Sharpe & Direct. The Direct Response and Email Marketing Newsletter

The sweetest sound in any language is the sound of your name. That’s why the most important word in direct mail is “you.”

Since your prospective customers care about themselves more than they care about you or what you are selling through the mail, your direct mail package should make your prospects the hero of your letters. (more…)

If you use direct mail to generate leads for your sales force, and if you’re hunting for an offer that will motivate prospects to respond to your mailings, how about asking your sales force for some advice? Your best sales people know what to say to prospects to close sales. Different folks need different closes. You can take these closing techniques and make them your direct mail offers. (more…)

Are you a business-to-business direct mail marketer looking for something better to offer than white papers? Consider self-assessment surveys. (more…)

Direct mail marketing rules are made to be broken, or so I’m told. So break this one and see what happens. (more…)

Two of the greatest challenges for a company doing direct mail sales lead generation are getting attention and creating attractive offers. A compelling package with a poor offer will flop. And a poor package with a compelling offer won’t even get opened. (more…)

In business-to-business direct mail lead generation, sell your offer, not your product.

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The secret to success in business-to-business direct mail lead generation is testing. I have hunches. You have hunches. But testing settles the debate. When you test your package against my package and we measure the results, we know for certain which package performed better. (more…)

For two winters I heated my house with an old fashioned woodstove. I learned the art of reviving a bed of dying coals each chilly winter morning, adjusting the kindling, firewood and dampers just right so that the stove would heat my turn-of-the- century farmhouse for the longest period possible. (more…)

In business-to-business direct mail, you are unlikely to reach prospects at the very moment they are ready to buy. And even if you do, you are not likely to close (more…)

When you are selling business to business using direct mail, you cannot always feature a reduced price or an information product as your offer. Here are some offers, some unusual (more…)

In direct mail, the offer is the incentive or reward that you dangle in front of your prospects to motivate them to respond to your mailing, either with an order or with a request for more information. (more…)

Every direct mail package you drop in the mail should contain an offer. The offer is the incentive or reward that motivates prospects to respond to your mailing, either with (more…)

In direct mail, the offer is the incentive or reward that you dangle in front of your prospects to motivate them to respond to your mailing. In business-to-consumer direct mail, for example, (more…)

Rarely in B2B marketing will you close a sale with a sales letter alone. That’s because products and services that are sold business to business are usually more complex and more expensive (more…)

Every sales letter you send to customers or potential customers should contain an incentive that motivates your reader to place an order or request more information. (more…)

People like to receive personalized gifts, gifts that are for them alone. We love to receive gifts that have our names printed on them. (more…)

Although it may seem counterintuitive, giving something away at no charge can lower your cost per lead. That’s because offering a freebie usually increases your response rate. (more…)