Learn good advice when it enters your ears!
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Sometimes good advice takes an entire book. At other times, however, the best advice comes our way in a short, convenient list of ideas, rules, and should and should nots.
Although quick and to the point, it is amazing how this handy list of eleven direct marketing mail principles has helped our clients throughout the years. Adopt it and put it to work to strengthen your marketing and mail effectiveness.
1. Features are important. Benefits are more important than features. However, your offer-your “what’s in it for them”-is more important than anything else.
2. No two people in your universe of prospects are alike, even though they seem to be statistically. Know whom you are writing (speaking) to… before you put a single idea on paper… and speak to them one at a time.
3. Prospects and clients like to be educated. Always inform your prospects and clients, and they will be loyal to you. The more complicated your sales process, the more you need to educate the market.
4. Offend no one… not in the words you choose or the photos you select.
5. Your readers do not really know what you are talking about. You may think they do, but you cannot really be sure until you mail, you test, mail, test, and mail and test some more.
6. Customers are different from clients. Customers buy from you. Clients will build a lasting relationship with you and your organization, to see you as a partner and friend, and rely on you when they are in a pinch.
7. “You” is the most important. When you write marketing, advertising, or direct mail copy, “you” is always more important than “we,” us,” and “our.”
8. Always write in the present tense. The future tense has a way of making readers feel that you “will” do something in the future, but that you cannot or don’t want to do it now.
9. Always ask for the sale now. Asking for the sale includes a call to action. You owe it to yourself to create a call to action that is time sensitive, as in “call before midnight tonight.”
10. Provide multiple ways for prospects and clients to respond to you-to order, buy, or request additional information. However, keep them simple as possible so prospects do not hesitate or procrastinate.
11. When someone responds, follow up quickly.
