How to correctly use direct mail to generate SaaS leads
How to correctly use direct mail to generate SaaS leads
To produce the best results for a direct mail program for marketing SaaS, there are several very powerful direct mail strategies you will need to follow to increase your response rate. These strategies will produce great results for all sales letters, not just SaaS.
1. At the top of your sales letter, use a strong headline that states the most important benefit your software provides to Chiropractors. This headline should be bold and a larger font size than the font size you use for the body text in your sales letter. A great headline promises a specific result. For example, “How to increase the productivity and profitability of your Chiropractic office by 37% in 60-days or less”.
2. Your sales letters must be personalized on both the envelope and within the sales letter. Do NOT say, “Dear Doctor” as it screams junk mail. You must address the Chiropractor by their actual name -- Dear Dr. Smith…
3. When writing your sales letter, always use a friendly conversational style. Do not try to write “cold and corporate" by using large words and showing off your vocabulary. All that does is turn people off. Instead, write your sales letter using friendly simply language as if you were talking to your best friend. I find the more friendly and conversational that I make a sales letter, the better the response I get.
4. Your sales letter needs to explain the benefits Chiropractors will receive. Understand that everybody cares about one thing - "What’s in it for me?" Put yourself in the Chiropractor’s shoes and ask yourself, "If I was receiving this letter, why would I want to buy the product being sold? What’s in it for me?" “How is it going to improve my life?”
5. Offer quantitative proof of how your software will benefit Chiropractors. This can be done by including several testimonials from Chiropractors where the testimonials state exactly how your software helped them. “I love this software. I have been using it for 7-months and it has made my office run like a fine oiled machine. Because of my huge gain in productivity, I can now see twice as many patients and my office’s income has more than doubled. I highly recommend it to all Chiropractors.”
6. Offer a 100% money-back guarantee. “Try our software for 60 days and if it does not increase your office’s productivity by at least 30%, we’ll give you a full refund.” Understand that the biggest hurdle in a sale is the perceived risk on the part of the customer. In their mind they are thinking, “What if this software is junk? What if I spend time and money implementing it and it does not work? Will other Chiropractors think I am an idiot for buying this software?” You must remove this risk by taking the risk on your shoulders and offering a powerful money-back guarantee so Chiropractors know they are protected financially if they try your software and it does not perform as promised.
7. To get your prospects to take action, your sales letter must ask Chiropractors to purchase by a specific date and give them a bonus for ordering by a specific date. For example, “Sign up for our business and practice management system for Chiropractors by July 29 and we’ll give you the first 2-months of service for FREE.”
8. Use a P.S. in your letter and restate your most power benefit and sales offer in it. Most people will read a P.S. first before reading the sales letter, so it is important that your P.S. has a very strong sales message and a call to action.
9. To get your sales letter opened hand-write the recipient’s name and address. Do NOT use mailing labels! Yes, this takes a lot more time than using mailing labels, but mailing labels scream junk mail and get your letter thrown in the garbage unopened. The first key in a successful sales letter campaign is to get your envelope opened, and by handwriting the recipient’s name and address, you can almost guarantee that your envelope will be opened. Admit it—when you get a letter where your name and address are handwritten, you open it.
10. Make your envelope "lumpy" by enclosing a small, inexpensive free gift. Make sure the gift has your company name and contact information on it and that the gift is something a person would want to keep - such as a nice pen, a good highlighter, post-it notes with your company information printed on them, etc.
11. TEST your sales letter on a small scale to measure if your sales message will generate a response. You will never know what sales message is going to generate the best response rate, so you need to constantly test, and you should always test on a small scale. The biggest mistake you can make is to do a large direct mail campaign without knowing beforehand what the response rate is going to be. That is how you lose your shirt in marketing. A good way to perform a test is to create a list of 600 prospects. Then, write three different sales letters. Send letter “A” to 200 prospects, letter “B” to 200 prospects and letter “C” to 200 prospects. Then, measure the results to see which sales letter performed the best (produced the most leads). Just by changing the headline of a sales letter, you can double or even triple the response rate. Then, use the best performing sales letter and send it to 500 new prospects to see if it will again produce a strong response. Continue testing like this until you have a sales letter that is a clear and profitable winner.
12. Use repetition. You will have far more success from direct mail marketing if you send it to the same group of Chiropractors at least six times per year. Monthly is better. Understand that many Chiropractors (like all types of customers) need to think about a product several times before they will buy it. Therefore, you need to keep your message in front of them, constantly reinforcing how your service will help them. Then, when they are ready to buy, they will contact you.
13. If your budget is small, consider using postcards with a 60-Day FREE TRIAL message to get Chiropractors to go to your website and try your service before they buy. Remember that the word “FREE” is the most powerful word in marketing, so use it. Again, remember to test different sales messages to see which generates the best response.
14. And last, the most important thing you can do is to follow up your sales letters with telephone calls. A week after sending your sales letters call the Chiropractors on your list and pitch them over the phone. See if you can get them to try a no-obligation free 60-day trial. Do whatever you can to get them using your service so they can experience the benefits for themselves and become a loyal, long-term client. With SaaS, you earn your profits over time, so do whatever it takes to get client to try your service and experience the benefits. This is how you will build a successful business with constant and predictable growth over time.
How to correctly use direct mail to generate SaaS leads - To learn more about this author, visit Peter Geisheker's Website.
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Question: "We are a SaaS company that delivers a fully integrated business and practice management system for chiropractors. However we are struggling with our marketing and sales as we are on a very tight budget. Can you give me any insight in how to create a direct campaign that will get the doctors attention, on a budget."
To produce the best results for a direct mail program for marketing SaaS, there are several very powerful direct mail strategies you will need to follow to increase your response rate. These strategies will produce great results for all sales letters, not just SaaS.
1. At the top of your sales letter, use a strong headline that states the most important benefit your software provides to Chiropractors. This headline should be bold and a larger font size than the font size you use for the body text in your sales letter. A great headline promises a specific result. For example, “How to increase the productivity and profitability of your Chiropractic office by 37% in 60-days or less”.
2. Your sales letters must be personalized on both the envelope and within the sales letter. Do NOT say, “Dear Doctor” as it screams junk mail. You must address the Chiropractor by their actual name -- Dear Dr. Smith…
3. When writing your sales letter, always use a friendly conversational style. Do not try to write “cold and corporate" by using large words and showing off your vocabulary. All that does is turn people off. Instead, write your sales letter using friendly simply language as if you were talking to your best friend. I find the more friendly and conversational that I make a sales letter, the better the response I get.
4. Your sales letter needs to explain the benefits Chiropractors will receive. Understand that everybody cares about one thing - "What’s in it for me?" Put yourself in the Chiropractor’s shoes and ask yourself, "If I was receiving this letter, why would I want to buy the product being sold? What’s in it for me?" “How is it going to improve my life?”
5. Offer quantitative proof of how your software will benefit Chiropractors. This can be done by including several testimonials from Chiropractors where the testimonials state exactly how your software helped them. “I love this software. I have been using it for 7-months and it has made my office run like a fine oiled machine. Because of my huge gain in productivity, I can now see twice as many patients and my office’s income has more than doubled. I highly recommend it to all Chiropractors.”
6. Offer a 100% money-back guarantee. “Try our software for 60 days and if it does not increase your office’s productivity by at least 30%, we’ll give you a full refund.” Understand that the biggest hurdle in a sale is the perceived risk on the part of the customer. In their mind they are thinking, “What if this software is junk? What if I spend time and money implementing it and it does not work? Will other Chiropractors think I am an idiot for buying this software?” You must remove this risk by taking the risk on your shoulders and offering a powerful money-back guarantee so Chiropractors know they are protected financially if they try your software and it does not perform as promised.
7. To get your prospects to take action, your sales letter must ask Chiropractors to purchase by a specific date and give them a bonus for ordering by a specific date. For example, “Sign up for our business and practice management system for Chiropractors by July 29 and we’ll give you the first 2-months of service for FREE.”
8. Use a P.S. in your letter and restate your most power benefit and sales offer in it. Most people will read a P.S. first before reading the sales letter, so it is important that your P.S. has a very strong sales message and a call to action.
9. To get your sales letter opened hand-write the recipient’s name and address. Do NOT use mailing labels! Yes, this takes a lot more time than using mailing labels, but mailing labels scream junk mail and get your letter thrown in the garbage unopened. The first key in a successful sales letter campaign is to get your envelope opened, and by handwriting the recipient’s name and address, you can almost guarantee that your envelope will be opened. Admit it—when you get a letter where your name and address are handwritten, you open it.
10. Make your envelope "lumpy" by enclosing a small, inexpensive free gift. Make sure the gift has your company name and contact information on it and that the gift is something a person would want to keep - such as a nice pen, a good highlighter, post-it notes with your company information printed on them, etc.
11. TEST your sales letter on a small scale to measure if your sales message will generate a response. You will never know what sales message is going to generate the best response rate, so you need to constantly test, and you should always test on a small scale. The biggest mistake you can make is to do a large direct mail campaign without knowing beforehand what the response rate is going to be. That is how you lose your shirt in marketing. A good way to perform a test is to create a list of 600 prospects. Then, write three different sales letters. Send letter “A” to 200 prospects, letter “B” to 200 prospects and letter “C” to 200 prospects. Then, measure the results to see which sales letter performed the best (produced the most leads). Just by changing the headline of a sales letter, you can double or even triple the response rate. Then, use the best performing sales letter and send it to 500 new prospects to see if it will again produce a strong response. Continue testing like this until you have a sales letter that is a clear and profitable winner.
12. Use repetition. You will have far more success from direct mail marketing if you send it to the same group of Chiropractors at least six times per year. Monthly is better. Understand that many Chiropractors (like all types of customers) need to think about a product several times before they will buy it. Therefore, you need to keep your message in front of them, constantly reinforcing how your service will help them. Then, when they are ready to buy, they will contact you.
13. If your budget is small, consider using postcards with a 60-Day FREE TRIAL message to get Chiropractors to go to your website and try your service before they buy. Remember that the word “FREE” is the most powerful word in marketing, so use it. Again, remember to test different sales messages to see which generates the best response.
14. And last, the most important thing you can do is to follow up your sales letters with telephone calls. A week after sending your sales letters call the Chiropractors on your list and pitch them over the phone. See if you can get them to try a no-obligation free 60-day trial. Do whatever you can to get them using your service so they can experience the benefits for themselves and become a loyal, long-term client. With SaaS, you earn your profits over time, so do whatever it takes to get client to try your service and experience the benefits. This is how you will build a successful business with constant and predictable growth over time.
How to correctly use direct mail to generate SaaS leads - To learn more about this author, visit Peter Geisheker's Website.
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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Cheryl MatthynssensCheryl is a life skills coach, licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor and a 20 year entrepreneur. Cheryl's dedication to achieving a life of balance led to her expanding her teaching from the simple managing of life's daily challenges to adding financial well being as well. A direct marketer with DrinkACT, she is gaining ground in the online community with her concepts of making sure business owners, entreprenuers and employees have well rounded life styles. She opened up a small affiliate site - The Balance Guide- to help others find resources for mental and emotional well being. Visit Cheryl's blog to see more of the diversity beyond business she has began offering online at www.thebalanceguide.blogspot.com - Visit Cheryl Matthynssens's Website |
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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