Direct Mail

The primary variables are the list, the offer, the format, and creative. Of these, the list exerts the most leverage.

Minimum order quantity from a list is generally 5,000. Names will cost ten to fifteen cents each. "Selects" cost more (this is recent buyers, SIC codes, etc).

Package usually includes letter, brochure, order form, lift note, return envelope. Lift notes (AKA buck slips) give reassurance and involve the reader.

 Proper measure of success is profit per thousand. Profit excludes costs of fulfillment and mailing. Including a premium often increases PPK dramatically. Third class mail often outdraws first class on PPK.

 Typically takes 3 months to write, design, print and mail...from inception to post office. Half life is 3 weeks (time it takes to receive half the responses that will ever arrive.)

 Test, test, test. Mail to a sample sufficiently large to draw 30-40 responses. Test price, format, envelope message, enclosures.

 When selling software, a second mailing to the same list will generate 1/2 the number of responses of the first.

 Typical costs: $7,500-$10,000 for creative. Variable cost of 50 cents including postage. (Thinking quanitities of 50,000~)

The Robert Collier Letter Book, 1931

 "Find the thing your prospect is interested in and make it your point of contact, instread of rushing in and trying to tell him something about your propositions, your goods, your interests.

 When you come down to it, isnt' the prime requisite arousing in your reader the feeling that he must have the thing you are offering, or that he cannot rest until he has done the thing you are urging him to?

 But if you want to sell goods, if you want action of any kind, base your real urge upon some primary emotion.

 You know every man is constantly hodling a mental conversation with himself, the burden of which is his own interests--his business, his loved ones, his advancement. And you have tried to chime in on that conversation with something that fits in with his thoughts. ....Look for news value!

 The old gentleman who resigned from the Patent Office in 1886 because, as he said, everything had been invented, had nothing on most of us. There are times when we all begin to feel that mechanical equipment is about as perfect as man can make it.

 Folding the letterhead out so that only the sautation and first line of the letter show, has increased orders for us at times by as much as 10 per cent. Indenting the first paragraph helps, too. Two 1/2 cent stamps frequently pull more replies than one 1-cent stamp.

 Getting your reader's attention is your first job. That done, your next problem is to put your idea across, to make him see it as you seet it--in short, to visualize it so clearly that he can build it piece by piece in his own mind as a child builds a house of blocks...

 There are six prime motives of human action: love, gain, duty, pride, self-induldence and self-preservation. And frequently they are so mixed together that it is hard to tell which to work on more strongly.

 There is just one reason why anyone ever reads a letter you send him. He expectds a reward. That is the key to holding his interest. All through your letter you keep leading him on, constantly feeding his interst, but always holding back something for the climax.

 Every good letter contains these six essential elements:

             1.         the opening which gets the reader's attention by fitting in with his train of thought and estalbishes a point of contact with his interests, thus exciting his curiosity and prompting him to read further.

             2.         the descriptions, which pictures your proposition

             3.         the motive or reason why, which creates a longing in the reader's mind by describing--not your propostion but what it will do for him--the comfort, the pleasure, the profit he will derivce from it

             4.         the proof of guarantee which established confidence

             5.         the snapper or penalty, which gets immediate aciton by holding over your reader's head the loss in money or prestige or opportunity that will be his if he does not act at once

             6.         the close, which tells the reader just what to do and how to do it, and makes it easy for him to act at once.

Dear Sir: Will you do me this favor?

 Think of every proprety you could possibly desire in such a product or service. Think of everything you would like to have it do for you. Work out the ultimate ideal, then write a letter that stresses every desirable point of that ideal product. (Next day, cross out those that you can't claim.)  Your job is to buld a picture in his mind's eye of what he will get from your product or service.