Tons of businesses make the same mistake as my dentist. They send out B Pile marketing mail.
Legendary marketer Gary Halbert had a concept he called A Pile, B Pile. When people get their mail, they sort it into 2 piles. Pile A is what they will open and read. Pile B goes straight in the trash.
You know B Pile mail:
- New Credit Card Offers
- Extended Warranty Notices
- Obvious Business Postcard Adverts
Businesses spend thousands of dollars creating and mailing ads out just to have them thrown away unopened.
Because they look like an ad.
When I told my dentist about this, he laughed because he had just sorted thru his own mail the same way just an hour earlier. Standing next to the trash can throwing out everything that looked like an advertisement.
Here’s how you get into the A Pile:
Place your mail in a standard envelope with a first class stamp.
This will help it look like it came from and individual, not a business.
It may be more expensive, but right now you are spending money to put paper in people’s trash cans. Unread paper. Avoid the envelopes with the little windows and avoid postcard style mailers.
If you can, pay someone to hand address the envelopes.
Very few people will throw away a hand addressed envelope without at least opening it.
Second best is a cleanly printed name and address. The key here is to not make your marketing mail look like marketing mail. Remember the added cost will be returned by significantly higher open rate.
Add some way to track responses.
Doesn’t matter if its a unique coupon code, a text signup, or a website url to visit.
You need some way to see how effective you mail is being. Otherwise how will you know if you are wasting your money.
Many thanks to Gary Halbert for sharing this wisdom.