When fine-tuning, consider three elements
Typical executives receive 175 pieces of mail per week, so making your mail stand out is crucial to your success. After all, getting someone’s attention is the first step in the sales and advertising process. But direct marketing is a three-legged stool. In order to maximize your success while fine-tuning your approach, you’ll want to make sure all three legs of your stool are strong and sturdy.

The three legs include:

1. List: Make sure you send your mail to the right recipients at the right companies. Your list can account for as much as 40 percent of your success.
2. Offer: Include an offer that gives the prospect a reason to talk or meet with you. It shouldn’t simply state what a great job you and your firm will do. Your offer is the stimulus for action. It’s the “deal” — “I’ll give you a free video, a special premium, a chance to win … if you’ll … .” The use of a premium, the proverbial “free gift,” is a strong offer and pulls four times as many responses than without. Your offer can contribute to as much as 40 percent of your success.
3. Copy: If you invest good money using memorable, attention-grabbing mailers in your extreme-marketing campaign, do not give short shrift to the messaging that goes with it. All you have working for you is a gimmick, and that will only take you so far. Unless you would hire yourself out as a professional, direct-response copywriter, don’t write your own copy. The additional response you’ll gain by using a skilled, experienced professional will be worth the investment. This is especially true when you consider that your copy is responsible for 20 percent of your success.

Love and hate (but mostly love)
As mentioned earlier, when you take your marketing to the extreme, a lot of people will love it, a few will hate it and hardly anyone can ignore it. In a recent effort of my own, I had two opposite phone calls in the same day. One was from a somewhat-irritated man who wanted his company removed from my mailing list. “No problem,” I said. A few hours later, I had another call from a gentleman with a big smile in his voice chuckling to me about “the really cool mailers you’ve been sending me.” He booked a meeting.

Research has shown that well-done extreme marketing more often elicits a positive response than one similar to the irritated man’s. In fact, in one test, the response rate for an extreme-marketing effort was 74 percent better than for that of a more-conventional effort.

To which I say, go forth and do likewise.

Ernest W. Nicastro, a sales and marketing pro for more than 25 years, leads Positive Response, a marketing-consulting, advertising and promotions firm and promotional-products distributor. For more information on how Positive Response can help your business grow, e-mail him at ENicastro@positiveresponse.com, call (614) 747-2256 or go to www.positiveresponse.com.

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