The most important of all direct response tips I could give you is this… your list is the most important part of your entire direct mail campaign. Who you mail to is much more important than what you mail them. So if your campaign has proven successful, mail to other lists that are similar to your target market.
Here is another one of the more important direct response tips that you should be aware of… it’s to change up your offer from time to time. If you change it up, it will be constantly fresh and the same people won’t be getting the same offer time and time again, thus diluting your response rate.
Improve upon your creative. Perhaps your rate of response is suffering due to the fact that your package is not so attractive. Why not try something completely different? Next time, mail out a post card instead of a letter. There are so many ways you can change things up and keep your offer fresh.
You may also want to try and mail out a different time from what you were previously doing. Are you sending out the offers at the same time of the week, month, year, etc.? If so, change up the frequency, mail more, mail less, just change it up.
Here is a must, of all the direct response tips, this one can have a great impact, because it’s the ability to offer your clients other payment options. Decades ago all we could accept were checks and MO’s. However, today just about any business can get a merchant account and accept credit cards. Give your customers more options and they will use them.
Another one of my favorite direct response tips is to offer a premium. Such as a free Apple iPod as opposed to a cash discount.
Give something away for free, you’d be surprised… FREE is still a very strong word – for as overused as it can be sometimes.
Offer a money back guarantee. This will put your customer at ease and actually increase your response. Sure, you may get a refund here or there, but imagine those orders that you would have not gotten because you did not show confidence in your product to offer a guarantee?
Be credible. Know what you’re offering from top to bottom, convey that on paper and you will appear as an authority. Your customers want what you have… why should they get it from you?
Make the order process as easy as possible. Kind of like the payment options above, let them mail their order, call it in, fax it in, order online, etc.
As for the order through the sales process. Put in your call to action. You’d be surprised how many offers don’t have a call to action. That’s direct marketing 101.
Add more content to your package if results are slowing down… Change it up and see what happens, track it, test it and improve upon it.
I just gave you a few direct response tips. This is not all and everything having to do with direct response, just a tiny fraction of it. I hope to have given you an eye opener with these direct response tips, use them and increase your business today.
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