marketing toolbox


How to Create a Cash-Producing, Sales-Boosting Direct Mail Letter!                                       

mailbox 

7 Steps to Successful Sales Letters 

1. Before you compose a blistering, customer oriented direct mail letter, you must first quit thinking like a contractor. Yep, you may want to turn your contracting license face down on your desk. Disregard the technical facts and figures; temporarily forget your company's awards and try to detach yourself from comparisons to your competition. During composition, you may want to even seek the advice of regular ol' consumers.

If you're thinking, "But they don't know anything about this business", you're right. God bless them for that! Let's remember that the people to whom we're talking aren't supposed to know anything about this business. They're the ones with the checkbooks who are supposed to be buying HVAC equipment and services.

With this in mind, serve the people what they want. Your letter should be about them, to them, for them. Don't get caught in the Ego Trap wherein you brag endlessly about your own self-serving virtues or depth of knowledge. That brings me right to…

2. Write to a real person in an appealing conversational way. Look, even though we read this type thing all the time, no one ever really says, "Thank you for your patronage. Please contact us for all your landscaping needs". Whoever told you people respond to junk like that has been sniffing mosquito spray.

People say things like, "We really appreciate your business and hope we can help you in the future." So write like that. It's far simpler to write how you speak than to write insincere fakey prose that no one can relate to.

Since you're writing to a person, speak to them personally. Use "you" instead of "us" or "we" in every conceivable case. One of my largest revisions for ads I critique is striking out this first-person crud. Instead of "We have 24 hour service" it's a painless - but valuable - change to say, "Call us anytime, 24 hours a day!" The first one is borderline bragging, the second one tells me how to use this information.

3. Write about benefits, not features. How many times are your salespeople told this? It's no different in a letter. You must tell the person how they benefit - and if measurable - to what degree they'll benefit. Go on to tell them when they'll benefit. You can even reverse this to include the lack of benefits without your item or service. In some way, you must make your reader see and feel the gain (or loss) in the item being discussed.

Such as: "With a new hardwood floor you increase the beauty of your home, and you don’t need to replace it any time soon! (By having it installed by a professional you greatly reduce the risk of having to have costly repairs in the near future!)" This example uses "you" three times, tells them how to benefit, extract value, save many and avoid trouble.

All through your letter, continually stack benefits beyond the reader's expectation. At the end, summarize the hottest ones. Do this and you'll get more phone calls than you can imagine.

4. Make your opening statement or headline terrifically powerful and valuable or you will lose the prospect. You have 4 seconds to make your reader feel that the effort of reading is worthwhile… or worthless. The opener must have a commanding presence in the reader's mind, and you are to make this 'connection' with him through to the end.

Your headline or opener accounts for 80% of your readership, so make it count. Powerful headlines can be "How to" gain a benefit or overcome an obstacle. They can be immediately beneficial and pertinent such as "How to have a newly painted house and cash for summer!" with your rebate offer.

Headlines or openers can be imperatives also, like, "Get a new sprinkler system installed for the heat of the summer, but don’t pay a dime for it until the fall!" Or "Take advantage of my absurd over purchase! Get a free set of light bulbs with your new accent lighting instillation."

Headlines can be an allure for the reader to continue such as, "Many people ask me about my 'Free' light bulb offer and are looking for the 'catch'. Well, here it is…" and you'd go on to say how the "catches" were really the reasonable conditions to the sale, et cetera.

Headlines may take some work to get just right, but they're worth it. I sometimes write two- dozen headlines or openers to get one that works. Over the years, we've amassed 77 of the top performing direct response headlines in the industry, and I assure you, each of those came after a significant struggle. Just start writing them… it'll come to you!

5. Inform your reader with relevant, beneficial, measurable, understandable, verifiable information. Hey, you're asking people to read your letter. If all they get is a meandering vagueness about nothing particularly meaningful, your letter is in the trash where it belongs. I read countless manufacturer mail pieces that draw zero conclusions. If you just say, "Fast service, High quality, and Low prices" you're wasting paper and ink.

Tell me specifically what I'm going to get, such as, "Over 93% of our calls are handled within 24 hours." Or make your guarantee more specific than the worn out "Satisfaction Guaranteed." Try "Guaranteed service within 24 hours of your call" or "You’ll save 10% on irrigation this summer with our sprinkler system or we’ll pay for the instillation costs ourselves!" Get a little creative and tell me you'll be accountable for my comfort.

6. Sell your service or product like you were sitting down with the reader. Make your product touchable; your service palpably beneficial. Don't attempt too much cuteness or cleverness. Talk about some of the rich details as you would in a prospect's home. Have your salesperson tell you exactly how he "paints the picture" of a new concrete driveway for a homeowner. Use the words and phrases he uses or hire a copywriter to do this for you. I cannot overstress the importance of putting the prospect "in the ownership role" while reading your letter. It'll add significantly to the response rate.

Your writing should be pure salesmanship delivered with an air of familiarity. The function of each sentence is to build the prospect's interest and lead them to your next point. Enthusiasm is encouraged - just like a "live" presentation - but should not be overused.

If you put exclamation points! After! Everything! You! Look! Like a screaming idiot! And if you put more than one exclamation point after a sentence, you look like you need to repeat the 8th grade. If I catch you PUTTING EVERTHING IN CAPITAL LETTERS I'M GOING TO SEND AN ENGLISH TEACHER TO YOUR HOUSE TO YELL AT YOU.

7. Your letter needs to tell the prospect what to do. This is called the "call to action" and it is too often overlooked. A great salesperson asks for the sale at exactly the right moment. Your letter should do the same. And your directions to the reader should be clear and to the point, in the same "familiar" voice you've already adopted in the body of the letter. If there are any special or different conditions to your letter's offer, you must tell the prospect or you're asking for confusion. Be clear, be friendly, be open.

Now - as an option to increase the immediacy of the leads - you impart some sense of urgency in your offer. This can be a specified length of time (there is a formula for this based on the purchase price), or a specified number of units or appointments you're willing to take on this offer.

Correctly word and craft all these items in your Direct Mail offers and your leads will rise. The difference between an amateur attempt and a powerhouse letter can be literally tens of thousands of dollars in sales for you! Do not take this lightly by wasting tons of postage money and time on a poorly crafted letter.

Like you guys, our service fees are among the highest in our area but we offer certified inspectors and a higher level of service.   We know the same is true for your company – you get what you pay for.  Having tried a marketing firm and receiving inferior service, we would rather go with the best. You guys do a great job and you customer assistance is top notch!  --Stacey Ridgeway, Manager, Mason’s Chimney Service & Certified Air Duct Cleaning.

Should you run into a snag or want the letter created for you, please contact us. I'd be happy to create a letter that will do the trick.

My guarantee: I’ll create a letter that will outpull your existing Direct Mail’s results or I’ll give you a refund.

Custom Ad or Direct Mail Piece Creation Service