The 47% response Rate Sales Letter
Become a 47% Response Copywriter
Here’s the secret to making you the most indispensable copywriter anyone or any business can ever employ.
Knowing this means you will never have to chase a client again in your life.
Knowing this will have clients knocking down your front door to hire you, want you and demand you and you only.
This is a secret for the self-employed copywriter.
This is also a secret for all employed copywriters.
Prepare to get rich.
knowing this secret will also make you rich.
Now this is so uncool these days - a printed letter.
But I want you to know printed direct mailers have NEVER been so powerful in a world jaded by mass digital marketing.
Direct mails is better than ever.
And its cheap when done properly.
OK, let’s get to it.
How To Create an Insane 47% Response Sales Letter
Question; How the hell do you get 47% response rate to conversion from a direct mailer? Especially when the guy doing the mailer had already been mailing endlessly for months with a dismally low - ZERO - response.
This is a true story from the frontlines of direct mailing - and profits!.
The story will shock anyone involved in marketing because they just don’t do this stuff.
The results mentioned in this story will also be very hard to believe.
The businessman has asked for his name to be protected.
“Mille Fleur Cakes”
So the conversation and initial meeting started with a cake.
A guy walked into my business one day and asked to speak to me. I walked over introduced myself with a smile and asked what I could do for him.
He handed me a box and said, “I heard you love Mille Fleur cakes (I do) so I brought a couple for you.” Being a cake addict he had got my attention right away. The cake wasn’t opened there and then but we then sat and drank coffee together and, of course, shared the cake. His problem was really simple, brutally honest and threatening his marriage.
The Common Direct Mail FAIL
Apart from other things, his marketing problem was this.
He told me he had set up a new company with a partner just around one year previously. The partner was now screaming his brains out and threatening all kinds of actions if more sales weren’t made. The current sales were from door knocking and totally unsustainable.
You couldn’t blame the investor because he had pulled together an investment of just under a million to kick-start this project. The project included a mad scientist from the mountains of Switzerland who worked in a deep cave where he and another mad scientist were working like crazy to save the world.
No Sales, No Business
However …
Almost one year had passed and the sales were pathetic.
I asked him what he was doing to take this new business to market. He told me the following about his campaign.
“Each month I send direct mail to a list of highly targeted prospects”
“How many pieces do you send out?” I asked him.
“I send around 5,000 a month, sometimes more, sometimes less”
“And you get how much response?”
“Most of the time I get no reply”
“No reply?”
“Yes,” he replied with a face that looked grey and surrendered to a battle he now believed he could never win.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Yes one thing”… he stalled for a moment, looked me in the eyes, and smiled.
“This is weird, but if this doesn’t work now my wife is leaving me with our two kids”
“Wow,” I replied.
Desperate - He Sold His Wife's Car
He then went on to tell me that he sold his wife’s car, sold their small holiday place, and had re-mortgaged his home 3-times to make this dream business happen. The same dream that was now fast becoming a nightmare of nightmares.
So for the sake of getting to the point here is what I did (because this is a long detailed story).
I know this business inside out, I feel I am doing everything right, I am connected to here there and everywhere but I cannot get this marketing to work.
The Direct Mail System - That Works - Sales Letters That Sell
Everyone thinks of direct mail as tens of thousands of mails or at least in the thousands - it’s not. When done properly it can be a very small amount. I myself have created extremely successful campaigns worth small fortunes. These campaigns have been as low as ONE highly targeted client to literally just one hundred targets.
To mail out five thousand direct mail letters a month for this guy was like a King's ransom. So, the first thing I did was massively reduce the volume of sales letters being sent. Why? His no response after all the direct mail had been sent proved his targeting was way off.
Second, we hand picked just 100 targets from his list to chase. All were more specific to his new product and a higher-end client. The list I used was a leverage campaign. This meant they had dealt with him before so this increased the possibility of the sale. Why? They knew him and trusted him. He had been chasing new clients not existing.
Third, in this case we stopped trying to sell the product directly from direct mail, but created an intimate evening where they were all invited to join us, listen to professional advice for the target’s businesses and receive free gifts for the evening. This allowed the target to get to know my client more, his new product and costs before making any commitment - trust! The meeting was more in harmony with the mindset of these buyers.
Next, the build-up period for this small gathering was just 4-weeks as time for the client was now very tight. The mailers were packed with good news, urgency, and a strong call to action. We also mailed them every few days. Same letter with a different note added.
Then, the one thing I spent a long time persuading my client was his acquisition offer. This meant rather than make money from the first sale he would actually spend some money to buy his new client. This is a killer strategy that almost no one uses. To be clear. We worked out the …
Acquisition Cost Vs. Lifetime Value
Lets keep this really simple.
Lifetime value of his client - Let’s say worth £30,000
Annual spend of his client - Lets say worth £10,000
So if we create an acquisition cost package of a box of product for £1,000
The real cost to buy the product is actually £2,400
My clients cost from his producer is £1,100
So his acquisition cost is £100.
In other words it is costing him £100 to buy his client.
Yet the client is WORTH £10,000 a year. So once signed up he has a new client worth £30,000 in lifetime value.
The Direct Mail Sales Letter Was Sent - Here’s What Happened
All of the one hundred direct mail sales letters were sent.
Out of the 100 targets, 47% responded and were booked into the open evening. All apart from one arrived on the evening. We used another strategy to ensure all came.
The evening began with a small presentation. The presentation gave the guests more than they could ever have expected.
The Big Call To Action
Finally, at the end of the evening, there was to be a call to action.
It was really simple. Strong acquisition plan. This removed all risk for the potential new buyer. So a package that was to cost £2,400 was reduced to just £1,100. This was cut right back to the cost price. This is the acquisition strategy.
So the reality was for everyone that bought on that night it was going to cost my client to buy them. It cost him around £100 per client. Honestly, he didn’t quite get the strategy but trusted me at the time.
Here’s the good news.
His wife never left him.
His partner didn’t fire him.
That Evening He Took Orders Of Over £800,000
All from 100 direct mailers.
All from stripping back his wasted and thoughtless marketing campaign.
All from a response from a tiny almost microscopic list of just 47 prospects.
And it all started with a cake and a dammed good one at that!
Get It Right From The Start
Really simple, he did what every business I work with has been doing for years before we meet and that is just do marketing with no thought at all.
If you get your planning wrong it just won’t work.
If you get your strategies wrong it just won’t work.
If you use tactics that are just not suited to your targets – it just won’t work.
11 Best Tips For Selling With Sales Letters
Know and understand the response wanted from the campaign
Refine and find the targets - do the research
Design the response mechanism in the direct mailer - what do you want the reciever to do?
Create a story with an irresistible offer
Create the perfect acquisition offer and understand your initial COST per client
Get the layout and design done right. Design to sell based on the psychology of the target
Design the packaging - envelope or box for the sales letter
Add a build up period - one mailer is never enough - every 3 days send out the same letter with an added note.
Add urgency to all sales letter - but never sound desperate
Tell the reader what to do next
THE COPY - make it hot, sizzling and attracting at all times. Boring words sell nothing.
If you are a copywriter knowing this stuff can transform your copywriting career.
This is what high-end clients demand.
That is RESULTS.
So when you create your own sales letter you have two things you can do.
Some clients will try and try to do it themselves forever. They can. They can do it themselves and hope and pray to God their wife or husband doesn't leave you in the middle of your hapless efforts. But seriously why take a risk or a chance or waste time trying yourself?
The client above is proof of that and believe me when I tell you 99.9% of clients that come to me despite doing what they have done for years waste fortunes on marketing that will never work in a million-billion years.
Over three decades in business have taught me one thing … thinking and planning a campaign through is always the key, but the most and biggest thing I have learnt in business is this…
Ask for advice and where required a cake offering can help.
Are you ready to really, truly uncover and discover how to become a copywriter that actually makes a real difference and understands how to create response, reactions and sales like clients have never had before?
I can help you with my life changing program here.
I can help you as a client with my services here.
I’d love to help you.
Peace.
Mentor Alan Forrest Smith
Create Powerful Copywriters
Transform In-House Copywriters
Create Unheard of Results
