Tip: A 25.2% response on direct mail

[somarco]

Gimmicks work . . . but not always.

I know a fellow who was trying to get a job interview. Sent resume's. Made phone calls. No results.

Then he bought a pair of old shoes. Took one shoe out of the box, left the other in. Mailed the box, with his resume', to the head of HR. Included this note.

"Just trying to get my foot in the door . . ."

He got an interview . . . and the job.

Advertising in any medium is competition for eyeballs. Doesn't matter if it is print, TV or websites. You want to capture the attention and create curiosity . . . at least enough to generate some kind of action.

Headlines & subject matter (email) are carefully crafted to grab attention and make you want to go further.

If you can grab their attention, make them laugh (or spur their curiosity) and then tie in your "grabber" with your product or service, you have a winner.

How many times have you seen an entertaining commercial, probably even laughed, but after the commercial was over you had no clue what the product or service was?

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

That is hilarious!!!

 

[senior-advisor-indiana]

Back to the BMW marketing idea, it was probably insured. Same way they insure hole-in-ones at golf tourneys. Doesn't cost much, a few hundred dollars.

There is a difference. There is a HUGE chance no one is getting a hole in one. BMW had to give away a car. Insurnce doenst work when the outcome is guaranteed.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

The bottom line is I haven't seen any clever marketing strategy replace hard work. Common sense tells me if anyone had designed a marketing technique that pulled crazy results where they just wrote mass amount of business then over time every agent in the country would be using that method.

Mailers that pull 10%? Why wouldn't anyone mail out 1,000 a week and get 100 leads and become rich? Of course people can't shut up when something pulls incredible results so it would spread around like wildfire and everyone would be using that method.

Last time I checked most agents are on a quarter of a tank waiting for their next check.

 

[Alsky]

Gimmicks work . . . but not always.

I know a fellow who was trying to get a job interview. Sent resume's. Made phone calls. No results.

Then he bought a pair of old shoes. Took one shoe out of the box, left the other in. Mailed the box, with his resume', to the head of HR. Included this note.

"Just trying to get my foot in the door . . ."

He got an interview . . . and the job.



Brilliant!!!

 

[Delta76]

I've tried using direct mail for health campaigns and tracked the results. I attached a band-aid to the top of the letter, and used an opening headlining such as "Are your health insurance premiums starting to hurt....", and then I called to follow-up with every letter I sent out (50 a day for 3 months). This was a very time consuming process to hand write the addresses (that's what the "experts" said to do), sign at the bottom, and attach the band-aid on the letter. Two hours each day before 8am.

I tracked the results for 90 days by sending out the letters and making follow-up calls and then the next 90 days I didn't send out the letters and just called completely cold. The results, drum roll please...

The exact same appointment ratio.

That was enough to convince me on the value of an approach letter for a commodity product.

 

[Macdaddy]

The bottom line is I haven't seen any clever marketing strategy replace hard work. Common sense tells me if anyone had designed a marketing technique that pulled crazy results where they just wrote mass amount of business then over time every agent in the country would be using that method.

Mailers that pull 10%? Why wouldn't anyone mail out 1,000 a week and get 100 leads and become rich? Of course people can't shut up when something pulls incredible results so it would spread around like wildfire and everyone would be using that method.

Last time I checked most agents are on a quarter of a tank waiting for their next check.

Well, for my friend, he is limited do to the small population of rural counties. The benefit to the high response is not that he can "get rich" but rather keep his marketing costs low.

 

[WBunch]

Ok...I'll throw in a marketing plan I did a few times. What I did is I got a list of some of the High Dollar people in my area and some referrals from some clients. I was doing a seminar on retirement planing and stretch IRA's. So I send them all an invitation along with a $1 Lotto Scratch Ticket. On the invitation it told them what I was doing the seminar on and explained that there was a free meal and cocktail hour after. Attatched to the Lotto Ticket was a sticky note that said, " Unless you made your retirement with this ticket, you need to see how I can help you". I mailed out 250 invitations and had 2 evenings set up for the seminar. I expected about 40-50 to confirm total, instead I ended up having 35 on the first night and 48 on the next night for a total of 83 people. Now that is what I call success. All stayed for the Meet and Greet Cocktail hour after and I had booked appointments with 46 of them that night and had another 14 book appointments days after. I had solid appoints booked for the next 3 1/2 months and ended up with around 3.5million in assets for investments and 87K annual premium in Life and DI. Now granted this was not a cheap shindig...The total cost for mailiers, postage, Lotto, Meeting Room, Meal, and Cocktail hour tab was.......Drum Roll Please.......$5,234.53. However, I made a boat load of money off of those seminars. I have only done this twice because it is a very time consuming thing to do. Now I just have a once a year client seminar and tell them to bring a friend. Doesn't have the same affect but it gets new people introduced to me by respected happy clients, and that is the only thing that matters.

 

[WBunch]

I also must add that all of those who attended said the Lotto ticket was a nice touch. It really got them interested and thinking.

 

[midwestbroker]

I like the lotto ticket idea. I might have to use that one...