I’ve been pretty pumped about putting together this post for the past week or so. I want to show you a weird direct mail marketing strategy I used in my Dance Floor business to generate $17,900 in sales in just 26 days.
Before I get into it though, let me set the scene:
On Christmas Eve, 2014, my mother – a Dance Studio Owner – told me she wanted to get a premium ballet dance floor for her studio…
But there was ONE big problem:
The flooring is insanely expensive.
So, to cut a LONG story short – I told her I would get the same flooring made myself and import it.
I won’t bore you with the details… that’s not the point of this post. You can check the entire story of what I did here.
And that’s what I did – along with my brother Geoff.
It proved to be so successful – price wise – that after we received it for mum, I put a casual ad on Gumtree (Australia’s Craiglist for those who aren’t familiar) just to see if anyone other studio owners were interested…
I just knew they had to be right?
I decided on an arbitrary price per roll – literally a figure I just made up.
I wasn’t keen to spend 10 minutes on this business unless I knew it was a winner.
Anyway…
I put the ad up on the Sunday when I was home in Canberra at Easter time. Before I returned to Sydney on the Tuesday, I’d received 3 calls of people wanting the floor that I didn’t yet have.
I told these 3 people I didn’t have any at the moment, but I would in 8 weeks’ time…
They said: RING ME!
I was pretty confident I was on to something here… but I wanted to test it further before I committed any resources.
If you’ve visited my site before, you might recall the Facebook Ad Blueprint I executed to Generate $70,000 in Leads from just $90 in Ads. This article outlines exactly what I did to test the concept.
It was official!
We had a winner.
THE BACKSTORY
Today however, I want to pick up around August 11.
This post is the crazy story of the last two months…
But before I get into it… here’s what you’ll discover:
I’m going to show you how I took things to the next level for this business with one of the oldest – and most overlooked – advertising mediums in existence – ‘Direct Mail’.
If you’re not familiar with Direct Mail, it’s exactly what it sounds like – yep, snail mail – direct mailings to your prospects letterbox.
After launching the business in June – and by launching I mean we imported and received our first load of flooring, which was 60% sold before landing and completely sold out a week later – it was time to “uplevel” and get this baby cranking.
We placed another order, 7 times as much as we’d received the first time.
To be honest… its’ as ludicrous as it sounds.
The concept looked solid, but we still had a long way to go – sales wise – before proving it to be a guaranteed winner.
Geoff decided on the quantity we’d order and what can I say… the guy just loves taking risks…
So it was now August 11.
For all my importers who are reading this, there’s nothing quite like this email hitting your inbox, when you’ve been waiting for cargo to arrive:
As you can see – excitement had hit, and we were ready.
Here’s a photo of Geoff on the day we moved nearly 7 tonnes of stock into our warehouse in Sydney:
So, without going on forever, we wanted a way to quickly shift some rolls of flooring so we could bank some cash and continue to grow the business.
It was that simple.
We’d continued to run the same Facebook Ads from our initial campaign, and whilst we were generating leads… well, they weren’t converting into sales.
As we would discover, probably a month later, August is a really bad time in the Dance industry as it is seasonal, and everyone is making plans for studio upgrades which they will execute at the end of the year.
THE STRATEGY
Anyway… I’m sitting in the office one day, and I stumbled across a marketing strategy I’d learned from one of my first direct marketing mentors, Mal Emery.
I can’t remember how it came to mind… but that’s not important.
If you are familiar with direct response marketing, especially in Australia, then I’m sure you will know of Mal and his work.
The strategy Mal taught me was what I refer to as “The Damaged Stock Letter”.
I’d heard him speak about it at a Seminar he ran in 2014, and he’d posted the letter he wrote and a breakdown of the strategy in an online post called:
“The Advertisement That Made A Small Fortune For Me And Did The Same For Some Of My Clients”
In any case, here’s the big idea:
Mal was selling business training packages, and 15 years ago, when the information was sold as books and physical education products, he had an order of stock that were misprinted, but still usable.
Instead of throwing them away, he took full advantage of the opportunity to run a one off promotion to people who’d expressed interest in his training.
In his own words – he made a small fortune from the promotion.
By writing a compelling letter, explaining the situation, Mal produced a killer result.
He then went on to do it for his clients time and time again…
In fact when I first heard him explain, he talked about doing it for a client that sold Sheds…
When I remembered this and went back through it, I immediately recognised a similarity between what Mal had done and the situation I was now in.
And I thought to myself… “If this could work selling Industrial Shed’s, I’m pretty sure I can make it work…”
THE PROBLEM
I didn’t mention this before – but our warehouse storage space is shared with our landlord.
Because the floor took up more space than we initially had, we were using some of our landlord’s space in the building.
At the start of September he told us we would have to shift the 15 rolls we had in his space or we would be evicted – talk about a situation!
Realistically, we could had moved them somewhere else, but we wanted to sell them anyway… so what better opportunity than to use this marketing strategy.
ACTION TIME
So here’s what we did.
We went through every lead we’d generated that had contacted us from our Facebook Ads or by referral.
To give you an idea of the enquiries our ads had produced, you can check the timeline here:
This was to the address on our website, but the ad linked to my personal address for the business, where we had a bunch more leads.
I checked my emails and there’s probably double what is shown above… but you get the idea…
Most of these people would request a sample so they could check out the floor themselves before making a purchasing decision.
So… we went through the list of people who had requested a sample that we had in our system. We shortlisted it down to just 30 people who we knew were interested and just needed a tiny extra incentive to go ahead with the purchase.
Geoff and I back and forth’d over what this incentive would be…
But, We had an issue.
We could easily discount the product as we had some room to move margin wise, but we didn’t want to devalue the floor.
In the end though we decided to mark down the rolls 15% to make the offer an even better proposition.
Don’t forget – this floor is already the best priced option in the market. Its incredible value.
But when you want to make sales, sometimes you need to make a compromise…
Anyway…
We had the offer, we had the marketing medium, and we had the strategy.
We made the deadline on the offer of September 30, and as you will see… this was perhaps the most important part of the strategy.
We also decided to limit this sale to just 10 rolls. It makes the offer more attractive, increases the urgency to take action for our prospects, and it means we aren’t losing out too much ourselves.
All I had to do now was write the letter…
THE MISSING LINK
But…
There was one important part missing, and this I believe is the most critical aspect of all.
It’s what Marketers and Copywriters call… “The Big Idea”.
The Big Idea is essentially the purpose of a marketing campaign. It is the whole premise and for the lack of a better word “idea” that underpins the campaign.
The more saturated a market is, the better and more unique your “big idea” will have to be for you to achieve success.
In the world we live in with social media, Facebook, Instagram… the works, we have never been privy to as many Marketing messages as we are right now…
I love it to be honest… as a marketer I swipe down on my phone when I’m on Facebook until I get to the first ad and then swipe right and analyse every single ad…
I’m obsessed…
But the point is this:
There has never been so much noise in the marketplace as there is right NOW.
And the problem with noise is it’s harder than ever to cut through with your marketing…
Anyway. You might be wondering what my point is?
You can’t simply run an effective advertising campaign, in most cases – by just saying:
“here’s 15% off my product – come and buy it”
It’s generic as and it’s been seen in all markets thousands of times…
But worst of all…
The message doesn’t penetrate through that noise anywhere NEAR as effectively as a unique and purposeful marketing message will.
Without going on about this forever, my final point is:
Plain Discounting Devalues Your Product
How many times (I’m talking to you marketers now) have you seen someone say in a Facebook group or forum:
“I’ve got a free spot open for only one super lucky client so I’m offering a special deal today”.
More than a few times I bet…
Now ask yourself how many times have you believed that’s the real reason why they are offering a discount?
The answer is probably NEVER.
It devalues your product because it appears no one wants it so you have to reduce the price to sell it.
Its basic supply and demand really…
I did not want that here.
So, the big idea behind the promotion or the reason why we were offering our product at a reduced rate was we needed to shift the floor – because we DID.
By offering it to people who had expressed interest for a slight discount, they were actually HELPING us.
Stop and think about that for a second. The customer was helping us by BUYING.
It’s a totally different place to come from in your marketing.
Okay… you didn’t come here for a degree in the world of advertising.
But don’t forget what I’ve mentioned above, it’s really. Almost every failed marketing campaign comes back to this notion, or a lack of it for that matter…
THE LETTER
As a copywriter, writing the letter wasn’t too hard at all, I followed a basic structure that went like this:
- Who I am, why I’m contacting them, and why they should keep reading.
- The problem I’ve got and why its best thing that’s ever happened to them.
- The offer
- Scarcity – I only needed to move 10 rolls and was only offering it for less than 30 days, this is what really drove the success of the offer.
- Call to Action – how to get in touch with me.
Whilst this looks really simple in theory, I spent a few days on and off, ironing it out and making sure it was really solid. I drove Geoff nuts obsessing about the detail, but hey – that’s what makes a good marketer… right?
Here’s a snapshot of my first draft of the letter:
By now it was Friday – 4th of September – otherwise known as “Mailing Day”.
At this point, I’d basically finished writing the letter, and it just so happened that I’d been in contact with one of my copywriting mentors – Australia’s King of Copy – Steve Plummer.
Steve and I were discussing a bunch of things – and while we were in contact, I thought I’d send him my letter and get his thoughts on the strategy.
You can see our email contact below. I included it so you could get an idea of the phases the letter went through, and also to acknowledge Steve for his help – he’s a genius.
I took Steve’s advice seriously (who wouldn’t right?).
I decided to use the headline he’d suggested as it added more bite to the letter.
Would you like a copy of the letter I sent to my list of leads? You can grab it here.
We sent the letter to just 30 people.
Due to the small sample size I never split tested the headline or variants of the letter, but it certainly performed, so it didn’t matter in this instance.
As soon as I got the response from Steve, I actioned his advice and finished the letter. The day before, on Thursday the 3rd – Geoff had compiled the list of prospects, and we developed a plan for the envelopes.
THE ENVELOPES
If you aren’t familiar with direct mail you might wonder what there is to actually organize with envelopes, but let me run through how I send my letters’ in a marketing campaign.
It all sizzles down to a 4 step process:
- Big Bulky Sized Envelope – bigger than a standard envelope, so when the recipient collects there mail it sticks out.
- Coloured Envelope – What colour are envelopes that bills come in? And for that matter… who enjoys paying bills? Make sure your envelopes are coloured or they will never get opened.
- Hand Written Name & Address – The reason for writing by hand on the envelopes is so they get opened. How many utilities companies hand write on their bills? None. But Grandma always does right? So make sure you hand write the name and address if you want your letter to get opened.
- A Secret Tip – I love this last one, it’s a sneaky thing I learned from a mentor about how to ensure the letter gets to the right person. Get a big red “Confidential” stamp and stamp it on the front. That’s certain to scare away the gatekeeper and make sure your prospect reads the letter.
They are the 4 basic things I do when implementing a direct mail strategy. Geoff has sent thousands of letters in the past few years, so he’s become quite the expert on getting your message read, which is the name of the game in this instance.
To summarise, this is where were at on September 4.
Then, everything was done.
It was as simple as writing on the envelopes and sending them…
Then the waiting game began!
On the 4th of September, once again, Geoff was hard at work. Now that I look at these photos, I’m not sure what I actually did haha…
Oh, I almost forgot – there’s one final piece missing that worked perfectly.
When I normally run direct mail campaigns, I like to put a 3D item inside the envelope, like a toy or an animate object that makes the envelope “bulky” – also known as bulky direct mail.
The reason for this is again – READERSHIP.
When mail arrives in your letterbox and an envelope is bulky and heavy, two things happen.
- It stands out like a sore thumb
- When all the mail is stacked in a pile, the other envelopes slide off this annoying bulky envelope. And you’ll want to open it and know why… because you know… curiosity killed the cat.
All of these sneaky tricks with envelopes have only one goal – to get the letter opened and read by your prospect.
Because you won’t sell a damn thing if that doesn’t happen…
However, in the case of the dance floor, I didn’t feel the need to make the envelopes bulky just for the sake of it, because the letters were being sent to qualified prospects and the envelopes were solid enough as is…
BUT…
Here’s the thing with buying flooring:
Everyone wants a sample – so they can see it first.
And even though these people already had one, I knew that if I included another sample with this letter I could knock out a few goals all at once:
Firstly, the person reading the letter would have a fresh sample of the floor in case they’d misplaced it, or for some reason, hadn’t received it to begin with.
Secondly, it would stop people from not making a decision because they didn’t know what they were getting…
And finally… It created less friction. They could read the letter, get a killer offer that genuinely benefited and excited them, and then a sample of the product so they could make an informed decision.
Oh and the bulky envelope thing was an added bonus too…
So that’s what we did.
Wrote a letter, put it in a coloured, ‘hand-written on’ envelope, and sent it to a list of qualified buyers.
The result? We banked $17,900 in 26 days from 4 separate sales, cleared a bunch of our warehouse space so we could give the landlord their room back, but more importantly, got a great product out to an underserved market.
That’s what I call a WIN / WIN / WIN.
CONCLUSION
To summarise, I want to touch on why this strategy worked so well.
I’m going to start with the most overlooked part of marketing.
Far too often, people get caught up in all the ‘shiny objects’.
By that, I mean the latest strategies and technology for marketing their products and services.
Now while that is important, and the platforms we market on are forever changing, please understand this:
Your Prospects BUY Your OFFER. That is it.
I was guilty of making this mistake myself early on in my marketing days. Forget about Facebook or Google or PPC or whatever the latest cool strategy you’ve heard is, and do this one thing:
OFFER PEOPLE SOMETHING THEY WANT TO BUY!
The offer I made to these people was not only hyper targeted and relevant, it was something they genuinely wanted. That’s the first key part to the strategy.
Secondly, the offer reached the intended target. Successful marketing boils down to getting the right message in front of the right person at the right time.
By having a targeted list of warm-to-hot leads and a killer offer, getting the message in front of them was the key part.
Thirdly, having a well written letter, with a solid promotional idea and a timely, relevant offer. That says it all…
Finally, and in some ways most importantly – a deadline on the offer. All of the responses came in the final week of September – otherwise I would have published this 3 weeks ago.
If you’ve read this far… I applaud you.
And I thank you.
If you want this implemented in your own business – you can contact me here.
If you want a copy of the letter – you can get one here.
Until next time…
JH