Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Paper Email, Image Suicide, and a 28,400% ROI

I created Marketing Multipliers to share some of the tools I use to grow revenues for my clients and myself.

Example: The Paper Email.

It's something I print and mail to clients and prospects when I want to make absolutely, positively sure they get my email messages.

Because, even on a good day, your email stands less than a 1 in 4 chance of being delivered, opened, and read, according to MailChimp.

I don't know about you, but I think those odds suck. If a <25% open-and-read rate is standard, then even the Pony Express in 1860 could do better than email in 2015.

So I don't play the email game. And neither should you. At least, not exclusively.

Instead, if a message is really important, I not only send it by email, I also mail it and/or call the recipient.

Case in point: The Paper Email below. It's a printed version of an email, spiced up with my weird picture. I mailed it -- in an envelope, with a stamp -- to a highly targeted list of prospects last week ...


... and in response, I got this email from a new client who had been trying to reach me:



Look at the subject of the email above that he forwarded to me: Did you get this email from Friday? When I picked up the phone and called him, he told me the problem wasn't my email not reaching him, but his email not reaching me.

BUT ... because I mailed him the paper email, he was motivated to email me back. And buy.

No paper email = no sale.

And I didn't mind committing what Bill Glazer calls, "image suicide" in my Paper Email by including a goofy picture of myself. Hey, if that's what it takes to get attention, no problem. Because, as David Ogilvy said, "You can't bore people into buying."

Okay, now let's run the numbers:

  • Cost: $7 to mail 10 Paper Emails to a targeted list, including postage
  • Revenue: $1,994 from a mini consulting project that will deliver $10,000 to $20,000 or more to my client -- or he won't pay
  • ROI from this simplest of direct mail pieces: 28,400%, or $285 for every $1 invested

Not bad. That's the power of a simple Paper Email, one of 11 Marketing Multipliers tools you can try Free -- click here to learn how.

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