Internet Direct Marketing Tip of the Day

Any good DM’er knows that the perceived value of a product or service has to exceed by many times the asking price. Some people accomplish this by lowering the price, while others do it by adding more perceived value to a higher-priced product or service.
While each situation is unique, it’s usually a pretty good idea to go with the latter strategy and add more value to the mix. Too cheap a price can cause people to back out of the deal entirely. After all, if an ebook, sushi knife or what have you is only fetching $4.95, how good can it be? This is especially true in B2B pricing. LC

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Before setting out to sell something to someone, ask yourself what you’ll sell them the second time out.
Often enough, the first sale is a loss-leader that serves to qualify prospects for the upsell to more expensive products later on. When done right, you can daisy-chain customers into a string of multiple purchases with increasing price points along the way. LC

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In order to get higher conversion, try this technique. Fashion the offer in such a way that it is far more painful to the prospect to not accept the offer than to take the offer.
Pile on overwhelming value, and perhaps a time-sensitive clause to induce immediate action. Because if someone has to “think it over,” it’s over. LC

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People love bulleted items. Why? Because they’re easy to skim. The reader can quickly get the gist of what your top-selling attributes are in seconds.
There was a time when people read body copy of ads and sales letters stem to stern. But we’re in the age of “over articulation,” where everyone and everything is overstated. The economical use of words by use of bullets immediately telegraphs to the reader that you are direct in your approach and in making your points.
Lots of copywriters don’t like bullets because they interrupt their “copy flow.” But copywriters sometimes overlook the fact that they’re not writing a novel. Rather, they’re constructing a message that is meant to get across the maximum benefit in a very short space. Here are some tips for bullets:
Keep Them Short
Make Them Actionable
Use “Power Words”
Make Every Word Work Hard – LC

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The best offer in the world means nothing if the email isn’t opened or the envelope gets trashed. In this way, the subject header and OE (outer envelope) teaser serves the same function.
How do you know if an OE or subject header is good? Well, see what your gut response is. Your target audience is as busy as you are and as skeptical as you are (maybe even more so). The first things you want to test are your OEs and subject headers. Because if they don’t work, nothing thereafter will either. LC

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Where can you get great examples of headlines that sell everyday of the week? Direct copywriting guru, David Garfinkel, suggests looking at the Enquirer. That’s right, the tabloid newspaper that everyone loves to diss, but feels compelled to read the headlines. The headlines in the Enquirer sell newspapers, lots of newspapers. They’re short and hit you right between the eyes. If the headline grabs your attention, or forces you to buy the paper, it’s doing its job. The publisher of the Enquirer knows exactly how successful that day’s headline was by how many issues it sold. LC

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Selling is a serious business that requires the words on a page, screen or audio track to focus the prospect’s mind on your proposition, story and call to action. Comic relief can and typically does derail the prospect’s train of thought.
Humor is a favored tool in branding copy, and from time to time in f2f (face-to-face) selling, because you are there in person to judge the reaction of the prospect. While DM copy may not use humor, it will use a wide range of other emotions, like fear, greed and pride. The irony is that some of the funniest people I know are DM writers. LC

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Compiled lists typically don’t perform as well as single source lists. A compiled list is a list comprised of mutiple lists or segments of lists. The reason they typically don’t perform as well is beccause you are sending a single message to essentially different audiences who may not share an affinity with each other. Therefore the message is either diluted in order to relate to mutiple audiences, in which case it is less relevant to any one audience, or it is focused on one audience at the expense of being relevant to the other audiences you’re mailing to. LC

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