So your last postcard mailing was a bit of a disappointment in generating leads and sales for your real estate investment firm? It happens. But undoubtedly when it does happen it leaves you a little baffled. You’re not alone. You sit there looking at your statistics. You study them from every perspective you can think of. But you can’t answer the question why. Why did the mailing not pull well? What did I do wrong? What part of the content didn’t work?
Was it the headline? Was it the text? Or perhaps I didn’t place enough or even convincing testimonials?
Your job – and without a doubt one of the hardest and most frustrating for any direct marketer --- is to discover what aspects hindered this effort. Before you tear up your original copy and start from scratch, telling me that this is just impossible, consider using this very simple approach to correcting your copy.
Let me start off by telling you that I’m a “collector” of junk mail. Sure, some people may collect coins; others collect stamps. And still others prefer to collect Mickey Mouse items. I though find that junk mail is worth its wait in gold to my business.
And I’ll tell you why. My name is on a mailing list not once, but sometimes twice and even three times. Each time my name is worded a little differently. Or perhaps the address is just a bit different.
This gives me the wonderful opportunity to receive the particular mailing twice. And many times I discover that the mailings are not exactly identical. I soon realized that this was how the firm was “testing” its copy. Each mailing had a different code. They obviously were tracking the results to discover which pulled better.
The difference in these two mailings? You might believe that there was some huge change in copy, or in format. Ah, you’d be wrong. It was a very subtle, almost indistinguishable change from one mailing to the next. And it was a single photo on the front page.
Yes! That was it. And you can use this illustration to your advantage in your next postcard mailing. If it didn’t bring in the results that you though it should, change one element – and one element only. Then mail it again. Better yet, mail the two side by side carefully placing different codes on them. Then you can get a true picture of which pulls better.
It may be a different headline. Or you may decide to place different testimonials on the postcard. It really doesn’t matter what you change. Use your gut instincts. Just be sure to only change one item at a time. Then mail it. When the results roll in, then you can compare it to the previous one.
Did it pull any better? Or did it pull worse. If you’re not satisfied with these results, then on your next mailing, select one more item to change.
Yes, this does take patience on your part. But you’ll be surprised how you can perfect a less than stellar performance into an effective direct-marketing postcard campaign for your real estate investing firm. Just give it a try!
One more thing, I would like to invite you to
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