Or maybe the Police are finally catching up with me! You look through the keyhole. Probably selling something. What are they selling? Do I really care? Should I open the door, or pretend to be asleep? You open the door. Could you spare five minutes to talk about how you can support the capybaras? Chances are that by now you know whether you want to keep talking about the plight of the capybaras, or whether you want to end the conversation as quickly as possible.
Probably money. What for? Some kind of animal. Do I care about animal charities? Does it sound interesting? Is it worth the time to have the conversation? People ask themselves at least 20 unspoken questions as they go through the process of picking up a mail item, deciding whether to open it, deciding whether to read it, reading it, and deciding whether to respond.
If you design your direct mail item to lead people through these questions and give positive answers to them, then you have the best chance of getting the response you want. Amplifiers might also reinforce the answer that the reader has already given, producing a sense of satisfaction. An amplifier makes the reader more likely to read on, and more likely to ultimately respond.
A filter makes the reader less likely to respond. Imagine a letter with a logo on the envelope, a return address on the flap that matches the logo, a logo on the letterhead, and a signatory who mentions their name, job title and organisation at the bottom of the letter.
The letter is very likely to be read. Now imagine there is one logo on the envelope and a different logo on the letterhead, and the signature is an illegible scribble with no further details. This letter is already on the verge of being thrown in the bin. Other unspoken questions are specific to products, categories, organisations or individual customers.
Have they remembered that I sent them a cheque last month? How much do they want? Can I still cancel with no hassle? He observed that sales and customer services staff will know what comes up in the real conversations that your direct mail replaces. It leads your customers to find the right answers to their unspoken questions. Letters are personal communications from one person to another. Receiving a letter creates the hope that someone knows about you and cares about you.
This also means that the first questions the reader looks to answer with the letter are personal ones. They glance at logo and date, the address block and salutation first, and then skip straight to the end of the letter to look at the signature and signatory. On the way, their eye will catch on some parts of the letter. The opening words, and elements that are in bold, underlined, indented, sentences, or single-line paragraphs. They then reach the signature, hoping that an actual person has gone to the trouble to actually sign the letter, or as close as possible.
If there is a PS, then they will read it at this point, probably in full. Then they will make a decision about whether or not to go back and read the letter from the beginning.
Most letterheads have a logo in the top-right corner. Instead, consider putting a picture or some text highlighting the benefits of the offer you are making. Otherwise, my advice would be to keep the logo area fairly clean and simple.
Often under the logo there is some letterhead text with the name and contact details of the person writing, which is great so long as it matches the actual signature on the letter. If there is a date on the letter, it will almost certainly be read. It goes without saying that people are more likely to respond to a letter that has their preferred form of their name and title. This is why high quality address, name and salutation data is important.
People skip from their name the important bit! However, as they go, they glance at bits of text on the page. Of course, your letter should be laid out in paragraphs, preferably of 3—6 lines each.
Otherwise the letter looks like an unreadable mass of text and will probably be thrown away. Not only does the layout make it look easy to read, it also provides hints to the content of the letter before the reader actually starts reading it properly.
The reader will glance at a few words in these elements, not stop to read them properly. The reader is actively looking to make sure that the signature and the name match, so you want to help them. The signature should be printed in a bright shade of blue, to match what you would expect to see in a personal letter, 70 per cent of which are signed in blue ink. This means that the PS is very likely the first thing in your letter the reader has actually paid attention to, and they read it in full before making the decision to engage with the actual letter.
Focus single-mindedly on what your reader can get out of going back to the top and actually reading the letter in full. If someone picks up your mailing, opens the envelope, takes out the letter and enclosures, checks the address and signature block and then reads the PS, then and only then will they go back to the beginning of your letter and start to read it from top to bottom. Someone who actually reads your letter is already in a very good place.
They saw the message on the outer envelope, they noticed what kind of response form is enclosed, they saw your logo and then they read your carefully crated PS to answer all of those questions. So start telling them what they can achieve, not telling them what they already know, which is that you want them to open their wallets. Add this book to your favorite list ». Community Reviews. Showing Rating details. All Languages. More filters.
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