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.

Person-to-Person Marketing in a Box

This is a very special unboxing of a very special something -- a CARE package I got from Brian Kurtz.

Back story: I attended Brian's Titans of Marketing event in 2014 and exchanged emails with him after. He included one of my productivity tips in his blog. I mailed him a thank-you note and he emailed me back, offering to send me a thank-you gift by mail.

What I got was ... huge. Awesome. Incredible. Watch the video to see me unbox it all.

To a copywriter like me, this stuff is priceless.

Here's the thing: Brian is teaching a super valuable lesson here on the art of P2P -- person-to-person -- marketing. 

Forget B2B or B2C marketing. In the end all marketing is really P2P -- person to person.

Brian Kurtz, a person, has just delivered an outrageous and totally unexpected amount of value to me, a person. And I want the whole world to know about it. That’s why I did this impromptu video and I'm even paying to drive traffic to it. This is what raving fans do.

Key: Brian invested time and attention to assemble all the parts of this package, hand-write the note to me, and put it in the mail. He could have outsourced it to a fulfillment house, but that would have been a package from a business, not a person. And I wouldn't be making this video.

You cannot buy the kind of raving fandom that I'm showing here. You cannot outsource it, either. 

But you can make an impact on others -- and spread your influence far and wide -- simply by making a direct, valuable, personal connection to another person today.

This is simple, but not easy. Yet Brian did it. Big time.

By the way ...

... I've created a club for entrepreneurs who want to grow. Every member gets a box of marketing tools delivered by mail every month. And you can try them free. Click here.