Hi Again!
You know... there was a time, long before the Internet, when most people looked forward to getting mail. I mean real mail like letters from friends and relatives. Letters that were written personally, in ink, using a fountain pen and later the more convenient ball point.
Then as time went on, marketers realised that people liked receiving letters, and so they hit on the idea of writing letters to people to tell them about products and services they were offering. These letters were quite generic in layout and although they were a little impersonal, people responded positively to them.
This became known as the Direct Response Sales Letter.
Later, marketers and copywriters realised that if they engaged their readers by tapping into their thought processes and then tweaked at their emotions, the responses to their product offers could be increased. And very soon marketers were making millions from their mail order businesses.
Now, like everything in marketing, if you can get one step ahead of your competition then you can make a small fortune virtually overnight. And that's when the mailing list broker was born. It soon became obvious that if you had a large list of names of people who were interested in buying certain products, then you too could make a lot of money.
A list like that was very valuable. A list that contained first and last names, postal addresses and details of previous purchases was like gold... and to the same extent it still is.
The list broking business soon became almost as big as the marketing businesses and list-building eventually became part of the marketing process.
Marketers started to look at ways that they could find prospects who might be interested in buying their particular products rather than just blindly sending out mail to random names and addresses.
It became obvious that marketers needed to focus on particular niche interest groups, and offer them products that would be more suited to their wants, needs and desires.
To more closely target specific markets, the 2 step process was deployed.
The first step was to place a small ad in a magazine that the likely prospect might buy, or to place an ad in a newspaper classified section. The small ad would always end on a call to action, which would either be to ask the prospect to write for further details, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope or call a telephone number.
Once the marketer had the name and address of the prospect, this became hot property because the prospect responded to the ad and was therefore interested in the product.
The marketer would then send the prospect a long sales letter explaining the benefits of the product, the features of the product and why the prospect should own the product. The letter would include an order form for the prospect to send back together with their payment.
Some switched on companied like Reader's Digest went one step further and personalized their mailings. This had a dramatic impact on response because it appeared that the letter was specially written for them. It would also appear as though the writer has personally signed the letter.
Many millionaires were created from direct mail, but today it has much less impact.
Today we all get far too much junk mail and don't bother to read hardly any of it. One reason is we simply value our time more. And the other reason is the Internet. If we want to buy something we'll just go online and find out all about it first. And compare prices.
Marketers still use some of the old mail order tricks, only now they are much more focussed on delivering their sales pitch via a web page. And that's a whole different story that I'll save for another day. Suffice to say that the long sales letter is dead or at the very least... terminally ill.
Ah well C'est la vie!
See ya soon.
Bill
Knight-Writer
eMarketingToolkit
License2Profit
MoneyHarvest
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