7. Give something away

Free is still a powerful word in direct mail.

8. Offer a guarantee

Remove hesitation that some prospects have by offering a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.

9. Improve your credibility on paper

Read your package cover to cover, including cover, and ask yourself (or better yet, ask someone else), why a stranger should trust you. Then overcome that distrust with testimonials, your credentials, third-party endorsements, accreditations and other facts that build trust.

10. Make ordering easier

Is your order form too busy? Have you frustrated prospective customers by giving too few ways to order (only mail, for example, instead of mail and fax and phone). A change here can make a dramatic difference.

11. Ask for order sooner

Read through your sales message and see how long you are in getting to point. Experiment with putting your offer and call to action further up in message.

12. Add to your package

The temptation when response rates are lower than expected is to reduce size of package. Instead, add something to mailer, such as a brochure, buckslip or liftnote (if you don’t know what these things are, visit Direct Mail Glossary at www.sharpecopy.com/glossary.html). You are more likely to boost response by adding to your package than you are by making it cheaper.

© 2005 Sharpe Copy Inc. You may reprint this article online and in print provided links remain live and content remains unaltered (including "About author" message).

Take a magazine publisher. It mails to 500,000 names, generates only a 1% response rate, yet considers mailing a success. But a stock. broker who targets wealthy doctors in Lower Manhattan has different expectations. His lead generation letter needs to generate a response rate of at least 25% because he only mails it to 100 doctors, and he only closes around one in every 25 doctors who responds. A one percent response rate, even if it is an average, is of no use to him.

Average response rates are useful when they are for your product or service and your target audience in particular. If you can discover response rates that your competitors are generating by mailing sales letters to same prospects that you are targeting, then, by all means, use those response rates as a yardstick against which you compare your results. You are talking specifics.

Some response rates for various industries. The Direct Marketing Association (www.the-dma.org) calculated average response rates for a number of industries:

Fundraising: 5.35% Retail: 3.36% Businesses selling services to businesses 3.34% Manufacturing: 3.17% Personal and repair services 3.07% Travel 2.98% Computer/electronics: 2% Packaged goods: 2%

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