What do you need to get a high response to your lead generation and client mailings? It ends up being three things:
- A good headline that is addressed right at your target market
- A good FREE offer
- Multiple mailings
I’ve discussed headlines before, but if I get some feedback that you would like me to discuss it again, I’ll be happy to. But for now, let’s focus on the last two items.
First, what are some good FREE giveaways? Your giveaway should be connected in some way to your offer. Don’t give away steaks if you are selling insurance, all you are going to get is people that like to eat steaks not people that are interested in insurance. With that said, your offer should be attractive enough to get those people that are even moderately interested in insurance to raise their hand for your FREE stuff. An example of that for a property casualty agent would be–A free home safety booklet just for setting an appointment. A booklet of ten free car washes when we write your auto insurance. Guaranteed handling of your accident claim in five days or a 10% cash bonus on the settlement.
An example for an annuity sale would be—A free booklet about how to not outlive your income. An free check of their current annuity for correct beneficiary or annuitants. An example for a life sale would be—A free analysis of current policies to ensure they are using the new life expectancy tables and to-age-100 guarantees. A book on a life insurance concept like “Missed Fortune: 101.” But…and it’s a big but, the most important thing when it comes to direct mail, lead generation and prospecting via mail is repetition.
Now here’s the secret about direct marketing that virtually no one in the financial industry understands. In order to acquire new clients – no matter how good the offer is, a single exposure to a given group of prospective clients, it will have minimal effect. But multiple repeated exposures will have a positive effect disproportionate to the number of exposures.
You really need to stop and pay attention here. If you get this your marketing is going to get a lot more effective, very, very quickly!
If you are patient enough to give prospective clients repeated exposures or mailings you will have a positive impact, far greater than the number of exposures.
Here’s one example – say you’re doing a lead generation mailing of 5,000 people. From a single mailing you might pull anywhere from as low as 1% response or less. Maybe twelve to sixty responses. The variants between the twelve and the sixty may depend on how attractive your offer is.
But if you’ll mail to those same 5,000 prospects six times over a four month period your overall response might be as high as 20%, 150 to 1,000 people. You should only expect 6 times the response because you mailed 6 times but instead you got about twelve times the response from the single mailing not just six times. Why?
See, the multiple contacts don’t just increase response proportionately they increase it exponentially. Is this always true? No. Sometimes you have a crappy or old list, the offer is weak, the company lacks credibility, whatever and no amount of mailing will overcome it. But, presuming the list has been chosen with reasonable care and intelligence, the offer is good, the mail piece is good then this kind of effect should be achieved.
In next week’s tip I will reveal another way to get multiple exposures for your business that can multiply your results.
