Increase your direct mail response rate by 30 percent to 49 percent.
Include a letter. This single sheet of paper can increase your response by 30 percent to 40 percent, maybe more. Include a letter in every mailing package.

Is the letter in your direct mail package really a letter?
A letter is something you send to your Aunt Bertha around Thanksgiving to make sure you receive a gift at Christmas. When you send it to 10, 100 or 10,000 people, it's really a highly stylized ad, designed to look like a letter.Take your time writing and designing it.

Take your time writing your direct mail letter.
I have clients who call and complain that they've spent a whole hour and a half writing their direct mail letter and it still hasn't come out like one of mine. Recommendation: Go back and put in the other eight hours. It takes me five to 10 hours to write and design a tight letter, sometimes longer. No, no TV on, even if it is "just in the background."

Researching your mailing list - more fun than root canal.
OK, so it's not that much more fun. And it doesn't impress people like sending them a glitzy four-color brochure - but if additional response is the name of the game, the best possible mailing list is the first place to look, and the best place to do additional homework.

Make sure your direct mail offer is clear.
Sounds simple, but people live with their own product for so long, they forget. I've seen lots of packages in which I can't figure out what's being sold. Your package should state, "You get this and this, and then get this FREE - when you send only $21.95 to this address...."

Ask for the order - or the call - several times in your mailing package.
If you don't get a response, nothing else matters. So don't be shy or embarrassed to ask for an order or call several times. I once wrote a letter and asked 6 times for people to call. It was one page. To see how I did this, drop me a not requesting my "16 Call Printer's Letter."

Call now and receive a FREE GIFT!
Free gifts work wonders for your response. Offer FREE premium with any order and watch your response increase.

Call and get our FREE informational booklet.
Free booklets are low-cost ways to increase response to your magazine ads, and help you build a mailing list of prospects. To help cut down on your mailing expense, the booklet title can be focused precisely to attract only more qualified prospects.

Offer an "instructional" or an "informational" booklet instead of a brochure.
Even though you fell in love with your own literature, offering your "company brochure" to readers sounds like it has no value. You can pick up a free four-color brochure at any car dealership. But...an 81/2" x 11" sheet of paper folded in half becomes an informational booklet" - more valuable than a brochure.

Go for the phone call.
One of the toughest things to do is to sell a product from a sheet of paper, especially if that sheet is one of hundreds of others in a magazine. Change the objective of your ad to "make the phone ring" ("Call now and get our FREE booklet!"), then you sell the product when people call.

Offering a FREE booklet. Free - if readers call now.
Offering a FREE booklet gives readers a "non threatening reason to call," and they will. It overcomes reader fear of "What should I say to them if I call?" and "When I call, if I ask for more information, I'll just get some salesman on the phone who is going to try to sell me something."

Decide on your sales approach first, then write your advertisement.
There are two kinds of ads or sales packages. "Direct-selling," often called "one-step" sales packages, sell the product directly. This includes catalogs and hard-hitting direct selling packages that were designed to sell products from the start. The other ads are "Lead-generating" or "two-step" selling packages. They show the product, but focus strictly on generating a lead. Pick one.

Here's a hint: 95 percent of the product literature packages I write do not try to sell the product, but they DO try every trick in the book to make the recipient CALL - and I don't care if it's to place an order, just to receive additional information, like our "FREE Information-Packed Booklet!", or just to say hello; because once we have him on the phone....

Just because you've enclosed an order form, it doesn't mean you have a direct selling package.
Unless you have designed your mail piece to sell from the get-go, it is not a direct mail order generator. At best, its function is to generate leads. Solution: Enclose a harder-hitting sales piece with your general brochure that is designed to sell product. Or offer a larger package to those still interested, if they just pick up the phone and call now...

Don't fool yourself with your own literature.
Stop trying to get orders from general sales literature that isn't designed to solicit an order directly. Your company brochure couldn't sell air to a flat tire. To get orders directly, you need to create a document with the original objective of "getting an order right here and right now" in mind when you start writing it.

Make it easy to respond, and people will.
Use an 800 number, a business reply card, a form to fax back to you, a reply envelope, an order form, a pre-filled-out order form, a postcard with live stamp (for small mailings), your e-mail address....

Offer a Money-Back Guarantee.
Heck, you're going to get it back anyhow if they don't like it, might as well be a good guy and say so right up front.

Send more than one letter to better prospects.
A single letter is not a campaign. Three letters is a campaign. A short campaign, but a campaign nevertheless. I recommend five to nine letters for any of your higher-quality prospects.

Send a postcard.
As a follow-up to your three-letter campaign. Postcards are low in cost, easy to mail, and keep you in the customer's mind. They also have a VERY HIGH READERSHIP. Even people like my brother, who toss out anything that says "bulk mail" before they open the envelope, read postcards.

Send a series of postcards.
I've never created an unsuccessful postcard campaign for a client. Postcards are NON-INVASIVE and NON-INTRUSIVE marketing. They don't offend anyone, like faxes or phone calls do, and it's a way to stay on "top of the mind" awareness of your client base.

Write profusely, but edit severely.
I write two or three pages to get a one-page letter. Maybe more.

Don't let your offer get lost in the clutter.
Make sure the offer stands out. This is especially true of longer-copy packages. If they can't find your offer and price when they're ready to buy, it'll probably be easier to toss your package out and buy your product somewhere else.

Repeat offer, price, and guarantee on your order card.
Knowledgeable direct mail buyers know when they want to cut through the clutter they can go right to the order card for an immediate synopsis of what they will get, and what They'll have to pay for it.


Repeating your offer also helps when your order form gets separated from the rest of your package: customers will still be able to make the purchase right from the form.


Include everything anyone needs to know to order easily: product, price, phone, fax, exactly what customers get (offer), send to, ship to, credit card number, FREE GIFT offer, hurry-up incentive, everything.

Use teaser copy on the envelope that's bound to work.
My very favorite line: "Gift Certificate Enclosed." Gift Certificates are cheap to print, add little weight to your package, have high perceived value, can be directed at overstocked merchandise, and don't cost anything - until they're redeemed. Nice.