Direct mail

  Crystal Balls make life easy, especially for the marketers amongst us. But as they are total figment of our childhood imaginations, we’ll just have to make do with research and copywriting cunning. Direct mail isn’t easy to write. Oh yes it is! No, it isn’t. Because if you think all  you need is a bit of blurb about your product, a price and a way for your customer to order, you’re not going to be very successful. Basically speaking, for your direct mail campaign to work you must have a brilliant: List Offer Copy ...

Although there are many different uses for the direct mail letter, they all have common characteristics that make them successful. Of course, your list and your offer will also have a big impact on your success rate but the characteristics I will be talking about are those that make the letter powerful, engaging – a sales force to be reckoned with. So, that must mean the copy. How you write your letter will determine whether you successfully engage with your reader. A lot depends on the words you use… Be personal When you are in a face to face selling situation, the first thing the sales person will try to do is build rapport. That is exactly what your letter has to do. Use language that will engage your reader ...

    Direct mail has always been a very effective marketing tool – but only if you get it right. It won’t have a place in every business, especially with the advances in online marketing. But it is still very much alive and well. If you dabble in direct mail and want your campaigns to be successful, there are three elements you should use to maximise your chances of success:   Make sure the content of your letter appeals to your target market Make sure it is written to inspire your audience to take an action Make sure you can monitor its effectiveness ...

  OK you men out there – we know what’s on your mind. Don’t try to deny it, I read somewhere that you think about sex every six seconds so it must be true. The problem with that is, as a copywriter, it causes a bit of a problem. No matter what I write, there’s a fair chance your mind is going to be elsewhere. For example, if I write a sales letter  that takes about five minutes to read, my beautifully crafted sales pitch will be interrupted by your carnal thoughts fifty times! The point I’m trying to make is that when anyone picks up your sales letter, there’s a good chance they’ll be focusing on something ...

As a copywriter I am frequently asked by my clients to write direct mail sales letters. These are quite an art form in themselves and can be quite complex to write. But the work begins long before you actually put pen to paper or finger to keyboard. In fact this is true for just about any form of copywriting. If you launch in without a lot of thought, you are very unlikely to produce something that will be strong enough to sell. There’s a lot of ground work to get through before you should even consider writing. The first stage is to know your market. How can you convince someone to buy something if you don’t know what they want? But not only do you need to understand who you ...

Being a copywriter my work has to inspire, entertain and inform my readers. It has to help them make the right buying decision, which, of course, means coming to the conclusion that that product or service I happen to be writing aboutis the one they want. But there is a saying coined by yours truly that shows this isn't quite as easy as it sounds: ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a reader in possession of a sales letter, will be in close proximity of a rubbish bin’ OK, so I may not have come up with that one totally on my own - I had a bit of help from Jane Austin. But it is very true - people don't like sales letters. They turn up on your door step unannounced trying ...