Alan Sharpe

Good Direct Mail Sales Letters Are Like Good Salespeople.

Want to improve your sales letters? Compare them with newspaper classified ads for salespeople. What employers look for in a salesperson, you should look for in a sales letter. 1. Self-starter The best salespeople require the least amount of supervisi... Read >

Successful Fundraising Letters Give Your Donors Conflict.

Your fundraising letters will be more dramatic if you write them like a novel. Every good novel follows a simple outline: conflict, development, resolution. The novel opens with a main character in conflict. The main character deals with the conflict. ... Read >

Fundraising Appeal Letters: Make Yours Novel Using Fiction Techniques.

What would happen if the author of The Da Vinci Code wrote your next direct mail fundraising appeal letter? Would your letter be boring? Predictable? Forgettable? I'll give the answer in a minute. Your donors will no longer respond to lacklustre ... Read >

Direct Mail Guarantees Should Hurt.

The best guarantee to offer your direct mail buyer is one that hurts. You, that is. Like you, your potential buyer lives in a rip-off society where merchants sell shoddy products and vendors do not honour their promises. In this kind of selling and buy... Read >

Write Pre-Lapsed-Donor Donation Fundraising Letters Before Donors Lapse.

When is the best time to recover a lapsed donor? Before they lapse. Using a "pre-lapsed donor letter." I heard recently of a non-profit organization that mails a special letter to all donors who are at risk of lapsing. This organization has found that ... Read >

Successful Fundraising Donation Letters Use Before-And-After Samples, Examples.

The best advice I can give you for writing successful fundraising letters is to act as if your donors are obese. Really obese. Imagine, for example, that they struggle with their weight every single day. Imagine that they hate the way they look. Imagin... Read >

Don't Always Make Direct Mail Headlines Positive.

The most powerful headline I ever read and acted upon was a negative headline. It changed my life. Yet most books on direct mail copywriting will tell you to cast your headlines, overlines and Johnson Boxes always in the positive. But sometimes being n... Read >

Direct Mail Reply Devices Must Tell Sales Letter Buyers How To Respond.

My brother-in-law says you should be thankful for truckers because everything you buy was handled at some point by a trucker. LoWayne is a trucker, so he's biased. But I think he's right anyway. You depend on truckers for your life. And, if you are a d... Read >

Premiums in Request Letters Asking for Donations: Examples, Samples of Pros and Cons.

Q. What is a premium? A. In direct mail fundraising letters, a premium is an item offered to a donor, usually at no charge, to encourage the donor to make a donation. Q. What's the difference between front-end and back-end premiums? A. Premiums that... Read >

Lapsed Donor Reactivation And Recovery: Continue Writing Those Direct Mail Donation Letters.

When is the best time to stop sending direct mail donation appeal letters to your lapsed donors? Never. Dropping lapsed donors and members from your mailings is rarely cost-effective. Sending them all of your regular mailings is not cost-effective e... Read >

In Direct Mail Marketing Copywriting, Specifics Outsell Generalities.

Lilly Tomlin, the American comic, once said: "When I was growing up, I wanted to be a somebody. Now I realize I should have been more specific." In direct response advertising and direct mail selling, as in life, specifics sell. Generalities don't. ... Read >

Donor Newsletters Boost Direct Mail Donations Without Asking For Donations.

I have a client whose direct mail fundraising program is in trouble. I think you can profit from his predicament. I know he is going to. The development officers at his non-profit organization are doing plenty of things right. They attract new supporte... Read >

Mailing List Brokers Boost Direct Mail Marketing Results.

Last time I checked, there were 25,000 direct mail response lists and 50,000 compiled lists currently on the market. Among all of these lists, you'll find hundreds that work for your product or service. Actually, you likely won't find them. Locating the b... Read >

Donation Thank-You Letter Mistakes To Avoid In Direct Mail Fundraising

I once had a friend who used to bid me farewell by exclaiming, "Up 'yer kilt!" Where Jock is today and how many pals he still has I cannot tell. But his original and startling phrase reminds me of a vital truth in direct mail fundraising: How you thank yo... Read >

Like Direct Mail, Landing Page Conversion Starts Above The Fold.

In the Good Old Days of direct mail, which is to say, before 1997 and the advent of the Internet, I and other direct mail marketers agonized over what to put "above the fold." Maybe you did as well. That tiny top panel on a sales letter or self-ma... Read >