Mailpost Peter Kritas

Postcards are perhaps the least expensive way of reaching a large number of people with your sales message. Although they have their drawbacks, they are cost-effective at attracting new customers. But only if you follow some simple rules that professional direct mail copywriters follow.

Grab their attention on Side A

Side A is the side with the picture on it. One beauty of a direct mail postcard is that your prospective customer does not have to open it. There in the morning mail is your sales message, seen by all. So make sure you put something on Side A that arrests the attention of your prospect. Here are some ideas:

1. a wacky photograph

2. a photo of your product in an unusual setting

3. an outrageous (but true) claim

4. your unique selling promise stated in a clever or intriguing way

5. your prospect’s problem (the one that your product or service solves), stated or presented in a compelling way

The only goal of Side A is to arrest attention and stimulate interest. OK, so that’s two goals. You must motivate your prospect to turn your postcard over to read the other side. So make sure Side A is arresting and interesting but does not tell your whole story.

Sell them on Side B

Side B is the one with the address and postage stamp. Here you create desire and motive your reader to take action. You do not have much real estate upon which to give your sales pitch, so stick to your strongest benefit. Describe in clear, compelling language what your reader gets by buying your product or service. You don’t have enough room here to say enough to make a sale, so just sell the next step.

Ask for the next step, not the order

The next step these days is often for the prospect to visit your website. That’s a great use for a direct mail marketing postcard: driving potential buyers to a special page on your website (called a landing page) where you give the entire dog and pony show and give prospects a convenient way to part with their money, if I may put it that way.

The next step may also be for the reader to call you, or to visit your business. Both good uses of direct response postcards. So make sure you say enough, and in a strong enough way, on this side of the card to motivate a potential buyer to lift the receiver or start heading in your direction. Which brings us to your offer.

Make your offer irresistible

All direct mail pieces should contain an offer. The offer is what you dangle in front of prospects to motivate them to take the next step in giving you their business. What you are selling and what your offer is are two different things. For example, using direct mail, banks promote credit cards. That’s what they are selling. But to persuade you to act today they extend you an introductory and time-limited interest rate of only 2.5% (some conditions apply, of course!). That’s their offer. Their offer must overcome inertia. And so must yours. Make sure your postcard features a strong offer. For more information on crafting effective offers, read the many articles I’ve written on the topic, found at my website.

Mailpost Business Franchise Opportunities

Having a good and organized mailing list can result of having a good email delivery rates as well. Though many internet marketing newbie ignore this stuff, some underestimate this step and they are all wrong. But others say that mailing list is a powerful email marketing tool you will ever have in your arsenal. This marketing strategy was tested by many people and for them it was really effective and turned to be successful on generating huge sales, quick revenue, making their subscribers to be active again, and getting back old customers, and many more.

This old school tactic seems to be tedious, because it will really take a lot of time to create a huge mailing list, especially when it is your first time to do this task alone without any guide or tips from the experts. But as long as you are really determined then no task is difficult for you right? First thing you want to do is use a software to collect names and store them in a database you can use Aweber for this, next is create a form for the user to submit the data you need to make sure your mailing lists are targeted, be sure to check that your email server is not listed on spam blacklist filters before sending your form. Then after collecting and giving them a form, offer a unique content that is only available in your newsletter or you can share an E-book rather. Make sure to include your opt-in box at the bottom of each article.

Mailpost opportunities

With the rise of social media, there have been various rumors circulating that email marketing is dead. Several entrepreneurs I’ve consulted with recently have been reluctant to get started with email marketing, thinking it was too much work for too little reward. But nothing could be further from the truth, especially if you utilize a few email marketing best practices.

Though the statistics look daunting, claiming that up to 50% of all email marketing goes straight to the spam box; this simply isn’t a hard and fast rule. Successful email deliverability is not a game of chance. For most reputable marketers the percentage rate of emails that do not get through is usually much lower than 50%, and some marketers claim loss percentages as low as 5%. Here are some of the email marketing best practices that have helped expert marketers get maximum email deliverability.

Get Certified

Getting your email program certified helps to greatly improve your email marketing reputation. Having certification through nearly any vendor will help with email deliverability. Once your email is certified, it makes your marketing messages appear reputable to the ISP and worthy of being delivered directly to the inbox. It will not fix all reputation issues with all ISPs but it will go a long way toward doing so. It will greatly reduce the number of times your message is blocked or filtered out.

Understand that Delivered Does Not Always Mean Delivered

Many marketers falsely believe that the amount of “delivered” emails that their broadcast system reports accounts for the number of emails that get to recipient inboxes. Unfortunately, this simply isn’t true. Many times these numbers only reflect what wasn’t sent back as undeliverable. It doesn’t mean that your email truly reached the inbox. It is vital to any email marketing strategy that marketers find out exactly how many of their emails are bypassing the spam box and hitting the inbox. You might need to put more tracking and logging into place in order to get a more accurate idea of what your actual delivery statistics are.

The Importance of Seeding a Campaign

Seeding your campaigns is vital to understanding your overall email marketing program. Seeding basically means sending your email messages to “test” accounts. Because every ISP, every email software package, every operating system – and every different combination of the three – delivers and displays email messages differently, it’s important that you’re able to view your email messages on all these various platforms. An email marketing best practice is to send your message to your seed list before sending it to your general mailing list. This allows you to identify and fix any problems or issues before everyone on your mailing list sees them.

Getting a Good Reputation Goes Along Way

The key to getting in the inbox is to keep things clean and simple. When your emails receive few complaints within a given ISP and are exhibiting a decent open rate, your rate of delivery to the inbox can be astronomical. Some marketers have gotten so good at sending only highly relevant messages to highly interested subscribers that they consistently keep a 100% approval rate with most ISPs. This might not be easy to do but it is possible. It is all about keeping reputation high and potential customers satisfied.

Pay Attention to Subscribers

Internet marketers often forget who they are trying to market to. Keeping up with opens, click throughs, unsubscribes, and new subscribers is one of the most important email marketing best practices. If a certain email list segment or prospect demographic has a high level of spam complaints, then you’re better off removing the entire segment from your list. Target the audience that is most interested in what you have to say, the ones you can help the most, the segment that is going to benefit your company the most.

Keeping customers interested, making your email messages worth reading, and keeping things fresh – basically, paying attention to what your subscribers want – is the best way to guarantee better delivery rates and respectable open rates.

ISPs are not the only ones that marketers have to get through to in order to be successful at marketing email deliverability. Subscribers are important too. ISPs are actually working side by side with subscribers to better separate reputable marketing from spam (as evidenced by those little “spam” “not spam” buttons that you might have seen in your own ISP’s mail program). With so much input from customers, reputation is becoming more and more important. The number one best practice of email marketing is to keep reputation high and information relevant.

Mailpost Leadership

Do you have a sense of dread when you open your mailbox? Not just because of bills, but also because of everything else that’s in there with the bills. Mail is like a weed, if you don’t keep it in check, it will spread out and eventually take over any and all empty tables, countertops, and chairs you’ve got. The consequences can be more than just clutter, too. The National Association of Professional Organizers estimates that 25% of Americans pay their bills late because they can’t find them. To make things even more difficult, postal workers delivered nearly 101 billion pieces of bulk mail in 2005, a 12 percent increase from two years ago. It was the first year that bulk mail exceeded first-class mail. Strange to think there was actually a time when we waited excitedly for the mail to come, hoping for a letter or magazine. Fortunately, there are ways to stop fearing, and maybe even start anticipating, the mail again.

Alicia on “Recycling the Junk”

“When you first glance at the pile of mail you get on a daily basis, it already looks imposing. If you do a quick sorting of the pile, though, you can weed out the junk that makes up a majority of the mail. Keep a recycling bin next to where you keep your mail, and immediately toss all the unwanted catalogs, fliers, subscription offers, sweepstakes entry forms, charity solicitations, credit offers, advertising supplements, and whatever else they can dram up. You can be environmentally conscious, while also shrinking your mail pile.”

Sarah on “Opting Out”

“One of the easier ways to get a handle on your mail pile is to reduce the amount of mail you get in the first place. A good way to remove your name from several national mailing lists at once by signing up for the Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service. Thier Web site provides instructions on how to register (a $1 processing fee is charged). This service is only for national, not local, mail and only for residential, not business, addresses and is good for five years.”

Here are a few simple steps to getting your countertops free of mail piles.

#1. Create a Sorting System

The best way to organize your mail is by getting an organizer. Start by getting a mail holder with three compartments. Make compartment #1 for bills, #2 for correspondence and #3 for things that need action (e.g. forms to mail back, coupons you want to use later in the week). It’s amazing how manageable the mail suddenly becomes when it’s broken down into its contents.

#2. Make “Sorting Time”

Pick a time every day (before you leave for work in the am or before you turn on the TV at night) and take a few short minutes to sort the mail into the compartments we mentioned above. Once you’ve done that, pick a day each week (same day/time) to go through and pay the bills, answer any correspondence, put invitations into calendar, and whatever action-oriented things you need to do. That way you can start with a clean slate the following week.

#3. Magazines/Catalogs

Magazines and catalogs take up an enormous amount of space in your mail. No matter how much you may like getting all of them, there comes a time when you need to recognize whether you really need all of them. If there is a magazine you get but never have time to read, cancel your subscription. If there’s a catalog you used to like but haven’t ordered from for a while, contact them and request to be off their mailing list. You can always re-subscribe, but why waste money, and paper, on things you always throw out.

Mailpost Organisation

Are you a small to medium sized business owner? If so, are all of your duties and tasks performed by your own employees, under your own roof? If so, you may want to consider outsourcing a number of your business services. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to eliminate a portion of your staff, but it does mean that you can give them additional, more important tasks to focus on.

One of the many services that you may want to consider outsourcing to another individual or company is your business mail. If you choose to do this, you will likely be seeking a mail service. A good mail service specializes in handling your business mail for you. Depending on the type of business you run, this may help to eliminate a good portion of your work or the work of your employees.

One of the most common mail services offered is mail forwarding. Mail forwarding is most often used when a business owner, just like you, wants to acquire a well-known business address. See, most mail forwarding services give you an alternative business address. This address is where your incoming mail will first arrive. In most cases, your new, alternative business address will be located in a large, well-known city, such as New York City. After your mail has arrived at the mail service headquarters, your mail will then be shipped on to you, at your physical business address.

Although mail forwarding is the most common type of service offered, there are additional mail services that are commonly offered. One of these services includes mail sorting. If your mail is marked to go to the appropriate department or person, your business mail forwarding service should be able to sort out your mail for you. This is often done by grouping all of your mail together and sending it to you that way, all sorted. Depending on the specific business mail services available to you, you may even be able to have a portion of your mail, or junk mail, thrown away. Eliminating your junk mail, before it reaches your business, will save you time.

If you are interested in learning about additional business services that may be available to you, you are urged to contact an individual or company who offers these types of services. Perhaps, it is best to use the internet. A standard internet search should provide you with the results that you are looking for. Those results, which should include 1-800 We Answer may help make it easier for you and your business to achieve success.

Mailpost direct marketing

Not long ago, I read that well-known California winemaker Rodney Strong had passed away. While recounting his professional career, the article cited Strong’s innovative direct mail marketing tactics.

An excerpt:

“Strong developed a marketing strategy that involved direct mail in which he offered to sell wine with a buyer’s individual information on the label – ‘From the wine cellar of so-and-so,’ or ‘A gift from such-and-such corporation’.”??

The program continues to this day, as living testament to its effectiveness.

That story got me thinking about the way we market our products and services in relation to their uniqueness.

For instance:

Why do so many companies today waste time and money marketing average products and services to hard-to-impress consumers? Why don’t more companies follow the Rodney Strong model (remarkable product / service idea first; marketing second)?

Marketing the Remarkable

Rodney Strong took something simple but interesting — personalized wine labels — and made it available to his audience. Why was it so popular? Because nobody else was doing it at the time. Rodney gambled on an idea, and it worked. He made something that was remarkable to his customers. Then, all he had left to do was tell them about it (in this case through direct mail), and they asked for it by the thousands!

Here’s the idea again:

Come up with a remarkable product or service, and then start telling people about it. Word-of-mouth will take it from there.

How Do You Measure Up?

If you struggle when creating your direct mail message, it might indicate that your product or service could use a shot of “the old remarkable.”

Or think of it this way…

If you stripped away all the marketing glitz and set your product on a shelf by itself (or described your service on a plain piece of paper) — would it seem remarkable? Would it impress members of your target audience? Or, are you relying on your marketing to add the pizzazz?

Instead of struggling to promote something average, dig deep to find the above-average aspect of what you’re selling. If there isn’t such an aspect … go back to the drawing board and make one.

* You may republish this article in its entirety as long as you include the byline and author’s note. If publishing online, please leave the hyperlinks active.

Mailpost Franchise

Business to business cold calling can be made easier and more successful when you use a well crafted e-mail targeted to a specific prospect. Some studies indicate that an e-mail and voice contact strategy can increase closing by as much as 20%. So, it pays to have an e-mail address.

Of course, the problem is getting the prospect’s e-mail address.

This article provides you with 7 ways to obtain an e-mail address. The techniques tend to take time and effort, and they assume that you’re crafting a 1:1 approach to your prospecting effort (versus a mass mailing effort). If you are a financial advisor, trainer, consultant, or if you sell high end products or services, this article is for you.

WARNING: Some of the techniques below are a little edgy and must be used with integrity. What this really means is you need to follow the processes described so that you never misrepresent yourself or your company.

1. Receptionist – Just Ask

Start with the easiest of tactics. For the amount of time and effort it takes to dial a company and speak to the receptionist this approach is a no-brainer. Just call and ask. You might get lucky.

2. Website – Look for the Code

Sometimes the most obvious spot to find an e-mail address is the most overlooked. Check the website. On occasion, e-mail addresses are as bold as brass.

Look for the ‘code.’ You might not find your prospect’s e-mail address but if you can find any e-mail address chances are you’ll discover the address code.

A great place to look is the “sales contact” page. Sometimes the name of a marketing or sales rep is listed. If you see, joe.smith@abc.com chances are your client’s first name, dot, last name and the company name is all you need. (Be careful with this tactic. Sometimes the name is fictitious and is used only to garner inquiries.)

3. Call Sales or Customer Service – Direct and Indirect

Direct. A quick and easy way to get e-mail addresses is to call your prospect’s sales or customer service department. When calling sales, be candid. Explain that you are sales rep (just like them) and you’d like the e-mail address of your prospect. Sales reps understand your plight and will often help you out. This is a powerful and effective technique.

Customer Service departments can be helpful too because most CSRs have been taught to be helpful. Simply ask,

“I am sending Mr. Big an e-mail but I don’t seem to have his address. Can you help me?”

Simple as that. Always be candid if asked what you are sending.

Indirect. Some sales or customer service departments won’t give e-mail addresses as a matter of policy. One way to tackle this is to treat the call as an information gathering contact. Ask the rep for information about the company, products and services and then request his/her e-mail address in order to send then a thank you note. Et voila! You’ve got the code.

Or, if you ask the rep for Mr. Big’s e-mail address and they refuse, ask the rep for their e-mail address. They will know what you are doing but some will chuckle and give it to you. You can figure out the rest from there.

4. Experiment – Try Different Addresses

This tactic takes some time and effort but it sets you up for the next step (#5) listed below. Most e-mail addresses are standardized. For example, first name plus company name or first name last name and company name. Or maybe it is last name with an initial and company name. The variations are obvious.

If you have a handful of prime prospects and you haven’t been able to get an e-mail address despite trying a number of avenues, try sending your e-mail to the variations you’ve created. Usually you’ll get an error message on those addresses that don’t exist. Meanwhile, one of your variations is bound to get through.

But if they don’t here’s what you do next.

5. Back to Reception, Sales or Customer Service – The E-Mail Error

If the variations do not work, call reception, sales or customer service. Explain that you have attempted to send an e-mail to Ms. Decisiononi but the e-mail address does not seem to be correct:

‘I have been trying to send Ms. Decisioni an e-mail and I am wondering if I have the right address. I have,
<a href=”mailto:j_decisioni@xyz.com”>j_decisioni@xyz.com</a> Is that correct or did I get wrong?”

The beauty about this approach is that it is legitimate. You can honestly say that you have attempted to reach the prospect and that the e-mail address is truly wrong. This protects the integrity of the relationship. And while the approach does take considerable time and effort, it works well. Use it for prospects that have great potential.

6. Use LinkedIn

LinkedIn offers a vast amount of information on your prospects. First, use the search feature to determine if your prospect is a LinkedIn member. If so, review the information provide in the profile. Sometime you will find an e-mail address. Or, you can contact the prospect via LinkedIn e-mail service.

7. Use Traditional Marketing – Send Something

The final way to gather an e-mail address is to send the prospect a card or letter and request an e-mail response. Offer a special report or copy a company newsletter or send something of value (anything from an industry report to something more personal like a jar of BBQ spices) and then ask the client to respond by sending you an e-mail.

Mailpost

It is important to deliver your email newsletters on particular days of the week and not on any day.

The email or the newsletter should reach a customer or a prospect at a time when he is able to spend some time reading it and deliberating on its content.

For different types of emails, different delivery timings are appropriate. Different types of emails can be either business to consumer type, or business to business type. For any mail reaching your work station, you should be in a position and frame of mind to read it and act on it as well.

The business to consumer type of newsletters, are best sent to the prospects and the consumers over the weekend. This is a leisure time and if not busy, people will generally read the message.

The best time for business to business type of newsletters reaching the prospects is somewhere in the midweek afternoons. The better days for these email messages to reach destination would be Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. This is a time when the executives are less pressurized and stressed about time. And there are fewer messages and emails seeking their attention. Sending it during the midweek period when the executive is a little less busy, you are in a way increasing the chances of the message being read.

A very bad time for the business to business newsletter reaching the prospect is Monday morning or even Friday. This is the time when the executive is trying to catch up on the backlog of the weekend mails and maybe planning for the projects coming up during the week. If it is a Friday then he is trying to finish maximum work, before leaving for the weekend.

Remember that the newsletter will be read only if the prospect has time to read it, so why not target for a time when he is most likely to be relatively free.

It would be worth a try to follow this strategy of email and newsletter delivery

Peter Kritas Mailpost

Below are six simple, practical plans that will enable you to start and build your own money making mail order business. These plan have made money for others, and they will make money for you – If you will REALLY work at them!

PLAN #1 – SELL BIG MAILS. The easiest way to start selling by mail is to advertise and sell “Big Mails”. To get started, co-publish at least three Mail Order Magazines and several ad sheets. Use an ad like this: BIG MAIL – $1.00 – Commission Mailed Free! (Your Name and Address)

When someone sends you $1.00, send him one copy of each magazine, one copy of each ad sheet, and one copy of every commission circular that you have in stock. If you advertise regularly, and fill each order by return mail, you will soon by selling ads and subscriptions, as well as merchandise offered on the commission circulars. You can expand by regularly adding to your list of magazines and ad sheets. There are some dealers who advertise in more than 100 Mail Order Magazines every issue. If you are willing to work, you can do the same thing!

PLAN #2 – SELL DIRECTLY FROM ADS. If you are selling merchandise which is used by Mail dealers and Opportunity seekers, such as rubber stamps, information directories, envelopes, labels, mail order manuals, sample copies of opportunity magazines, etc., you can make money selling them directly from ads in the Mail Order Magazines. If you buy the merchandise in quantity, you can ship orders directly to your customers yourself. Otherwise, you can use the drop-ship method.

To be successful, you must schedule REGULAR FOLLOW-UP MAILINGS to your customers offering more of the same merchandise or items that are closely related to it. Do this consistently, month after month, and you will be amazed at the number of checks you will have to deposit in your bank account!

PLAN #3 – MAKE SALES THROUGH CIRCULAR MAILERS. If you have a good offer – one which really appeals to opportunity seekers – have your printer set up an attractive 3 x 6 circular and then pay circular mailers to mail them for you. Your circular will only pull if it offers something that mail dealers and opportunity seekers want and need.

Ideally, 3 x 6 circulars distributed by circular mailers should offer “leader items”, items which are appealing, useful and priced right (never more than a dollar or two-even less if possible). The purpose of the circular is to attract new, steady customers for your mailing list.

You should plan to make regular mailings to each person who purchases your leader item. It is the REPEAT business which makes Mail Order Profitable.

If you send 200 circulars to mailers every day for thirty days, you will have 6,000 circulars in the mail at the end of the month. If you send 500 a day, you will have 15,000 circulars in the mail at the end of the month! There are mail dealers who rely entirely on circular mailers to find new customers for them. Some of them distribute as many as 100,000 circulars every month!

PLAN #4 – SELLING THROUGH COMMISSION MAILERS. This plan is similar to Plan #3 except that you do not pay mailers to mail your circulars. Instead, you print a good commission ad on the backs of your circulars, leaving a blank space for the commission mailer to rubber stamp his name and address.

The mailer stamps his name on them and includes them in his mailings. When he receives an order for them, he keeps about half of the money as his commission and sends you the other half to drop-ship his order for him. You will probably make a small profit from his sales, but your real profits come from the circulars which he is mailing at no cost to you. This method is a little more complicated than Plan #3, since you have to stock merchandise and fill drop-ship orders – but in the long run, it is cheaper than paying mailers to mail your circulars.

You can give your circulars away free, you can ask mailers to pay their postage for them, or you can run ads in the Mail Order Magazines like this: COMMISSION CIRCULARS! 100 – $1; 500 – $3 We drop-ship for half.

There are literally hundreds of people looking for good commission circulars. This can be a very effective way of building up a very prosperous Mail Order Business – if you have the stamina to work at it!

PLAN #5 – GET PAID FOR MAILING CIRCULARS. Start by studying the mailing rates of other mailers in the Mail Order Magazines and then create a similar ad for yourself. Start small – advertise in lots of 100 and 250. Later, as you gain experience, advertise for circulars in 500 and 1000 lots.

Besides your mailing ad, you should also run an ad like this! BIG MAIL – - FREE! Postage Appreciated.

Soon after your mailing ad appears, you will start receiving small packages of circulars to mail – each with money in them! (Be sure to send a sample mailing to the mailing customer. It is the only way you will get more circulars to mail!) You will also get letters with stamps in them. Use the stamps to mail the circulars which you have been paid to mail.

As soon as you get more requests for Big Mails than you have circulars, increase the number of your circular mailing ads. If you get more circulars to mail than requests for Big Mails, increase the number of your Big Mail ads.

If you stick to your mailing copies of magazines in which you are advertising in your Big Mails, you will sell enough ads to pay for your own advertising. And if you include commission circulars in the Big Mails, your sales from them will be “pure gravy”. Circular Mailers soon learn that there are dozens of ways to make money in this business – if they keep their eyes and their ears open!

PLAN #6 – BECOME A “COMMISSION MAILER”. The first thing you should do is sit down and order SMALL quantities of commission circulars from about twenty or thirty different dealers. Most will charge you about $1.00 per hundred. A few will supply them for just the postage. Once you have done this, order at least one new batch of commission circulars EVERY DAY! (You will find them advertised in the Mail Order magazines or you can buy lists of commission circular suppliers from most dealers.) Also order 100 names of opportunity seekers from two or three different dealers.

It will take two or three weeks for your circulars to start arriving, due to present day third class mail service. As soon as you have about fifteen different circulars, start mailing them. Set a daily quota and stick to it. Five letters a day is 150 letters a month, 33 letters a day is 1,000 a month!

When orders come in, forward the order to the drop-shipper IMMEDIATELY! Then acknowledge the order and let your customer know that his order is being shipped to him direct from the supplier VIA THIRD CLASS MAIL. With your acknowledgment – INCLUDE SOME MORE CIRCULARS! I cannot over stress the importance of this. Your customer likes you and your offers – give him the opportunity to buy something else from you. He is your best source for more business.

Orders will be slow – very slow – in the beginning, but don’t get discouraged. Initially this is a slow business, and the only ones who succeed in it are those who have the patience to persevere.

When you find a customer, send him a new mailing every month for at least three months. (That is why you should be ordering NEW circulars every day!)

Once you find a circular that “pulls” – order more of them. If possible, order them with your names and address PRINTED on them. (They will almost always pull more than rubber stamped circulars.) Eliminate circulars that do not produce orders, but keep mailing the ones that do. Eventually, you will develop a mail order “package” that will be irresistible to your prospective customers.

As your customer list grows, you will soon discover that your mailings will become productive (providing that you mail to your customer regularly). A “customer list” will always pull more than a cold list. Making the first sale is certainly the hardest. Commission mailing is difficult in the beginning. Most beginners do not stick with it log enough to give it a fair chance. If you will stick with it – you can make money mailing commission circulars. It takes determination and a willingness to really work at it!

Peter Kritas Mailpost Organisation