Tag: Mail Review

EDDM – What Is It and How Do You Do It? 🏠

Posted on by brianjpombo

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If you read this before watching, spoiler, Brian’s talking about Every Door Direct Mail!

Transcription

EDDM, what is it and how do you do it?

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

EDDM stands for Every Door Direct Mail. And this is a sample of it, I’m going to talk about it what is Every Door Direct Mail.

Well, if you’re not aware, the post office has had this program for a number of years now, where you can declare a certain area, and it’s a postal route.

Within a zip code, there are specific routes you can declare a certain area and you can say I want every door in this area to get a copy of my direct mail.

Yeah, this could be an envelope, this could be a piece of paper like this, this can be a postcard, there’s a number of different, you know, ways of doing it, but you’re paying for a bulk amount to be sent out.

The idea is that it actually reaches all of those areas.

Now, depending on the personnel in your area, this may work, it may not work, and you’ve got to really keep an eye on it to make sure that it actually reaches its destination because it’s junk mail.

Because the post office knows it’s junk mail, some postal employees have been known to skip it, and to dump it off in a dumpster or hide it somewhere, just so they have less work to do.

I’m not saying all post office, all people work for the post office do this or anything of the sort I’m saying it has been known to happen and anybody that’s done any amount of work with direct mail knows that flub ups can occur.

Now, with that in mind, though, Every Door Direct Mail may be really useful for you because you can cover a really big area. If you have a message that you want most people to see that it’s a great way of doing it.

This is a piece and you can always tell whether something’s direct Every Door Direct Mail, by this right up here, I don’t know if you can see that. That is showing it actually says EDDM retail us postage paid.

So where a stamp should be, it’s going to have this little insignia. And here it says it will not have an actual name it will say a something like local postal customer.

So that’s the name this showed up in my mail and said his person probably covered a very wide area be curious, I’d love to know because I’m going to show you all the details of this piece. I’d love to know if you know this person, have them get in contact with me I’d love to find out how well this did for them. I want to know if they got their money back and more.

I want to know if they covered the enter you know county or whether they they covered very specific areas and be very interesting to to know and be able to help other people out. This is what it looks like. Very simple page.

So what was on this side is just what I showed you this is nothing but a piece of paper neon, horrible color.

These horrible colors standout and they get attention that’s part of direct mail, you got to get attention.

So even though it technically this is this can get attention as long as I mean, I doubt you get into many of these in the mail every day and on it is a very simple message.

It says Bill’s tree service with his phone number. I hope you don’t mind me showing his phone number.

If you’re in the Southern Oregon area, Josephine County, I imagined bill might be able to help you with your tree. So there’s a little free advertising for you bill. It says licensed bonded insured, and there’s his license number.

I think they may have to have that in their advertising. I’m not sure of the rules for California, but I see it quite often free estimates. So you can estimate on what Bill can do for your trees but here’s a list.

Bullet point list on the bottom of things that can happen removal, hazardous removal, wind sailing, crown cleaning, stump, grinding, hedge trimming, logging, chipping, fuel reduction, retrieval, cat drone plane antenna install.

These are all things that they can do for you at Bill’s tree service, LLC now look at how simple that is. I would bet that bill got some attention with this one way or the other.

I would bet bill got some attention nowadays with with the yellow pages not being hardly I know in at least in our area. It depends on your area. Some areas they’re still thriving, the physical yellow pages, but in our area it’s not.

The simplicity of just finding who to use for your tree services.

It’s not there and everyone’s looking a little bit different. Some people, they go into Google, some people, they have to ask someone they know some people check with the local Chamber of Commerce, or with another website that is one of these websites that you have to pay to get on as a vendor.

They’ll look at reviews online and so forth.

Bill found a way around that with a simple piece of paper sent in the mail. Now, are there ways Bill can make this even better?

Absolutely.

One of the things I’d say is I would either say the city or the if it’s Josephine County, I’d say Josephine County resident, here’s a, here’s a special deal from Bill’s tree service. free estimate for this, this is I mean, even, it’s just taking the same information and presenting in a different way.

You can get more attention, there’s a reason why you put who it’s for. And if you don’t have a name of a person, or you can’t put a name and a person like something that’s direct mail, you want to get as specific as possible. You may say, Well, this whole area is, you know, in this certain neighborhood.

So you could say that the you know, residents of the suction suction neighborhood, or Josephine County residents, we live in Josephine County, Oregon.

He could say that, that’s a quick way to be able to gain a little bit more attention, you have a couple more extra split seconds is what you’re looking for when it comes to direct mail, before between the person throwing it away.

And actually reading the next sentence reading the next thing that stands out, this is going to hit certain people, and it’s not going to hit other people, he could take this exact same one, and put it out a couple of weeks from now, and probably get a very similar result to what he’s already gotten.

If he got a good result, I’d suggest he tried again, do nothing but sin the same one out, we’ll get something maybe even a different color, another horribly ugly neon color, they do work. This is the simplicity of getting attention, though.

Sometimes it just means doing something, doing something to get attention, it doesn’t mean you have to use direct mail, it doesn’t mean that you definitely don’t necessarily have to use Every Door Direct Mail.

You can go online and check out the post offices website, you can actually see maps and see where your mail will hit in theory.

That’s a great Every Door Direct Mail is something you, you certainly want to check out. And there’s a lot of other tutorials on YouTube and so forth, where you can find out how to do it exactly. Or you can work with a professional, somebody that knows how to do it a little bit. I am business investor.

So I love discussing these ideas. I love discussing how businesses can do simple things to get attention, because there are people who are not even in your local area that will buy Every Door Direct Mail in order to reach people and it’s well worth it if they understand who their audience is and who they’re trying to get.

Even if it’s a if it’s a very small minority of the people who they’re reaching with each piece of mail.

Hopefully that’s helpful to you. I have a book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. Right now it is at the timing of this filming.

It is still available on my website for free AmazonProofBook.com.

If you get this or watch this or listen to this later, it may not still be available for free, but hopefully there’ll be something there that you can discount or something that will help you out in your business.

AmazonProofBook.com That’s all I have for today. We’ll be back tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

One Way To Reach A Specific Person ✉️ (FedEx, UPS Mailers)

Posted on by brianjpombo

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Look at another way to get your ideal targets attention via the mail.

Transcription

One way to reach a specific person.

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

I wanted to talk a little bit about how you would go about reaching a specific person, I was having a conversation with some fellows that are getting that they’re really scaling up a new business, and we were having a really lively conversation.

It occurred to me, one of the ways that they’d be able to reach people, once they know who it is that they’re looking to reach would be direct mail.

I’ve talked a lot about direct mail here. It’s not sexy. It’s not appealing to most people, but direct mail is absolutely something that is very useful nowadays, but only if you do it the right way.

If you have a very specific idea about who you’re trying to reach and what you’re wanting them to do. So I’m going to I’ll give you a scenario if there’s someone’s attention you’re looking to reach and let’s say this person is the head of a business, how would you get to them, because most of the time, they’re not going to be the ones looking through their mail.

Let’s say they want a small business but if they’re in a larger business, they’re going to have someone else’s sifting through their mail, taking out all the junk mail, getting all of the stuff that matters.

That would be pertinent and then putting that in front of you and taking it out of the envelopes and everything else. So how do you get past this person who is oftentimes referred to in any form of sales as the gatekeeper is what they call the gatekeeper?

It’s usually an assistant or someone somebody specifically in the office that is set to block out salespeople and other people from reaching the principal in charge.

So how would you go about reaching somebody?

First off, before you do anything, you have to know really who it is you’re looking to reach and why and what it is you’re wanting them to do.

So in other words, you gotta have a really clear cut, offer something that’s centered around them something that they would pay attention to, and would matter to them.

Not just, Hey, I got something you want to buy, you know, it’s got to be something that’s very central to that person, and something that they would could possibly be looking for.

Then once you have that, once you got all that worked out, and you know exactly what you would say to them, if you only had a few seconds of their attention or less.

What do you go about doing that?

Well, what you do is you craft a very simple, straightforward letter to them. And there’s a bunch of different ways, I’m not gonna go into how you would lay out the letter and everything else that’s dependent on this scenario.

I’m not going to talk about the different examples of that here. But here’s a good simple straightforward way for you to go about doing it.

What you do is you craft a letter, you make sure it’s personalized, you make sure it’s directly to them. And then you send it via usually a FedEx envelope.

In the best-case scenario, you do like a, like an overnight FedEx, you get that to them. That is one of those things that someone had to pay extra for it because they’re making it important to put it in this very clear-cut envelope.

It’s guaranteed to get opened. Okay, right off the bat because this isn’t mass media mail, in general, it’s not going to be.

It’s going to get attention one way or the other.

Second, if you don’t have the ability to do FedEx, let’s say your margins just aren’t there, you’re mailing to too many different people and you just can’t hit that.

Honestly, if you do anything you need anywhere similar in that one of those similar envelopes.

So whether you do it in a UPS envelope, which in some cases could be could be less expensive, or even a priority envelope or with the USPS with US Postal Service, or, and I apologize for those who are outside of the United States.

I don’t have experience but I’m sure you could find something similar fern wherever you’re at. Or you can they pick out the fake ones that look like they’re one of those type of envelopes.

They look like they’re from DHL, or FedEx or one of these other carriers that offers these nice envelopes.

That will be the same size everywhere else. I know.

There are a number of companies out there that offer and they’re all I didn’t have my list ready of the different companies go and search for these envelopes out there.

And you can find them and you can purchase these envelopes and send it basically like mail. Even just with a live stamp and it will get there and it will get opened. If nothing else just because of curiosity because they can’t figure out what it is.

Or they just assume that it’s one of these other things because they look very similar to USPS, a mailer, and so forth. The idea is to trick them to open the darn thing. Honestly, that’s the idea.

You could even say in it, say, the reason why I sent this to you, FedEx is because I really wanted you to hear what I had to say because this is an important message.

I knew that just sitting on anything would not necessarily make its way to your desk.

So here it is, just lay it out there be straightforward, you don’t have to be sneaky, once they’ve opened it, they’ve opened it up in front of their eyes, you got to get their attention, you got a little smidgen of time to show them that you have something that they want.

If you don’t have something they want to know it’s a waste anyways. But if you do have something they want, make sure you’re clear about that right off the bat, and put it right out there for them to snatch up.

Be very clear about what you want them to do what we call a call to action, you have to do whatever you’re calling them to act on or two do, you gotta be clear about that.

If you do that, and you’re able to get the thing opened. That’s one of the quickest, easiest ways but here’s, here’s a little extra on top of that, once you sin that even if you get zero response off of it, this now opens up so many different areas that you would not have had open to you up until now.

So now, you can make a phone call. And say, the reason why I’m calling is we said to FedEx, it should have arrived yesterday, I just wanted to see if he received it, and what his reply would be to what we were discussing this can get you also past the gatekeeper directly to him, because it’s in regards to something specific, you’re not just calling out of nowhere, I’m calling just because I want to talk to him.

You know, that’s, that’s oftentimes not not going to get you there. But if you if you have a reason why you’re calling, even an excuse like that, that’s a foot in the door that opens up everything else.

Also, let’s say the person is on LinkedIn, you can send them a message over LinkedIn. Say, I was wondering if you received my FedEx envelope in the mail yesterday. And then well, what do you think?

What are your thoughts on what was in it? there were

These are simple, very simple concepts, going directly to the email to any sort of social media to texting or phone call, doing those directly, off-puttingting in a lot of cases when it comes to business. Especially if you have zero connection to them whatsoever.

Up until that point, there’s ways of doing it.

Obviously there are pros out there that know how to do this. But having a piece of mail precede you and then asking for in reference to that piece of mail. That makes a big difference. piece of mail with a follow up phone call is the simplest thing in the world.

It will oftentimes get you right in front of the person who you need to get in front of. And if not, it may not be a good fit to begin with. But at least it’s a really good shot at doing it.

Hopefully, that’s helpful to you. I’ve written a book and it has some tips about these things in it.

It’s called, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com I normally have these sitting back here but I’m running out of copies. I gotta get some more copies sent to me because I I’ve been passing them out to people.

So you get a free copy AmazonProofBook.com. Or you go purchase a hard copy it just go on amazon.com

They’ll print one right up for you and send it out to you. It’s pretty slick. It’s a great deal. You have a great night. We’ll be back tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

DIRECTV Sneaky Mail Review 📭

Posted on by brianjpombo

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Brian gives a mail review on a recent piece of mail he received from DIRECTV.

Transcription

DirectV, sneaky mail review.

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

Forgive my messy hair I didn’t quite do anything with right came on with you. But I want to talk a little bit about this direct mail piece that I got there. I haven’t really opened it yet. I’ve only partially opened it.

I know it’s from DirectV because there’s a lot to this and it can tie back into your business if you’re paying attention to it.

I’m a Business Investor, so I like to watch for different styles of marketing.

What are the lessons, and what are the takeaways you could take from it.

So from this piece of mail, it says right over here presort, standard US postage paid direct TV. Other than that, I have no idea that this was from DirectV, if you’re just looking on the outside.

It’s got an address a peel Box address, who knows where that’s from says electronic service requested, says that timely material opened immediately, right. This is the style, a style that was very common years back, not as common anymore but still is very useful for people of a certain age.

Sadly, I’m in that group where it looks like a check, it looks like one of these automatic checks, I know that the government still uses the system, and certain institutions are still useful for people who are sending out paper checks, they may receive one that looks like this.

Now, there’s a little side here that can be torn off. I tore that off already. I haven’t opened up the rest, but I just wanted to make sure it was not check-in and it was a direct mailer to begin, so I just poked my poke my eyeball and just make sure that, and then it says a fold increase this side here.

So we’re going to take a look and see what the rest of this holds for us. And there’s nothing on the back. You know, it just says you know, lift up here, which direction to open it from.

We open that and what is the first thing we see is direct TV, get direct TV and enjoy all of this. It’s an ad for Direct TV and it’s got HBO plus, it’s got a lot of personalization.

There’s my name there Brian Pombo. And little letter Hi Brian. It still sticks with that it’s got my name everywhere it can put it, We hope you enjoy AT&T wireless service so I do have AT&T wireless, there’s never been a better time to get DirectV.

This was there tying in that this is a very important thing besides the sneak approach which is very useful because the toughest thing with direct mail if you’re not aware, is getting people to open the darn thing.

If you can get someone to open it, you’ve won at least half the battle that far. If not more. Another thing is getting their attention and so using personalization makes a big difference.

But if you can go beyond that and say something that only an insider would know like you know the first line is we hope you’re enjoying your AT&T wireless service.

They’re speaking directly to me it’s not just a piece of thrown to everyone This has my name, they know I’m using AT&T, now AT&T either sold or gave them this info I don’t know the deals they have with AT&T but that’s why that’s how they were able to do this.

But it’s also something you can keep in mind. If you know somebody that you can team up with. Even if you’re a local business, you can team up with another local business and reach out to their list. If they have lists.

It’s tough to find people that keep lists, especially when it comes to local local businesses. Here’s a little catalogue of the different packages that are available from Direct TV on the back all the different channels.

Free Genie HD DVR upgrade free standard professional installation, so use of the word free, is very big here. 72-hour rewind watch select shows for the past 72-hours from up to 60 plus HGTV channels.

This is the choice package which is set there. Yeah, sentimental package. You’ll also notice this over and over again online and elsewhere. If there are three packages, they will usually highlight the one in the middle.

The reason is, is that’s the one most people choose. And however you end up lining up, if that’s the one you want people to pick, you just have to come up with a smaller package and a bigger package and most of the people will end up picking that.

It’s just a funny thing about how people are I don’t know if that social I don’t know if that’s true internationally. But it is certainly true in the US that people tend to pick the middle package, it doesn’t matter what the difference is between them all. That’s it.

It’s like the safe choice that people go with.

Of course, they are promoting that middle package. So that is a very interesting piece. The idea is if you can be a little bit sneaky, they’re not being outright sneaky. They’re not saying and you don’t want to lie, you don’t want to say it’s something that it isn’t.

But it draws curiosity, you’re going to be curious, to open it up to see what’s in it.

The people who are already looking, are going to dig in a little deeper.

Now I’m not looking for cable television. But if I were, that would pull me in a little bit deeper and would get me thinking it’s not too bad a piece.

I bet they did pretty well on this one, depending on how wide a selection if they’re going to all 18 t-wireless users or what have you, I’d be interested to see how well they did. But very interesting.

You can use these same concepts in your marketing regardless, even if you’re just talking things that are not direct mail. You can reach people if you’re quiet on the front about what it is so they can’t separate it and toss it in the garbage right away.

If you draw them in with a little bit of curiosity, and you go directly to speaking directly to them, and maybe giving them some inside info so that you can show that you know who they are. That’s it. That’s all I have for tonight.

Go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You can go download a free copy on Amazon on AmazonProofBook.com

We’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Catching Your Customer’s Eyes 👀 (Renewals by Andersen, Direct Mail Piece)

Posted on by brianjpombo

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Brian gives us a mail review from a mailer by Renewals by Andersen.

Transcription

Catching your customers eyes.

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

I want to talk about a piece of mail I got today. So we’ve been talking about like deep things lately on our little conversations, our nightly conversations.

But today I want to show you, this is a piece of relatively thick cardstock, let’s say it’s cardstock. It’s a relatively thick piece of paper and I don’t know enough about the paper to tell you how thick this is but they kind of get an idea just by the sound by looking at it.

This showed up in my mailbox. It was sitting there with some other stuff and it was sitting there kind of wide open. Then I looked at him like this is this a piece of mail or did someone slip this in my box.

So the first thought that went into my mind because it looks like just a piece of paper. And it’s just a very thick piece of paper. So it’s got the address, it’s got it’s pretty sorted standard US postage paid, Twin Cities Minnesota. looks like it came from Springfield, Oregon, or at least that’s why it’s made to look like Springfield’s not far from here. It’s a little north, a few hours north of here.

This is by a company called, Renewals by Andersen. But I want, I want to just point this out if you’re looking to get attention from your customers, regardless of what style of marketing, this is direct mail, but regardless of what style of marketing, the whole idea is to catch their eye.

The whole idea is to get their attention for just one more second, and there are so many very subtle things about this piece that makes it different.

Number one, you don’t get many pieces of mail that are just like this, even a postcard, or an oversized postcard. A postcard this size, it tends to have a little bit more weight and a lot more gloss.

This is not glossy, it’s a very flat matte look to it. Okay, that’s the first thing that caught my eyes.

Second thing is, I’m not sure if you can tell from the lighting in here and everything else. But it’s a very interesting color. It’s not white. It’s not exactly pink. But it’s a very light, something in between white and pink.

That’s off putting it catches your eye, it’s not a typical thing that you’d see. In fact, it kind of looks as I’m looking at it.

Now it kind of appears to be like a, if you’ve ever seen those carbon copies that used to have these around a lot more often before copy machines became so plentiful, and then printers and scanners. But the carbon copies where you can write something, and then you get a receipt and someone else gets a receipt and the top one will be like white and the second one will be like pink, and the next one will be like yellow.

And that’s what this reminds me of.

I’m not sure if it’s made to look like that or not but it appears that way. So it definitely caught my eye as far as that this is not accidental.

I guarantee you this is not accidental. If it is it’s a brilliant accident.

Having a very off putting color is going to grab people’s eyes, especially when it comes to direct mail. Just something that’s unusual. So it’s an unusual shape and size for direct mail.

It just It looks like a piece of paper, it looks like something that was torn off of somebody’s carbon copy. And there’s more to it. Okay.

In this, they’ve got this, what appears to be handwriting. And looking a little closer, I’m looking to see if this is an actual font?

Yes, it is.

This is a font. It’s a font that’s developed to be made to look like handwriting, how you can tell it’s a font is how similar, Well, I think it’s a font that now I can’t tell it’s very well done. How similar, a lot of the letters are, if you look at the similarity between a lowercase i here and a lowercase i in some cases, they have fonts that will I can’t remember the term for it, but it switches back and forth between they have like three four different lowercase eyes and so it switches between them.

So it appears to be like someone hand wrote this. And if someone did handwrite it it’d be just as simple because they’re they photocopied ever. It’s definitely photocopied ink. It’s not actually handwritten, but it’s made to appear like it’s handwritten in that customer information.

None of its personalized. So this is a sure sure giveaway.

It says we’re available in your neighborhood where it should say name, phone number address. They just kind of wrote over it.

We’re available in your neighborhood to provide price quotes. And then it goes through replacement windows all types including picture double hung. Replacement patio doors and fringe hinged and sliding.

Call our helpline a very clear cut call to action which is very important in any type of marketing that you do get a free installation, it’s highlighted.

The coloring is very I mean, it really appears like it’s highlighted you can tell wasn’t but it gives the initial appearance because it isn’t the same.

It’s the type of coloring that would not work on this type of thing. And so it blends in it’s perfect.

Says, call our helpline by March 31 for our installer discount plus an extra 500 off extra 500 off your project / Alex with his phone number. Alex, and I’ve gotten these things before, I’m not sure we may have done we may have shown something by Renewal by Andersen. But I don’t think we’ve shown this piece before because I’ve seen their Alex character that they use in all these things.

Very, very slick marketing. And for somebody looking for window or door replacement, this might just catch your eye. It caught my eye just because I didn’t It’s not gonna catch everybody’s eye.

A lot of people that are looking are going to notice this and go straight in the garbage. But because it’s different on many different levels, it has a better chance than anything else catching your eye. That the main thing.

If you can just remember that you’ve got to be different, you got to stand out, you got to you got to try something, you got to mix it up a little bit. I’m working with a political campaign consultant with political campaign and one of the things they’re doing is a different shaped political sign. It’s going to drive people nuts, you’re going to have a whole lot of people say, what is it? What is it?

Why are they doing it like that and everything else, it’s gonna get people talking, just by having a slightly different size sign, then people are used to it, it doesn’t take much to get attention.

So these are just things to keep in mind, regardless of what media you’re using. I talk a lot about direct mail. That’s something we all have in common, and something that’s really really underused.

I mean, seriously, you ought to look into direct mail for your business. But besides that, I’m not paid by the post office or anything else to encourage you to buy direct mail.

Overall, you got to have the initiative you have to have the desire to get out there and be seen more and stand out.

That’s what my books all about, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof of Your Business. You get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com. It’s all I have for today. You have a good night and we’ll see you tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Advertising Advice & Expectations 📫 (Mail Review)

Posted on by brianjpombo

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Brian breaks down some mail advertising pieces and gives some tips as well.

Transcription

Advertising advice and expectations.

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

I want to talk really about how to apply the principles that we’ve been talking about over this past week. All the last few videos and podcasts I put out had to do with a plot had to do with really the basic principles.

Now I want to take some of that and apply it and show you how so much comes down to both expectations and tracking. So first off, let’s talk about expectations you have to know what you expect to get off of your advertising.

Otherwise, you can determine whether it was successful or not.

You can just wait and see what happens but if you’re doing anything more than that at all in regards to either advertising or word of mouth or anything else, it sometimes it’s tough to be able to track it and know where one started and the last one ended and to really know if it was worth your effort and money to do it.

So I’m going to give you an example that direct mails are a fun one because it’s one of those that really can be tracked. And you can really good a good get a good idea as to whether it worked or not. Or my favorite things to send out as postcards.

Here’s a postcard, this is from a local lady who’s doing real estate and I don’t get that many real estate postcards or letters or anything.

There are hundreds of it and probably close to 1000 Real Estate people that cover this area and it’s a small area but there are tons of them there’s everyone in their brother’s a real estate person but very few of them advertise directly.

So I got to first off give her name is Suzie. Give Suzie props for putting this out now we’re going to talk about what worked in this and we’re going to talk about what didn’t work but once again this has to do with expectations.

You know and whether you’re tracking it if you’re tracking it and you’re getting back more than it was necessary to be able to constitute it working then you keep doing it you find a way to keep getting it out there or get it out to a broader audience or what have you.

I don’t know why I was placed on the list but here it says thinking of selling your home.

Okay so there’s the headline, it’s not super clear yet. I’m not sure if you can read it from where you’re at. It’s not super bold white on a dark background doesn’t do as well as a dark color or black on a white background.

The little picture of a teacup and some flowers, there’s not a chair but there is a little watermark symbol.

I just happen to know that I believe this is dream time the website that you can purchase and if you don’t purchase it there watermark stays on there so that’s that doesn’t look that hot. I’ve just noticed that now for the first time I didn’t notice it the first time.

Not that that’s going to deter whether people are interested or not but doesn’t say anything about a home I mean obviously this is on the inside of a home but besides that, and it’s a little beat up.

One of the letters fell off here but it says call for your complimentary market analysis. So that’s the basic pitch that’s what they’re going for. They want you to make a phone call.

See what your home is worth today, John L Scott real estate. So this is the main site and then you’ve got the address side and the rest of the copy here which is interesting.

That says if selling your home is on your mind, or you just want to know its current value, I would be happy to help.

I believe in old-fashioned customer service call me to receive your no-obligation market analysis and her phone number.

Suzy Matney PC broker-owner license in the state of Oregon or phone number and her website, there she is right there. And then it says something about you know, some offices are independently owned and operated.

If your home’s currently listed with another broker, please disregard this letter, all this type of thing that you probably have to do legally, if not ethically.

So pretty typical yet typical picture name of the real estate company. And that’s it. It’s a very straightforward pitch. And let me talk about what works or what does work.

She’s got a call to action, she’s got more than one way to contact her. If you don’t want to use a phone, you go to her website and go specifically to her. Not just someone else at the real estate office, which is good.

And I didn’t go to the website to see what the presentation is there that can matter to you got to make sure you are asking for something very specific. But this is specifically asking for people who want to sell their homes.

Now, what are the chances that she’s going to get my business versus all the other people that never asked me?

If I was interested in selling my home, if she caught me on the day or week, this might pique my interest?

If I paid attention to it long enough. There’s not a whole lot drawing you in here. It’s pretty boring, pretty straightforward.

There’s no glitz or glamour, but maybe that’s all that’s needed.

Once again, expectations come to, does this produce the results?

Is she getting people contacting her because of this piece or does she have to send out multiple amounts to be able to build up familiarity?

This is the first time I remember seeing her now maybe we’ve been I apologize if that were the case. But this is the first time I recall seeing her in regards to real estate and selling homes.

There’s a lot of things you could do you could do, you can have a little bit more standout pictures. It could be it could stand to be a little uglier.

Honestly, I mean, if it were more ugly, bolder, you will get more attention that way. If you offered something for free to be able to, I mean, seeing what your home was worth, for the most part, I would think that most people would know that you’d be able to look online to get a lot of estimates like that.

Maybe they don’t and maybe this works great. Once again, it comes down to expectations or tracking. And what are the results are what you want them to what I would test against this is maybe a little bit more to the offer, maybe offer, you know, see all that off the top of my head, I can’t come up with an offer right off the top.

But there are so many more different ways of doing this. This is very bland, but don’t throw off bland. bland may get the job done.

That’s the real question, in the end, is whether it gets the job done and what you expect back from it. And whether you’re planning to do more than just one so I’ll let you know if we see more from Suzie.

Suzie, I recommend continuing your direct mail out there to the community because you’re one of the only ones that I’ve seen this certainly in the last few years.

So hopefully that’s helpful to you in kind of taking some of those principles that we talked about and kind of reverse engineering them based on a piece of advertising that we saw, hey, I want to also recommend my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business if you have a business if your business owner or an executive in charge, and you want to make things completely competition proof is my book.

You go get yourself a copy off amazon.com or anywhere books are sold or you get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com. AmazonProofBook.com.

We’ll be back here tomorrow night. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

3ABN Mail Review 😇 (Three Angels Broadcasting Network)

Posted on by brianjpombo

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Brian gives his thoughts on a direct mail piece he got from 3ABN.

Transcription

3ABN mail review.

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

I like to talk a lot about direct mail. Because it’s one of those things that most people don’t pay attention to, but you can make a whole lot of money with and be able to reach your audience.

It’s just one of those things that that’s kind of been forgotten but still exists and cost less and has more results now than ever before, at least in my experience. And when I get direct mail that’s different.

If I can see that there’s some type of reaction if there’s marketing involved in it whatsoever,, I like to bring it to the show.

So this is an example of a piece that I received that was complete without me asking for it. Okay, this is unsolicited mail that showed up in my mailbox, which is always the funniest.

And this says it’s 3ABN and we’ll dig into what this is, I had already opened it.

Normally, I’d want to open it here and show you my kind of like an unboxing video, this is an anon below being video, were to kind of get my reaction. It was marked to the resident, but it was my address, and I am the resident of this address.

So I’m going to take it and I had no other name on it.

I’m not sure what they’re basing this off of or that this goes out randomly to people or if it’s based on demographics, I can’t really tell three ABN what’s that says Three Angels Broadcasting from West Frankfort, Illinois.

So Christian Broadcasting organization, I’m to assume I’m making no opinions on the religious content here. So I’ve done these before where I’ve done religious direct mail, and I get a whole lot of comments down below, with people, either for or against.

I’m not making any opinions or judgment calls on this.

This is a piece of mail that was unsolicited, I’m just going to comment on whether it achieves what it wants to achieve.

First, let’s look at the envelope itself. Now, this is something you can learn even if you’re in business, or if you have a church or whatever. This is something you can learn something from this, because of how it’s set up with the fact that it says a resident.

Most people, I’m telling you, most people without their names on it, they’re going to take this and toss it in the garbage. These people probably already know that.

But it’s important for you to know that if you’re going to send out something broad, just by saying resident on it. It’s not gonna it’s not going to hit that well, in most cases. says it doesn’t have a live stamp just says nonprofit org us postage paid. It’s got pictures on it. It’s so you know, it’s advertising right off the bat, that goes against it.

In general, if people know what’s advertising, they’re going to toss it especially if they weren’t expecting it. Is that so it’s got the pictures it says 10 commandments something about salvation so that about Hellfire free gift for you?

Well, that can be helpful.

If people want to see what the free gift is and it’s got some weight to it. As opposed to a lot of direct mail doesn’t have weight when has weight and has some thickness you can feel there’s something in there.

A lot of people are going to open it just out of curiosity. So it’s got that going for it.

So I opened it up what is inside?

Nothing besides three booklets.

It is nothing but a free gift, okay?

These three booklets you see here are the three booklets that are inside.

So let’s take a look at these. And there’s some writing on here that just disregard that that was an, I was using it as a piece of notepaper because I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing.

So you got these booklets and what are these booklets about?

Let’s take this one. This one looks like fun.

Hellfire. Just goes straight into a story and it’s got pictures.

Kind of basic pictures of what you would figure for a religious text.

And I’m just looking at it just getting a general impression here. I’m going to give you a kind of a marketing critique of it. I’m not going to talk about the content so much.

What happens when a person dies?

I’m looking at headlines and so forth. So that’ll I’ll tell you what’s useful about a headline like this.

What happens when a person dies?

If you’re interested in that type of thing. The fact that it’s a question specifically will draw you in. It’s a little bit bigger than everything else. It’s one of the only headlines I see in here other than and read a little more. There’s certainly a lot of text.

Lots if there is any interest whatsoever. This is going to give somebody something to chew on.

How hot is hell?

There you go. There’s a good question.

How long does hell burn?

Oh, there’s no table of contents, nothing else and then here seems to be the only call to action whatsoever in this thing. It says 3ABN, the mending broken people’s network. Ways to watch and listen to three ABN so you got your Smart TV.

So what are they doing?

They’re promoting their TV station, they’ve got this you could how to do it on a smart TV, you do dish, YouTube, you do podcasts, you know, Google Play App Store, live 24 streaming on their website, you go to their website, check it out.

And they’ve got a radio station that plays available over 350 radio stations around the world. It’s an ad for their overall broadcasting setup their radio and television. in marketing terms, we call this magalog. Okay, you have a magazine, except it’s not selling anything other than a worldview and get on their TV and radio.

Now, what about these other ones same thing there, Danny Shelton thing, the truth about the 10 commandments. And it goes basically through the same concept, same layout, Sabbath is the Lord’s Day, 10 commandments, God’s standard, the bottom line.

Okay, a comparison of the 10 commandments in the laws of Moses got a little chart there. And then the same exact layout on the end, this is the main call to action is to go check this out. Same thing.

And then this third one, the truth about salvation.

Now, as I said, I don’t know maybe this is really great content, especially for the right person, this is that they’re going to eat this up. And this is going to be really good stuff that they’re going to want to read.

Maybe it’s extremely well written, I don’t know, I’m just looking as a browser, and you have to look at mailpieces as a browser, you really do, because that’s a most of the people that are going to open it up.

Most of the people that get into it, most of the people that open these up, are going to be browsers.

So they’re looking for something that draws them in.

Now, the people that get drawn in and go through and read all this, well, that’s really your audience. But that’s going to be a very, very, very, very thin percent of all of these that you get sent out, especially if you’re sending them out in a very broad resident manner.

Once again, on the same page on the end, there doesn’t seem to be any other call to action other than a sizeable each of these has a sizable footnote section. So you can go check out these other pieces.

You know, parts of the Bible and Bible study tools and other books that people have written. Interesting stuff. Once again, is Danny Shelton’s work. So these are three pieces.

Okay unto themselves, it all depends on what you want to say everything comes back to intent. It all depends on what you want it to achieve. If you want this to sit around in people’s houses, maybe it does that maybe people will hold on to them because they have a book-like consistency to them.

And people will open it, I’ll feel like well, maybe I’ll read it one of these days type of thing or sit next to their toilet or whatever.

That’s because people read on the toilet, not saying anything else.

So very interesting booklet concept. I’m interested to see how well they do with this, whether they are actually tracking it, whether they have something they’re trying to achieve looking to get more people on to their thing, or if they’re just looking to just randomly spread the word of God, it works for that too, I guess, but you can’t track it as well.

If we’re talking marketing, and we’re talking direct response and being able to track and know whether you achieved what you’re trying to achieve, at least initially on your initial concept.

This doesn’t quite do it a would be very difficult to be able to track any of this but a very interesting setup. What do you think if you receive something like that, would that draw you in?

Would you be interested to look into it more?

Are you Do you know anything about 3ABN do with this draw?

You know, I’d love to find out your background and see what you think about it. Leave me a comment wherever you’re watching or listening to this. If you happen to be listening like on a podcast, and you’re not able to leave a comment.

Go over to BrianJPombo.com. Leave a comment there now is my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You can get a free copy. If you want a digital copy, AmazonProofBook.com It’s all I got for tonight.

Hopefully you found that helpful. We’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Are You Using Nostalgia? 👴

Posted on by brianjpombo

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Direct Mail, Catalogs, Amazon and Christmas lists from kids. Oh, and some thoughts on using nostalgia in your business.

Amazon-Proof Your Business➡️ https://brianjpombo.com/amazonbook/

Transcription

Are you using nostalgia?

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

Today I wanted to talk about something I got in the mail. This if you have not seen one yet, is an Amazon.com Christmas catalog made specifically for kids.

At least it appears to be. It’s all it’s all kids toys and so forth.

As soon as I got it, it very much reminded me of something from my past. And it’s not accident. I can almost guarantee you it is not accident, even if it was accidental once they would have figured it out by now. Because I’ve heard many people say the same thing about this is depending on where you grew up, and then in the people you had in your family and everything, I had a grandmother still have a grandmother, who, but at the time when we were kids, she would get the Sears catalogs delivered.

I believe she had Sears and JC Penney’s, and they always had the toy version of it, or they had a toy section in the back of it. I believe it was in the back where all the toys were at.

And she said, Okay, go through this and circle everything that you want and market either with your color or is me and my sister were the two oldest grandchildren at the time, or the only grandchildren at the time.

She’d say, market with a B for Brian or a J for Julie, and or with our specific color, we’re using a highlighter or something like that. And then I’ll know that that’s what you want.

And it’s pretty easy to tell which ones the girl wanted. And the boy wanted in most cases, especially back then, that things were things were a little more distinct back then when it came to catalog toys.

But it was all the same stuff that you’d find in the stores or anything else. But it’s not necessarily that she ordered it from Sears, although most of the time she did, I think.

But that enjoyed that was more exciting than Christmas itself. It’s a pre made Christmas list. You’ve got all the toys, right sitting stuff you never knew even existed. And you’re sitting there, oh, I want that, oh, I want that.

And just the anticipation was huge.

Amazon’s jumped on this bandwagon. And there’s a whole lot of interesting things. If you’ve I believe I’ve brought this up last year, when they came out with one. And I think this may go to prime users. But I let me know if it went to you also, this is current resident.

So I think they’re going pretty far and wide with this and it’s all kid stuff. It’s all toys, action figures, dolls, games, you know, all the Hot Wheels and all that stuff.

My kids were going nuts. As soon as they saw that it was here. And I said, No dad gets to use it first for tonight’s video and then then they can go through it and tear it up.

And it’s even got, it’s pretty clever. They’ve got like stickers and stuff that you can take and put on the different pages or use to, you know, graffiti your household, which is what happens in my house.

And, you know, all ages are really young, young type and everything. So that’s the style job. This isn’t for the kids. Yes, it’s for the kids. But it’s also for the parents that went through that era, where we would circle things in a catalog.

It’s a paper catalog in a time of digital marketing. Don’t forget that Amazon is one of the top dogs out there. And they are putting out paper catalogs, in mass.

They’re sending these things out there. They have to work. Okay, so one thing, don’t ever forget that direct mail still exists and still works. Don’t ever forget that paper catalogs still exist and they still work.

There’s a number of large e-commerce companies that put out paper catalogs that swear by them. And if you’re doing it to your buyers, you’re going to get a good response off of it almost guaranteed.

Having a physical item, in addition to what you’re offering digitally, makes a huge difference. And if you’re able to tap into nostalgia, tap into what families are already into traditions that are already there into holidays and so forth that are already built in nostalgia, they’re already stuck in our heads and you go with use that to your profit, hey, more power to you.

That’s what these guys are doing. Just realize they’re doing it to you too.

And that if you want to communicate with people, you got to get past the conversation going on in their head and sometimes that conversation is, 20, 40 years old.

So consider that when reaching out and using marketing of all types. Physical print still works, and it works through snail mail. So just a quick idea.

If you’re looking for kind of larger, that’s a tactic really, that’s really a conversation of tactics. But if you’re looking for larger strategies that you could use in your business, let’s talk about ways you could defeat Amazon ways that you can survive even being the little guy.

9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. This book right here, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business, is a new book. You go get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com. We’ll be back here tomorrow night. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.