If you are looking to improve response from your mailers, you better first understand what makes them work, or fail.

First thing I like to think about is what is it that I want this piece of mail to accomplish. This may seem dumb but I can't tell you how many businesses I deal with that think they are a 'killer postcard' away from success.

No postcard on earth will bring in mountains of sales, unless you mail many mountains of ads. Knowing this and the fact that responses will likely be below 2%, does that change your perspective?

Your postcard is a salesman!

When you put any wording in your postcards or sales letters, how does it sound when read out loud? When we write them we tend to write in a stagger. We think of one word (or a small grouping of words) at a time.

What seems to sound right to you will sound mechanical and hard to read for the consumer.

Solution

Sit down with a pad and pen. Pretend you are speaking directly to someone about your service. How would you start the conversation? Not likely "do you want clean carpets?"

Write down why someone should have the service performed. Don't forget that majority of the people reading the ad had no intention of hiring this service, before seeing it… give them intention!

Write down as many answers to this question as you can think of. Ask your current customers why they needed this service.

Why you?

Now that you got them thinking about their situation, tell them why you are the best solution for this problem.

NEVER, and I mean NEVER use a superlative (we're #1, best, greatest) as that causes immediate distrust. As NO business can call themselves any of these things… only customers can (use testimonials for this).

Take your pen and pad and start writing down the benefits of what your service provides. If it is carpet cleaning, perhaps it's features like 'we pre-vacuum'. That is a feature as it does not define the solution. Now let's benefitize it- " Unlike other carpet cleaners, we pre-vacuum carpets so you don't have dirt bubbling up days later. Leaving you with truly fresh and clean carpets".

In that statement I gave the feature, benefit AND re-positioned the competition without sounding like it. You become the expert that goes the extra mile to make sure they get all they can from your service.

The hard part…

Try to add a few of these to one ad! The more you can add to this the more responses you will get.

Close hard!

The close is vital, whether a postcard, letter or even an email. You want them to make an action (respond). Careful on using cheapness as a carrot. That can bite you in the ass later (as cheap customers are reluctant to ever pay full price).

Try to add value that does not lower the price of your main service. I do this by adding a premium. If you sell carpet cleaning try offering free scent, 3M protection, curtains, couch or some other service not carpet cleaning. This keeps your prices intact while prodding them along.

Always put value to your premium! Free is worthless unless it has a perceived value. "FREE upgrade to gold protection plus ($75 value)"

GUARANTEE! You MUST guarantee your work (known as risk reversal). You cannot expect them to trust you from a postcard. They need all the assurance they can get. There is no question guarantees improve response.

Mention you give free quotes. I forgot to once and I had 3 people call and ask if it was free to get an estimate… imagine how many did not take the time to find out.

Read your ad several times over… then ask someone to read it and see if they think it flows well.

Last but most important

The headline. You MUST use a headline to give them a preview of what the ad is for. Do not try to be funny or generic. "Dirty windows?" will not grab attention and will likely send your ad to the trash with lightning speed.

One headline I successfully used was "A home with dirty windows is like a nice smile with yellow teeth". That creates a mental image compelling them to read more. Now it's up to the rest of the ad to keep them interested and compel them to call.

This outline covers postcards, flyers, door hangers or even newspaper ads.

Go get some

Paul McQuillan