Follow - Up Made Easy

"We are a team that Finishes" the much repeated quote from Alabama's coach Saturday night reminds me of a funny paragraph about follow-up in a book by Dan Kennedy that goes something like this.

I am talking follow-up, not some form letter - post card, or message on your answering machine "It was good to see you" type of half-hearted attempt. How about, receiving an inquiry phone call, and answering the prospects questions, referring them to your website for more information, sending them a free report with a response option, sending a sample package with yet another chance to respond and then putting them on your newsletter mailing list from now until forever. Now that's real action. That's follow-up!

Isn't that kind of asking alot from a stack of business cards wrapped in a rubber band and tossed on the desk ? Yes, our after network event office re-entry has looked like that before too, and it just doesn't get you very far. The fact is you can't get to never-say-die follow up with business card bombs (you ever hear one of those things hit the table if you give it a toss? Bomb is appropriate due to sound alone). Before you check the menu on the next event the follow-up system has to be in place. Our system we are building - Here Goes!

We have about six basic letters to address different likely events. Oh no not canned letters! How distastefully detached and soooo boring. In the word processor we can change these around to be personal and specific, but the fact that they are basically already in existence means that the personal and specific message we have in mind has a much better chance of actually getting sent. So no, I don't like canned food, nor sending really canned letters.

Next, (this is in the works here) a binder with a page protector for each database that is to be used for follow-up ie. breakfast at noon attendees, hard copy newsletter, e- newsletter. Cards, contacts and messages get put into the appropriate database page protector as soon as they break the plane of the office door for addition or deletion. A note goes in the front of the binder very briefly (post-it note kind of brevity) describing which letter is to be sent to which data base. When the letter gets printed the database is updated first and then merged to the letter.

Do the math, we have three computers, 4 people working on Solid Rock and two are not old enough to drive. How many hours will you spend searching for letters saved somewhere if the file names are not permanently affixed to the inside of the binder? Answer: Too much and who has hair to spare for pulling out. We are seeking to lead a quiet and peaceable life here. We will put the file names of letter outlines (outlined not canned) in the binder so they cannot fall out.

Traditional, blood hound follow-up or direct response.
After a year with a steady diet of direct response marketing reading material, the crux of the issue jumped out at me when I read the last paragraph of a packet of canned oops (these really were canned but good for starter) letters which each read " A member of our team will be in contact with you soon". This is traditional follow-up meaning we will call, and the company that used these letters in our industry did extremely well with it. However, direct response marketing is different and has an advantage. It encourages the person receiving the letter to make contact with the company sending the letter if they are interested and would look something like "Read the complete story at www. or call to leave your address so we can send you a free copy.", or call or email us before Nov 1 and we will send you a FREE ...". The letter is framed to make the mode of response clear, easy and rewarding but the key is the interested contact identifies him or herself as a prospect, vice a team member having to call them and carry this process out. Wow, that saves a ton of time and all the no's involved in salesmanship. Anyone who is not interested simply throws the letter out, any one who is faxes a form to get a promotional item, logs on for a free report ect.

How much nicer to talk to will you be when you break the plane of the office door and exit at the end of the day never having had to speak to the non-interested contacts?

How much happier are they not to have had to talked to you?

How much better off are the contacts turning into prospects who get a prize or discount for making the effort to demonstrate their interest?

How much better will they be served if your sole purpose is to get busy providing what they need since you are not weeding through not interested contacts and calling them up?

Truly this type of marketing makes follow-up much easier. It still needs a system, but here is motivation to make that happen. The rest of the system is a chart showing the next step if a response is not received after an initial letter for follow -up. It may be a card, free report or useful item. Something scheduled as a second chance to respond and is very likely to be a pleasure to be received. The final step is as the first paragraph described adding them to your mailing list from now until forever. So long as the newsletter is opt out and useful to begin with that's about the size of it. The contact has every oppotunity to respond by seeking information in a very non-confrontational manner (ie. reading an article on a blog - no one has high pressured you to buy buy buy while you have been reading this yet), and make a decision at their pace, while never being just dropped. When the contact a company is gaining are well matched to what they offer then the record of organizations that use this type of easy (once its in place) follow-up strategy is very, very good.

Pics of binder set up and examples of direct response letters COMING SOON!

The "Wow! Now that's Incredible Timing" Marketing Award

No, nobody wins anything, but this is an example of timing for a marketing piece that really hit the mark. 9 days before an InvestTools subscription (on-line stock training and very cool analysis/ tracking tool) ran out, an 8 page full color, magazine style report comes in the mail announcing a very inexpensive stock in a brand new industry about to skyrocket. Hmm, well maybe I won't let the subscription run out and renew in six months like I was planning. After all, if I invest here then of course I will want to track it. Well, now let me think about this.

Regardless of what I decide, this stopping in my tracks is exactly what the Lowell Report, as the mini-mag piece was called, was meant to do. This was not stand alone, but part of a top rate follow up including free coaching and periodic calls. I'm not selling the subscription, but pointing out from a consumers point of view that I might not have been willing to trust anything that came in the mail if I had not been associated with ongoing contact to a real person and responsive company on the same subject.

Kudos to the Lowell report for great timing. A " ho hum, I guess they are trying one last shot to keep me as a client.", changed to "Where were these reports all summer!" - That's our goal in marketing - to provoke an "I wish I had known this earlier" kind of response.

Direct Mail Marketing

What 1 Single Factor Can Boost Response to Your Mailing
by 400% ?

Say for instance you are an accountant announcing to area businesses how you can help them take advantage of a new tax law to save them money. You broadcast your "grand" news via 1000 letters. Now you check your watch, sharpen your pencil and wait for the phone to explode due to call over load.

With a letter alone, you ( the savvy accountant employing sound marketing principles) will likely end up making appointment's with 1.8 % of those who received your mailing. So for 1000 pieces out 18 appointments come in. That could be very worth worthwhile especially in this case where an appointment equals a sale. If this same example involved you selling copy machines, then the number of sales you typically walk away with after 18 appointments would tell you how much good this marketing endeavor is doing for your bottom line.

Now back to our accounting scenario. If the letter went out with a pen in it (and you tested the package out at the post office 1st to make sure it fit through auto-sort slot and does not cost an exorbitant amount to mail) you could expect the number of appointments that you reap to jump from 18 to 27 for the same 1000 letters. You could have sent a postcard announcement alone, but of course that can't carry a pen and typically postcards are weeded out prior to arriving at a decision makers desk in cold business to business sales.

Now, you want to save businesses a bundle with this new tax opportunity. How can you max out your response to your letter so that you get 73 appointments from the same 1000 pieces ??

Send a bigger item?
Add a music chip as used in greeting cards?

They might work, but here the "heavy weight" package is not required. Send the letter plus a promotional products incentive (basically a promise of a gift) and statistically you can expect 73 people to respond and ask for the offered FREE gift and an appointment! 400% more appointments, from the same amount of time, work, stamps, paper and ink than a letter alone. If each sale were $100 (not big but its simple math) the results from a letter alone compared to a letter with a promotional product incentive would mean the difference between $1800 and $7300.

Denny Gorman, a consultant to the Promotional Products Industry, published these results because the experience is credible, but still astounding. The statistics do not cover results of a 3D mailable that would increase open and read rates (the rate at which your letter is not left unopened and thrown away) plus an incentive, but a big factor to realize is that an incentive costs no extra to mail.

The 3rd Edition of Dan Kennedy's The Ultimate Sales Letter records a real life example. An exhibitor for a trade show sent out an invitation to visit their booth (and included a large, themed 3D item) along with an incentive for a promotional product to be presented upon visiting the booth. Counting visitors at a booth would compare to counting appointments to determine positive responses. The increase in traffic over previous years was 75%. Hopefully, they matched the incentive to prospect so that their booth resembled profitable business appointments and not a fire sale. I think it's fair to assume they did or they would not be held as an example.

We have built our business on networking with promotional product give aways and doing trade shows with graduated size gifts (ie. walk- by freebie, and a larger gift if you schedule an appointment while you are at the show). Last year our company growth was 75% so we know the idea works. We are really grabbing onto this particular avenue of mailing with incentive though because clearly we can reach alot more business people that way. Another serious advantage: this is a very unpushy manner of sales. Businesses or individuals basically announce themselves as being interested, and all we are doing is offering a nice free gift.

Finally, if you are reading this article because you saw it in a letter from Solid Rock Promotions then you are living proof of the effectiveness of lumpy mail and possibly incentives. Did you open the lumpy envelope to see what was in it? Most people do, if you have a whole pile of mail why not open one with a present? The "lump" wasn't a rock or a chipped marble, but something useful so you thought at least somewhat favorably of the sender (us! Thanks) .