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How To Craft Stronger, More Compelling Offers That Will Boost Response Rates

"I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."
Don Corleone, The Godfather

If you want to improve the response rate to your direct mail the answer may be as simple as making a better offer.

For example, a recent mailing by one Positive Response client offered free samples and pulled a 7.5% response. Here are the details:

A manufacturer and wholesaler of skin-care products, my client offered free samples to a targeted list of licensed estheticians (high-end skin-care professionals). These two factors, the offer and the list, were far and away the most important reasons for the client’s success. The third, and least important factor, was the copy. Sure, it played a role and had an impact. But without an excellent offer -- free samples -- it’s unlikely that this mailing would have produced much more than a handful of responses.

Crafting An Effective Offer: First, Do Your Homework
I understand that everyone’s business is not suited to offering free samples. But that doesn’t mean you can’t craft a stronger, more compelling offer that increases your response.

To craft an effective offer you should first consider the economics of your business. What is the best offer you can afford to make? For example, you run a high-end printing business. You know that the top 20% of your customer base spends an average of $42,000 a year with you. And because of the high-quality nature of your work and your outstanding customer service, these top-tier clients stay on the books with you for an average of seven years. When looked at in this light you may determine that you can afford to make a much more generous offer when targeting companies that meet the same profile.

Maybe you’ll decide to offer these prospects a substantial discount on their first order, four-color printing for the same price as black and white, free shipping on all orders during the first 12 months, or some other compelling incentive.

Get Creative With Your Offer
Allow me to continue with the above example and show you how a little creativity can help you craft an even more compelling and unique offer.

Let’s say you feel that the offer of a first-order discount would cheapen the high-end, high quality image you’ve worked hard to establish for your printing company. So you and your staff do some brainstorming and come up with another idea. After careful consideration of the $294,000 future income stream each name on your targeted list is capable of producing…you decide to do a test mailing of a very special offer. An offer that, figuratively and literally, drives home your corporate image as a classy, one-of-a-kind organization. Here it is:

Because you have a world-class printing facility with state-of-the-art presses and digital imaging equipment your most effective sales approach is to have the prospect tour your shop. So your offer is a guided tour of your facilities.

But here’s the kicker: You arrange for a limousine service to provide each prospect with transportation from their office to your shop and back. (I can see the envelope copy now. “May I send the limo for you?” Who wouldn’t want to read what’s inside?)

Plus, for an added touch of class and more selling time with the prospect, you schedule the tour so that it ends right around the lunch hour. Then, you and your prospect dine together in your executive offices with lunch ordered in from a fine restaurant. When lunch is over you walk your soon-to-be customer to their limo and warmly send them on their way. Class, all the way.

In addition, any marketing professional worth his or her fee will easily be able to take a winning campaign of this nature and generate local and national publicity with it. By the way, if you use this idea let me know. If you use it and get great results with it how about sending me a case of Omaha Steaks?

Now maybe your business doesn’t lend itself to the type of offer I just described. That doesn’t matter. The two key points I want you to take away from this example are as follows:

1. Be a progressive, forward-thinking, “big-picture” marketer. When calculating the ROI of any marketing effort don’t focus solely on the short-term profitability of making a sale. Look also at the much more substantial and profitable outcome of making a customer.

2. When crafting an offer don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Make every effort to make your offer fun, unique, compelling. Ask yourself, “If I were receiving this offer instead of sending it out what would motivate me to take action?”

Successful Offers For Your Next Mailing -- Two Proven Business-To-Business Offers
Sometimes, particularly when you’re mailing to a larger universe of prospects, circumstances may restrict how creative or generous you can be with your offer.

That’s why I want to share with you two low-cost business-to-business lead-generation offers you can use to achieve profitable results. But first let me preface that with a brief discourse on one of the most significant challenges faced by business-to-business marketers.

Way too many business-to-business offers amount to nothing more than “Call us for further information.” The problem with this offer is that it lacks any motivating force and the prospect feels no need to take action. Consequently, the only people likely to respond are those folks who are already interested in buying the product or using the service. The end result is that “Call us for further information” will produce high quality leADS but not nearly enough of them to make your salespeople happy and your marketing program successful.

On the other hand, offering a free premium such as a Mag-lite Flashlight will generate a high number of leADS, but at an increase in fulfillment costs and a substantial drop-off in the quality of the leADS. Using one of the two offers detailed below can help you solve this quantity/quality dilemma:

1. – Today’s business owners and executives are overloaded with reading material. The paradox is that they are always on the lookout for advice, tips, pointers and information that can help them do a better job of doing their job or running their business. (You taking the time to read my article is a perfect example of this. And by the way, thank you for doing so.)

The topic of your booklet should obviously be a subject of genuine interest to your targeted prospects. It should offer relevant, helpful, meaningful information in a seemingly unbiased and neutral way. At the same time, the information in your booklet should help sell the reader on your product or service. A good editorial approach to take with your booklet is to explain how to successfully accomplish a certain end result or how to select a product that will help your prospects achieve that result. Naturally, you want to slant your material in such a way that the reader will favor your approach or your product.

Once you’ve selected the topic and content approach for your booklet, your next step is to give it a title that will attract attention and generate response. A good title is very important and will largely determine how successful your free booklet offer is. Here are some examples of effective business-to-business booklet titles:

50 Cost-Saving Printing Trade Secrets

How To Market With Postcards

15 Ways To Improve Your Collection Efforts

The 6 Most Common Mistakes People Make When Leasing Commercial Property … And How To Avoid Them

Family-Owned Businesses: The 3 Most Common Pitfalls…and How To Avoid Them

Important final note: Be sure you call your informational offering a booklet and not a brochure. Why? Booklet sounds less commercial, more meaningful and more informative than “brochure.”

2. Case Study – A Case Study can make a great offer and a powerfully effective marketing tool. Essentially a Case Study is a success story that details how your company was able to help a specific client achieve exceptional results. You can also look at it as a lengthy and detailed testimonial written in the form of a magazine article.

A good format for a Case Study is as follows:

Problem: This is how things were before our customer started using our product or service.

Solution: This is how we solved the problem.

Payoff: This is the documented payoff our products/services have enabled the customer to achieve.

You want your Case Study to show the “hows and whys” of a customer’s situation and decision. For example, how many products did they evaluate and which other companies were among the “finalists”? Why did the customer choose your product over the others? Your Case Study should emphasize the successful results your customer achieved with your product or service. Plus, you’ll want to be sure and include numerous direct quotes from the principal parties involved in the buying decision. Also, as with the informational booklet, you’ll need to give your Case Study a good title.

Well-written case studies will build strong credibility for your product or service. By providing references and helping prospects gain a better understanding of how your product or service can help them achieve their goals and objectives, a good Case Study can overcome the prospect’s natural skepticism.

Plus, a Case Study has public relations value. Many trade publications make extensive use of them, either as full-length feature articles or as fillers.

Profitable direct mail marketing hinges on making the right offer to the right people in the right way. If your direct mail efforts are not as successful as you think they should be, improving your results may be as simple as improving your offer.

Mortgage Marketing With Direct Mail: Two Powerful Techniques

In recent years, an increasing number of mortgage professionals have been incorporating direct mail into their mortgage marketing programs.

While referrals and networking still account for a large portion of mortgage leADS, savvy marketers have begun to realize the need for diversification. Direct mail is one of the tools they've turned to.

This article will focus on two highly effective ways you can use direct mail to support your mortgage marketing program -- the seminar and the free report.

Technique #1 – The Seminar
Type "home buying seminar" into a major search engine and analyze the results. After a while, you'll notice a trend as far as who is offering the seminars. Many of them will be mortgage companies, or mortgage professionals in concert with real estate agents.

Why So Effective?
The reason why so many mortgage companies (and individuals) put on home buying seminars is simple. Homeowners and home buyers are hungry for information and will seek it from any source made available to them. They will read magazines, visit websites, and ask friends and family for advice.

So if a free seminar were offered to them, most would jump at the chance. If the presenter does a good job and truly helps the audience, he or she has a good chance of gaining one or more clients.

Direct mail comes into play as a promotional device. With their "at a glance" impact, postcards in particular make excellent seminar announcements.

Most direct mail companies today offer some from of geographic mailing feature. In other words, they make it possible to send your direct mail postcards exactly where you want. This is perfect for promoting seminars, because you can send postcards to people who live a convenient distance from your seminar location. This narrows your mailing list to those people who are most likely to respond (from a geographical standpoint).

Best Practices

• Convey the primary benefit of your seminar through a strong headline: "Free Seminar: All Your Mortgage Questions Answered!"


• Point to a website where people can learn more about the seminar (and sign up for it).


• Create a sense of urgency: "Seats are limited, so reserve yours today."


• If possible, include a map showing the location.


• Mention a free "take away," like a printout of the presentation or a special report.

Technique #2 – The Free Report
Direct mail can also support your mortgage marketing efforts through the use of free reports. In recent years, the free report -- a.k.a. the "white paper" -- has become an increasingly popular marketing strategy. Today, many companies use reports and white papers to educate prospects about their products and services (or about topics related to those products or services).

Make Your Report a Standout
For this to work, you have to create a "must read" that your average prospect would really want to get their hands on. Maybe it's information about a new and popular type of loan. Maybe it's "insider" mortgage information they can't get from anywhere else.

Whatever approach you take, just make sure the report is strong enough to stand on its own. Here's a technique to help with this: Imagine that the only way you can market the report is by showing the cover (with title) and a two-sentence summary of the content. Based on that glimpse, does your report stand strong? Or will it rely to heavily on your direct mail piece for support?

In other words, start with a great product before you even think of promoting it. This will directly influence your direct mail response rates. Then all you have to do is feature the report in your direct mail letter or postcard.

Best Practices

• Convey the primary benefit of your report through a strong headline: "Free Report Shows How to Review Your Credit for Costly Errors."


• Point to a website where people can learn more about the report and obtain it.


• Have a lead-capturing system in place. One easy way to do this is to use a newsletter sign-up box on the web page, and then send a link to the document via auto-responder confirmation message. The postcard points to the web page, the web page captures the lead, and the auto-responder delivers the goods!

Conclusion
Direct mail is like any other form of marketing in that you get out of it what you put in. So for the best possible return on your investment, have a clearly defined goal and strategy. The strategies listed above will get you off to a great start, but don't stop there. Try and improve on these strategies. Modify them to suit your needs. And of course, be sure to track everything so you can see what works the best.

* You may republish this article in its entirety as long as you include the byline and author's note. If publishing online, please leave the hyperlinks active.

Direct Mail Marketing Generates Sales LeADS: Here's How

1. Personal
Unlike an advertisement in a trade publication, which can be read by anyone, your sales letter arrives at your prospect’s place of business as a piece of personal communication from your mind to his. Also, unlike any other medium, direct mail can be personalized (Dear Mr. Smith) and customized to each reader (“As an IT manager, you know that . . .”), showing your prospect that you know about him by name and understand his business in particular.

2. Cost effective
Advertising by its very nature is expensive. To reach a lot of people, you need to spend a lot of money. Direct mail, on the other hand, only targets the prospects you want to reach. Instead of pitching your product to a huge audience of potential buyers, you aim your sales message only at prospects most likely to buy.

3. Breaks through the clutter
Your ad can easily get lost among dozens of competing ADS in a trade newspaper. Your sales message is also easily forgotten on radio or television unless you repeat it many times, which is expensive. But a simple letter, addressed to your prospect by name and arriving on her desk in the morning mail (which she must open), cuts through the media clutter and gets her attention.

4. Measurable ROI
Direct mail is one of the best mediums for measuring the return on your marketing dollar (or pound or yen). Simply code your business reply cards, and count how many return to you in the mail. Then calculate how many of those replies generate a sales meeting or a sale. Now you know immediately—and exactly—how effective your mailing has been. Direct mail numbers never lie.

5. Predictable
One advantage of knowing the success rates of your past mailings is that you can predict the success of future mailing. If you mail the same package with the same offer to a similar group of prospects at the same time of year, you can predict how many responses you will receive, and how many of those will translate into sales.

6. Can be improved through testing
Because you can measure your direct mail results, you can also test your mailings. Test one package against another, one list against another, one offer against another, and you’ll discover what works and what fails. That way you’ll spend your marketing dollars where they are most effective (without relying on guess work or hunches).

7. Immediate
General advertising builds brand awareness. Sales brochures inform. But a direct mail letter asks for action now. So if you need to generate sales leADS, and don’t have time to wait for your ad to appear in “IT Buyers Quarterly,” send a direct mail letter and wait a week or so for a response.

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