Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.