To be successful with direct mail when running a store closing sale or going out of business sale here are some tips that will increase your response rate:
• At the top of your letter use a powerful headline that shouts the most important benefit you offer. You should always use a larger font size for your headline than you use for the body of your letter and it should be bold.
• Use a friendly conversational style when writing your letter. Don’t make it too corporate by trying to impress your prospects with your command of the English language and large words. You’ll turn them off if you do and they won’t respond well to your message.
• Always use a “P.S.” in your letter to restate your strongest benefit and offer. Most people read a “P.S.” first before the body of the letter.
• Your letter must focus on the benefits to your potential customer. Everyone cares about one thing – “What’s in it for me?” You need to tell them.
• Ask your prospect to take immediate action such as come to your store, complete a entry card, call you. If you don’t ask them to take action, they won’t.
• Set a time-frame on how quickly they need to take action to receive the benefit. Open-ended offers seldom generate responses.
• Never use mailing labels on your envelops. Mailing labels scream “junk mail”. Use a mailing label and your letter goes to the circular file right away.
The national average direct mail response rate is only 1%. What that means is that if you send out 100 letters, the average response rate is one customer for each 100 letters you mail. The more targeted your mailing list the better the response rate. Mailing to your existing customer list will dramatically improve that response rate.