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Thoughts on grabbing people’s attention with your mailers and a few direct mail tips.

Transcription

If you were your customer, what would you do?

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I want to talk about this, this because the psychology behind it is kind of cool.

My wife came into me with a piece of mail, we talk about these things once in a while, because we like to see things from our perspective of what would I do?

What are the things that attract my attention and what would I do if I was my own customer?

We watch for things that that pull our attention and like to dissect why.

This is a great example, we’re going to talk a little bit about this envelope, and why it caught her attention.

So we own a property management company. And on occasion, we’ll get a piece of mail trying to play toward that.

That’s what this is, this was specifically playing toward. Well, specifically, it was more for an association that we used to be a member of. And so I’d like to talk about the envelope.

Now, the inside of the envelope was a different story, it’s there was not enough there to really discuss, but I want to talk about the outside of the envelope. Because if you’re sending out mail, I want you to think about how it affects other people and different ways of handling the same, the same issue.

Because there are many different ways that can work. It all depends on what you’re trying to get and who you’re trying to speak to.

Initially, I want you to think this about this not just regarding mail is just direct mail snail mail that shows up, I want you to think about regarding your emails, regarding your social media, regarding everything that you put out there to either prospective customers, current customers or previous customers.

Everything that you’re doing, you have to think, what would I do if I were them?

The best-case scenario is if you actually have something in common with your customer, it’s not always necessary but it’s a good place to be in because you kind of come with that.

And if not, if you know someone that has similar traits that are in the same industry or you know your customers well enough, try and get their take on different things.

If you can do that, on a smaller sampling, before you make it a wider sampling, you’ll save a whole lot of money and you’ll get a lot better effect.

So let’s talk this mail piece gives us a good idea of that. You can see here, there are a couple of things that they did that’s very interesting here.

The first off right up here, it’s very subtle.

Most people won’t to catch it.

There’s a person’s name and address. There’s no name of that this actually came a from an organization, company organization, what have you.

The name of the organization isn’t up there. All it says is Michael P Akin. Okay?

That’s all it says, that can be anybody.

It’s from Alexandria, Virginia, a very commonplace to get things from, you know, larger area in Virginia. There’s just nothing to really tell you who it’s from.

If you’re reaching out to person, especially if you’re going cold and you’re coming in for the first time. So the like that is actually pretty useful because it doesn’t tell you anything.

The one thing it does tell a person, you know, a lot of these things are subconscious. They may not, people look at it quick, they’re either gonna dump it, or they’re going to open it and your whole idea is get him to open it.

Some of the subconscious things is because it’s printed the way it’s printed. And because it’s got a great big headline here.

One thing they will realize immediately, this is a piece of commercial mail.

This isn’t from a friend, this isn’t a business letter that I’m receiving from another business. This is this is somebody trying to get money out of me.

So they will realize that right away and there’s a benefit to that. If your message is clear, which this one is pretty good. But we’ll get to that in a second. The other thing that throws it off is you got the nonprofit owner.

So it is a nonprofit organization, nonprofit org, US postage paid that little stamp right up that little, whatever they call that that’s up here on this side.

This is why a lot of people for years and years and years going all the way back before Gary Halbert or recommending using a live stamp so an actual stamp that you buy out of a machine or you get an A roll or whatever put that on there.

That gives it a little bit more power in terms of it looking like it actually went through human hands. So there might actually be something personalized for me in there.

But this is not attempting to get past that which is funny that they went with just the regular name here. They really do want to use curiosity to pull you in even though they’re, they’re showing off the fact that this is, this is a piece of somewhat commercial mail.

So this says, has the great..and I’m reading it for those who are listening and not watching, “Has the great resignation disrupted your workforce?”

So pretty good, pretty good draw because it’s the great resignation is something that’s kind of been popping around there.

Even if a person doesn’t know what that means it’s capitalized. So you’re going to Okay, well, what is and there’s a, there’s a subheadline here. This is right on the face of the envelope for those you can see.

It says develop new strategies on talent acquisition, and retention, to find and keep great employees.

Who’s this gonna play to?

Someone who wants to find and keep great boys?

Who is it not going to play to anyone that either did not read it or is it looking for great employees binding and keeping great employees, they either already have them, or they’re not looking for them?

So right away, that is going to determine a huge percentage of who opens and who doesn’t, if you’re going to put it on there, you might as well be bold about it.

They did that pretty well, it did. What’s funny about it is it attracted my wife’s attention, even though she wasn’t interested specifically in finding great employees right now. But she noticed how it did grab her.

She did find it to be a good headline and it is for the right crowd.

If that’s the only people you’re looking to get to, this was a good one.

So it’s something to keep in mind all the little things all along the way, even down to the color of the envelope. This I’m not sure if you can tell because the lighting in here isn’t the best.

This is not a distinct white envelope like you would be used to it is it has a slight yellowish tinge to it. I don’t even know what you’d call that. But because of that, it gives off the idea that it is different. It isn’t typical. It’s something that’s more commercial, at least to me, that’s what it gives off and maybe maybe reading too much into it. But I pay a lot of attention to these subliminal concepts that people go through.

If you think that the big guys don’t pay attention to this, you’re wrong. They pay a lot of attention to it, they will try different colors or different shades of colors to see what which gets the most pool.

These are all things that get paid attention to and even if you’re a small company, it’s something you want to pay attention to not just for direct mail across the board, you have to think about what would I do?

If I were them. You see if you can start there and keep focus in that area. You don’t have to be there all day long. You do have to think about it on a regular basis, though. And if you’re not thinking about it you better have somebody reliable thinking about it at your company.

That’s all I got for today.

Hey, go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

Amazon-Proof just means that making it where the big guys can’t pull you down. Even if they’re amazon.com

You should be able to overcome competition, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

Go buy yourself a fruit, go buy yourself a copy or get a free copy from my website. AmazonProofBook.com That’s all I got for tonight.

You have a good night, and we’ll be back here tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.