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by André Vatke |
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Most traditional mailings to "cold" prospects will receive anywhere from one-half to a rare three percent response. The key word here is "cold." A "cold" prospect knows nothing about you, and could care less if you are even alive or not. As a matter of fact, you may even be creating stress for the person because you are clogging up that prospect's mailbox with information he or she does not want. If you take a look at some of the numbers associated with a cold mailing, you may even wonder if the direct mail business is even worth pursuing. For example if your cost to mail 1000 letters is $550 (this includes printing costs of letter and circular, printing on outer envelope and reply envelope, and postage costs), and you receive a one-half of one percent response, you would receive a total of 5 orders. In order to make a profit on the mailing, you would have to have a profit of more than $104 for your product. Remember, this does not include how much it actually costs to produce your product. After you factor in these production costs, you would have to charge a lot more than $104 to make any money. I don't know about you, but I would not send someone more than, or in many cases, less than $104 if I have never heard of them before. Especially, if I did not request their package anyway. If your percentage response is higher than one-half of one percent, than you could charge less. But from my experience, and others I have talked to, attaining numbers higher than this are rare, even with an outstanding sales letter. So, how can you get a 10 to 15 percent response from Direct Mail? The answer to this question lies in the word, "cold." You see, in order to get higher percentage responses from your direct mail, you must mail to "warm" prospects. A "warm" prospect is someone that shows an interest in what you are offering, and actually requests more information from you. How do you find these "warm" prospects? The answer lies in a technique called Two-Step Marketing or a "Soft Offer." The goal of Two-Step Marketing is to first get the prospect to request information from you, and then once the prospect has had a chance to go through your information, order your product or service. Two-Step Marketing is a lot less threatening, and gives the prospects a chance to become familiar with you. Plus, once the prospect has requested information from you, his or her name and address are on your file forever. This means that you can contact them in the future with new product or service offerings, or you can provide their names and addresses to list managers for profit. So, in many cases, Two-Step Marketing can be a lot more profitable than trying to make a one-time sale from a direct mail package. The next big question is where do I find these warm prospects. Well, based on my experience, if you do not wish to spend a lot of money, there are two very good places to start - Classified Ads, and Direct Mail Postcards. Classified ads are good because they are very inexpensive, and they can be placed in many places - newspapers, magazines, computer bulletin boards, and online services just to name a few. Postcards are good because they are very inexpensive to mail, and you can use the same message as in your classified ads. When you are writing your message in an ad or a postcard, you must remember to get the reader's attention and curiosity, otherwise your ad will be skipped over. Remember, the goal here is to make the prospect request more information from you. In all my ads I offer a FREE Report. These two words have worked magic for me, since the prospect does not feel threatened. FREE Report helps to relax the prospect because he or she knows that a sales person is not on the other end using "High Pressure" techniques. Also, when requesting that someone contact you, make sure you have in place, something for them to contact you on. This may seem a little elementary to tell you this, but you will be surprised at the number of people that forget this one simple thing. You need to make it as easy as possible for the prospect to contact you. This can be easily accomplished by having a phone number in your ad, an e-mail address, web page, an 800 number, or some other way that makes it very easy for the person to contact you. Now, let's look at how the numbers would work out based on results I have had. If you advertise in print media such as newspapers or magazines, you can expect to spend anywhere from $10 to $150 for a classified ad. A color postcard mailing to Leaders Club leads costs me about $80 for 120 leads, postage & printing. Out of this I normally receive about 8 to 15 calls for additional information. From 10 inquiries I'll get at least 1 to 3 to join my MLM program. I have gotten as much as half with additional follow-ups. This represents an annual profit of over $400 on every person even if they never promote the business. My goal is to help them in promoting their business (of course). When they do, each first level person is worth on average $3500 in annual income. Not bad for a $80 investment. The key in MLM is to think long term and not short term. You must build a relationship with your downline and mentor them to success. If you don't know how to do this you need to find yourself a mentor. Leaders Club is a good place to start. Also check with your upline. Find someone who is already successful and then ask them if they would be your mentor. It's the only way you will achieve long-term success. Best of luck and happy hunting! About the author:
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