spent a small fortune on the copywriting and the expensively printed brochure, but if you don't ensure that as many packs are opened and read as possible, then both copy and brochure are wasted.

There are two main schools of thought on how to avoid being binned. The first is to use disguise, and the second to use persuasion.

Using disguise is mainly a business to business approach but it works for business to consumer mailings too. Business to business promotional mailings are marked out in that they don't appear to have been handled individually. This can be indicated by an envelope pre-printed with a postage mark, and use of a window or address labels to show an address.

Try one or more of the following to give the envelope a more individual look.

Use stamps. They have to have been put on by hand, so it must be individual. There's no more obvious an indicator than a pre-printed stamp impression. When a preprinted impression is used in conjunction with a window envelope it practically screams advertising so don't do it.

Hand write the address on the envelope. This is probably only viable for higher value items but will certainly get more attention this way. It doesn't have to be copperplate, it just needs to look as though it's been handled individually.

Use an unusual material for the envelope, say vellum or a textured paper. In tests conducted by a paper merchant, this alone increased responses significantly. The additional cost for the special paper was more than compensated for by the additional revenue generated by the mailing.

Again, do anything to make your mailing appear more individual and personal to the recipient. Probably the most important element is the use of stamps. This on it's own can be enough to get you under the recipient's radar.

Secondly, use persuasive tactics. This is completely the opposite from disguise and is used mainly for business to consumer, but again it works for business to business too. In this instance we mark it out specifically as commercial by using advertising images, copy and headlines on the outside of the envelope itself. In this instance it doesn't matter if you use a printed postal impression.

Unlike the previous method which uses curiosity to get your envelope opened, we need to give the recipient a good reason to open the envelope. This can take a variety of forms, but as a couple of examples you can state a benefit, "Increase sales by 15%", or alternatively provide an incentive, "Reply by the end of the month and get 2 for the price of 1".

Be very clear and very specific about what the contents are going to achieve and remember you are only trying to get the envelope opened and read. Avoid anything vague. Don't expect to appeal to everyone using this method. You don't have that much room on the envelope, and you can't be all things to all people.

Hopefully you will achieve a strong enough response in a small percentage of recipients that they open, and read the contents. Your persuasive copy will follow on logically from the envelope copy, and keep your prospect interested.

There is a lot of advise against this in business to business direct mail, and there is probably an element of truth in this. If you are mailing to an executive whose mail is screened then it's likely good advice. However there are plenty of owner/managers out there that still open their own mail, if the offer or benefit is clear enough and of interest, it will get opened. You may well consign your mailing piece to the bin for the 99.5% of your prospects by doing this, but it wasn't about them was it?

In summary it's pretty simple. Don't be run of the mill. Step away from the norm and make sure your envelope is overtly commercial with a clear benefit or incentive or alternatively make it look it personal. If you do this you are halfway to getting it read and that's more than half the battle.

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About The Author
Robert Wilkinson is the owner of http://www.arhiann.com/ a direct mail production company specilising in mailings for small and medium sized business.

How To Get Higher Converting MLM Leads For Less

If you are involved in an mlm or network marketing business then you probably have tried to find the best ways online as well as offline to get qualified people either to your website or to the companies website. There are many different ways to find qualified people who are actually looking right now at starting a home based business.

The thing that you first need to realize is that most people who are looking for a home based business are not actually realizing what it is they are looking for and for the most part are simply getting some answers.

These types of people are the non targeted leads that you will find being sold by countless mlm lead companies online. These types of mlm leads for one have a terrible conversion rate and also end up putting your excited mood into one that makes you start second guessing yourself and possibly the opportunity you are marketing. What is needs to not only help you build a successful mlm business as well as the right mindset to succeed is actual quality mlm leads from an actually mlm leads company with proven results.

If you were looking to compare mlm lead companies odds are you would start possibly with your sponsor or upline in the business you are currently marketing and this method is actually not the best method at all. What will end up happening is your upline simply trying to get a commission or a bonus off of you by sending them to one of the low converting mlm lead companies.

You may take the above statement as being rude or labeling all sponsors but in all honesty most people in mlm and network marketing companies are following the same pack of people barely making any real income. What you need to do is set yourself apart from the pack and become a leader in your company.

If your sponsor in your company and or business is trying his or her best to teach you the correct methods on building your business but has not actually seen any real success themselves then you need to find a new method in which to build your business. Mlm is mainly duplication of a proven method and if your sponsor is not seeing the large monthly income then that is something that I personally would not try and duplicate.

With all the many different ways to get mlm leads which can be done with pay per click accounts and even door to door methods there is one truly proven method that has the highest conversion ratio as long as it is done correctly.

You need to find a mlm lead company that not only has proven results but also offers you a residual income that will actually end up paying for your leads as your downline signs up under you for the leads also. There are only a small handful of mlm lead companies that are even worth comparing and sometimes they can be hard to sift through. Most mlm lead companies are selling leads that have been sold 1,000 times already and will not convert for nothing.

What you should do if you are actually looking to build a solid mlm business is to research and compare mlm lead companies. You need to look for a company that allows you to buy at minimum 72 hour fresh leads. Along with being extremely fresh you also need to find a mlm lead company that actually offers a monthly residual income plan. Having a matrix payout plan attached to a solid mlm lead company can actually end up paying out more then your mlm company is paying you.

Remember also when researching and checking the many mlm lead companies out there that you will most usually get what you pay for. Any company offering you 1,000 fresh leads a day for $20 is nothing but a scam style company and will end up giving you a very bad name in the mlm community. Find a company that has been proven successful and has mlm leads that are actually converting into real mlm sign ups and sales.

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About The Author
Don Luttrull runs a MLM lead comparision site. MLM and Network Marketers vote on which mlm leads company has the best conversion ratios and those companies are then ranked. To see who they have voted for go here http://www.comparemlmleads.com.

Direct Mail - the Deadly Sin Of Not Testing

If there's one thing that makes direct mail a reliable method of drumming up new business, then that would have to be the ability to test if different version of a pack achieve a better return on investment. Having processed many mailings over the years, I can attest that clients rarely take full advantage of this feature. In fact, more often than not, clients don't test at all.

Not testing is commercial suicide. In today's competitive climate, if there is anything that can be done to reduce the cost of acquiring a customer, then it must be done. It's a no brainer. Research shows that in times of depression, those that continue to advertise are those that do well. It also shows that those that continue to advertise also make efforts to stretch their budget even further.

You decrease your direct mail costs by application of a little commonsense and by testing which produces the best response. We'll take the example of direct mail pack that comprises five parts in all.

The parts of the pack are as follows:

1) Envelope
2) Personalised letter
3) Brochure
4) Leaflet/Order form
5) Business reply Envelope

Looking at this you would think that this it, but we've forgotten the most important part of all:

6) The data

So, there's enough there now to get your message out.

Experience shows that the most important part of the mailing is the data, so we must test this part. A badly produced but well targeted letter will almost certainly produce a better return than a well written badly targeted letter.

You may have a particular target audience already decided, for example, lawyers. You will be able to get lists of lawyers from more than one source, that can be tested. Equally you'll have the option of mailing to a named individual, or to a job title, so you can test that too. So far that's at least four permutations provided you use 2 data suppliers. It would be 6 if you used 3 suppliers. If you hadn't narrowed your field to one sector, then the choice of tests to run could be massively increased, but it's not practical to take it to the extreme.

Targeting is everything, you must get that right, and you can only find that out if you test.

Looking at the envelope, you have a huge number of choice here too. You can send plain with a stamp, or printed with a message. You could make the material from an unusual paper, print in full colour, use different sizes. You could print different designs, use different taglines and the like.

Depending on how your envelope is made you may be able to run multiple designs for a minimal charge. The nature of some jobs is that they are printed 2 or 3 or up on a sheet, so you will be able to produce equal quantities of more than one design. Even if it's not free, chances are that it won't be hat expensive for a plate change.

For the letterhead, you can change the material. Studies by paper merchants have shown a 20% increase in response just by changing to a textured paper. The copy itself on the letter can be changed, offers can be changed. The number of options to test here is almost limitless.

Moving on to the leaflet, the same applies here as did for the letterhead. Copy, material, imagery; they're all fair game.

Last but not least we move on to the BRE. There's not a huge amount you could do here. White or manila envelopes perhaps? Maybe even a coloured BRE? if it isn't going to cost a lot, why not try it.

Using these methods over time you can increase the effectiveness of your mailings. Always test, even when you think you have the perfect pack, continue to run a test campaign against it, even if the difference between the two is really quite small. If you continue to do this, your costs to acquire a customer should fall and fall.

Overall, the point is that there an almost infinitely large and almost limitless opportunity for testing. Maybe it's this huge scope for testing that puts people off, but I don't think it is. I think it's just a lack of awareness of what you can do. You don't need to complicate things, you can just run two packs with one difference between them and see how it goes.

Whatever you do though, don't commit commercial suicide and fail to test.

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About The Author
Robert Wilkinson is the owner of http://www.arhiann.com , a print, design and direct mail business specialising in direct mail and envelope production for small and medium sized businesses.