Peter Kritas Mailpost
Direct mail marketing rules are made to be broken, or
so I’m told. So break this one and see what
happens.
Direct mail pundits, me included, recommend that all
your direct mail pieces have an offer. The offer, as
you know, is the incentive that you give prospects
to encourage them to respond.
Offers are usually bilateral. You promise to do
something if the prospect does something. “Buy two
blouses and we’ll pay the shipping,” for example.
Or “book your appointment before 16 November and
we’ll send you a free Sample Seed Kit.” If the
prospect does nothing, you do nothing. Both of you
must act if the offer is to work. Offers are
bilateral.
Break this rule by making unilateral offers once in a
while. Instead of asking the prospect to do
something, you do something instead. That’s what a
car dealer in Australia did a while back. He mailed a
letter to his customers and enclosed a crisp $50
note. “Your trade-in vehicle sold much quicker than
expected, so we saved ourselves a little money,”
explained the letter. The customer didn’t have to do
anything to get the $50 The offer was
unconditional, or unilateral.
You can see the value in offers that ask for nothing
in return. In this case, which car dealer do you
suppose customers visited the next time they were in
the market for a vehicle?
I received a unilateral offer from Christopher Knight,
founder and publisher of EzineArticles.com.
Unannounced, he mailed me a huge coffee mug and a
wee note thanking me for being an Expert Author. He
didn’t offer me the mug in exchange for anything.
I didn’t have to mail in a coupon or take a survey or
visit a website or refer my grandmother. Christopher
simply made me a unilateral offer. And yet I
responded by phoning him during a busy day to thank
him for his kind gesture. Plus, I continued using his
services. So his unilateral offer did generate a
response from me after all. Funny how that works,
eh?
Tags: Mailpost, Peter Kritas