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Guerrilla Direct Mail

Written by: Jay Conrad Levinson

Article Overview: Get your profits off to a rip-roaring start with direct mail. To make every stamp and letter count, follow these seven steps and leave your competitors in the dust.

Guerrilla Direct Mail

Get your profits off to a rip-roaring start with direct mail. To make every stamp and letter count, follow these seven steps and leave your competitors in the dust.

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While their competitors are still rubbing the New Years' confetti from their eyes, guerrillas are quietly working away. Preparing to launch a series of marketing attacks to capture customers and sequester profits.
Because January is the best month historically for direct mail, now's a great time to reach out through the mail.

You can use direct mail to get new customers, thank holiday customers and invite them back for January specials, and bring old customers back into the fold. You can warm the way for a sales call to a cold prospect.

But what you can't do is send out a half-baked letter. Or flyer. Or postcard. Or catalogue.

Not if you're a guerrilla, you can't. Because sending out a shoddy direct mail piece is like taking postage stamps and pushing them down the drain.

Or, even worse, it's like giving the postage to your competitors. And saying, "Here. I'm really a fine business. But I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to mail. So please, send out a mailing and tell the market what a fool I am."

Not an appealing scenario. But, lucky for you, you can avoid the trauma of a half-baked mailing. Not only that, but you have the opportunity to make significantly more money than you spent on the mailing.

How?

Simple. By following these seven guerrilla rules of direct mail:

1. Before you write, do a couple hours of research. Ask a handful of your current customers to tell you in their own words what they like most about doing business with you.

Use those words when you ask them. What they will tell you will be the most important benefits they perceive. Use those benefits to start your letter.

2. Come up with a really dynamite reason for someone to respond to the letter. Make an extraordinary offer.

Find a new and appealing way to bundle together a number of your product or services. Or offer special payment terms. Or an unusual guarantee.

3. When you start writing, use short words and short sentences. People can't, won't, and don't read long, complicated stuff. Not if they don't have to.

They won't read your letter unless it's EASY to read.

4. Count the number of "you's" and "your's" in the letter. Your letter should have at least twice as many "you's" and "your's" as "I's," "we's," "me's," "our's" and your company's name. A ratio of four to one is even better.

When they read your letter, your customers like it when you talk about their dreams, their problems, solutions you can provide to their problems, and the benefits they will receive. And they will show their appreciation -- with sales!

5. Whatever you do, DON'T mail it out the minute after you write it. No matter how good a writer you are!

Let it sit a day or two. Then, rewrite your letter to make it simpler, clearer and more compelling. After that, read it out loud.

Then, show your letter to some customers. If their reaction is "interesting" or "well written," you may have a loser on your hands.

A sales letter isn't an essay. It's a sales piece, first and foremost. So, after reading, if your customers say, "How can I get one of those?" -- they want to buy what you're offering -- you've got yourself a guerrilla letter.

6. Check to see if it's clear what you're offering and how a reader can take you up on the offer. One great way to find out is to have a child read your letter. Children often see the obvious that adults -- caught up in the more abstract problems and distractions of life -- miss.

7. Do a test mailing and measure the results. Don't send out all your letters at once. Just send out a few dozen. Or a few hundred. When the results come in -- when your mail is good, they'll come in fast -- then do the math.

Did you make money? Did the letter get you more than you would have gotten if you had put the time to other use? If the answers are yes, then roll out it. And let the profits roll in. See ya next time!

Related Articles
  The Way of the Guerrilla
  Downturns and Guerrillas
  What is Marketing in the First Place?
  Are you a Guerrilla
  What Is Guerrilla Marketing?

Article Tags: cold prospect, couple hours, direct mail, doing business, dynamite, fool, great time, guerrilla, guerrillas, half baked, handful, mail piece, marketing, money, postage stamps, postcard, profits, sequester, seven steps, trauma



Related Forum Posts
Top 19 Copywriting books - 1. Ogilvy on Advertising. David Ogilvy. Wiley. 2. Positioning: The Battle for your Mind. Al Ries and Jack Trout. Warner. 3. The New Positioning. Jack Trout. McGraw-Hill. 4. Tested Advertising Methods. John Caples. Prentice-Hall. 5. How to Make your Advertising Make Money. John Caples. Prentice-Hall. 6. Guerrilla Advertising. Jay Conrad Levinson. Houghton Mifflin. 7. Direct Mail Copy that Sells. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall. 8. Sales Letters that Sizzle. Herschell Gordon Lewis. NTC Business Books. 9. Herschell Gordon Lewis on the Art of Writing Copy. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall. 10. Romancing the Brand. David Martin. American Management Association. 11. The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with William Bernbach, Leo Burnett, George Gribbin, David Ogilvy, Rosser Reeves. NTC Business Books. 12. Confessions of an Advertising Man. David Ogilvy. NTC Business Books. 13. My Life in Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books. 14. Scientific Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books. 15. How to Become an Advertising Man. James Webb Young. NTC Business Books. 16. The Lasker Story as He Told It. NTC Business Books. 17. Advertising Concept and Copy. George Felton. Prentice Hall. 18. The Copy WorkShop Workbook. Bruce Bendinger. The Copy Workshop. 19. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads. Luke Sullivan. Wiley. This should keep you busy for at least a year. Enjoy!
Hello From Marietta GA! - Hello All! My name is Tim Naylor and I am in Direct Sales! I am glad I have found EC's sites and I hope to learn and share a lot!
CRM Pro Program - There are programs like CRM pro that cost a lot but they do a lot of combination Direct mail and email and voiceblast. I have a karate school that uses something like that. I can get a lead -- then email use directmail and even fax. voicemail too. I also now of a cost effective program but I have to look the name up and get back with you. Hope this helps.
Re: Is Bulk Mailing useful for promotion - We use Mail Chimp for our email campaigns (it's awesome and free for small lists), but we only email to subscribers. Have never tried buying a list and spamming people. I can't imagine it would be very beneficial, and will certainly create ill will from the people you spam.
Where's the Entrance? - that's true I've been seeing a lot of construction going on to the City of Toronto's sidewalks and even Movie shoots sometimes block of access to stores for a week sometimes.. Guerrilla techniques should be at play here. 1. Get a Can of Paint and some Footstep Stencils and paint footsteps all the way from the accessible street right to your temporary entrance. (may be illegal but the store owner could plead innocent and say he has no idea who did that - maybe a "fan" of the restaurant) 2. I remember when there was the SARS outbreak in Toronto a lot of the Chinese restaurants were not doing so well except for Lee's Garden. I noticed they created a special Menu with prepackaged Menu Items for $20. 3. Create some buzz like with a Unique expereince - "Someone stole all my Plates! Now serving food on Banana Leaves - Guess What! The Food tastes better than ever! Blah Blah...


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