To run a successful direct mail campaign, you must have a compelling offer... amazing copy... and most important... right list to mail to.

And even if you have each of these things running at their peak, there are many other subtle "little" tricks you can use to increase responsiveness of your mailings, which is what it's all about, right?

Because this means...

You'll Be Increasing Your Cash-Flow As Well!

And remember, in whatever you're doing: All you need is 5-or-6 little steps that each increase your response rates 1 or 2 %, and before you know it, you've got a lot more money pouring in than you did before.

So don't start neglecting subtle differences -- this is usually what separates people who are marginally successful, from people who are wildly successful.

First, always hand-address your envelopes. Why? As my mentor Gary Halbert taught me from "Day 1", you'll always open a hand-addressed letter because you think its "personal" mail -- as opposed to a sales letter or a bill.

Make sense?

It's a lot of fun to use, but it's often over-looked.

Want to know what it is?

O.K., I'll tell you. It's...

Sweepstakes!

And here's how you can start using sweepstakes as a lead generation tool, to build your list of prospects:

Let's say you own a retail furniture store. Here's what you do:

You run a display ad (or even better yet, you use several press releases) that says you're going to be giving away a brand new set of living-room furniture valued at $10,000 Dollars, delivered to person who comes into your store... registers for contest... and comes closest to guessing how many square feet your entire furniture showroom display area is.

The person who guesses closest, gets furniture delivered straight to front door of their home.

You should film that entire delivery, by way, and have that video clip playing on a television monitor over-and-over again at front of your store, to build enthusiasm up for your next sweepstakes.

Also, if you're really clever... team up with a local interior decorator and tell people you'll be giving away a professionally designed custom layout as well, courtesy of this interior decorator.

Let your sweepstakes entrants know, charge for interior designer alone is worth "X" dollars.

Or, you could even team up with one of your furniture suppliers, and instead of having a "Guess how many square feet our showroom is" contest, you can have a "Tell me how many king size [insert your furniture supplier's name here] beds we have in our showroom" contest.

See which of your suppliers would be willing to share cost of your contest with you, or maybe they'd spring for whole shebang.

Anyway, you call your lead-generating contest:

"The $10,000 Dollar Sweepstakes!"

Then, you promote living daylights out of it!

You do a direct mail piece promoting it (postcards may even work in this case)... use your local val-paks... run display ads... have banners announcing your sweepstakes all over your store... and you give every single interior decorator and moving company you know, brochures about it, to hand out to their clients.

This does 3 things for you:

First, it gets people interested in you.

Second, it forces people to come into your store to sign up and register to win sweepstakes. You automatically get foot-traffic, and names and addresses of qualified leads, you wouldn't have had without sweepstakes.

And third, since your prospects have to guess how large your showroom is, it forces them to walk around your entire store in order to make any kind of accurate "square footage" guess, right? And do you have any idea what each-and-every one of these qualified leads will be doing when they're browsing up and down each of your lovely furniture showroom aisles?

They'll be checking out all your furniture!

Mom's will be thinking "Oh, this would look so nice in baby's room."

And seniors will be saying "Wow, that would look great outside on our patio."

And crooked CEO's like Ken Lay from Enron will be licking their chops, saying "Hey, I can use a bunch of my shareholder's money to buy all those brand new top-of-the-line Herman Miller chairs, for all guys back at office!"

Whatever.

The point is, people aren't just going to come in, see your "$10,000 Dollar Sweepstakes" sign-up booth at front desk, fill out form, toss their entry into box, and then leave.

Now at first blush, you might think giving away $10,000 Dollars worth of furniture is a lot to give away for FREE.

But au contraire... let's look at numbers here. Remember, before you ever make any kinds of marketing decisions, you must look at your numbers.

Because...

You are in numbers business first, NOT... marketing business!

So... here are some numbers: