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Casual Articles - How to Create a 66% Chance to Increase Your Direct Mail Response Rate?
The qualified labor "gene pool" is clearly getting pretty shallow. All indications are that it will continue to get worse. Right now It's as good as it will ever be, and that’s a scary thing to say the least.With the labor market tightening up, the harsh reality is that there are
The testing imperative becomes all the more important as more companies are marketing ever more specialized products to smaller niche segments of the population.
Test, re-test, and prosper.
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(385 w
With all the cutbacks, right-sizing and outplacement occurring in today’s corporate world, career change is very difficult. Many blindlessly list their resumes on Monster or Career Builder hoping for a quick interview and job offer. However, my best advice, provided during career training
Testing, Testing, and Testing…
But how do you test a direct sales or a fundraiser letter?
This is how I’d do it:
Have at least three different versions of the same letter and mail each to 10% of your total sample.
Then select the letter that has the maximum response rate and mail it to the remaining 70% of your list.
Doing so would give you a 66% chance of increasing your response rate.
How? Let me explain.
Let’s assume that you have A, B, and C versions of your basic letter.
You mail each to 10% of your mailing list and you receive 1%, 2% and 4% response, respectively.
If we assume that your total “sample population” consists of 1,000 names, this means you receive 1, 2 and 4 responses from each of your 10% mailings.
I’d take the letter which rang up a 4% return rate (Letter C) and mail it to the remaining 700 addresses, for 28 responses.
That would give you a total of 1 + 2 + 4 + 28 = 35 responses, yielding an overall response rate of 3.5%.
Now, let’s see what would happen if you send any of these letters randomly to all of your list without testing it first.
If you send letter A, you’ll receive 10 responses.
If you send letter B, you’ll receive 20 responses.
And if you get real lucky and send letter C, you’ll receive 40 responses.
Thus for 2 out 3, or 66% of the cases, your response rate will be LOWER than what you'll achieve by first testing all three letters on separate 10% samples.
And that’s why I claim that testing the three different versions of your sales copy on three 10% samples would mean a 66% chance of increasing your response rate over the no-test case.
The testing imperative becomes all the more important as more companies are marketing ever more specialized products to smaller niche segments of the population.
Test, re-test, and prosper.
----------------------------------------------------
(385 wo
Before you can start advising others how to get their act together, you need to ensure that you have got your act together. i.e. you need to walk the talk and set a good example. Now that you have a good idea of what supervisors need to do to be good supervisors, let us explore some basic
Doing so would give you a 66% chance of increasing your response rate.
How? Let me explain.
Let’s assume that you have A, B, and C versions of your basic letter.
You mail each to 10% of your mailing list and you receive 1%, 2% and 4% response, respectively.
If we assume that your total “sample population” consists of 1,000 names, this means you receive 1, 2 and 4 responses from each of your 10% mailings.
I’d take the letter which rang up a 4% return rate (Letter C) and mail it to the remaining 700 addresses, for 28 responses.
That would give you a total of 1 + 2 + 4 + 28 = 35 responses, yielding an overall response rate of 3.5%.
Now, let’s see what would happen if you send any of these letters randomly to all of your list without testing it first.
If you send letter A, you’ll receive 10 responses.
If you send letter B, you’ll receive 20 responses.
And if you get real lucky and send letter C, you’ll receive 40 responses.
Thus for 2 out 3, or 66% of the cases, your response rate will be LOWER than what you'll achieve by first testing all three letters on separate 10% samples.
And that’s why I claim that testing the three different versions of your sales copy on three 10% samples would mean a 66% chance of increasing your response rate over the no-test case.
The testing imperative becomes all the more important as more companies are marketing ever more specialized products to smaller niche segments of the population.
Test, re-test, and prosper.
----------------------------------------------------
(385 w
Career testing has become a very popular way of "discovering ourselves" and our abilities. However, many people tend to accept their test results as the absolute gospel truth about themselves and their occupations.This in a way can be a very dangerous assumption and especially for
I’d take the letter which rang up a 4% return rate (Letter C) and mail it to the remaining 700 addresses, for 28 responses.
That would give you a total of 1 + 2 + 4 + 28 = 35 responses, yielding an overall response rate of 3.5%.
Now, let’s see what would happen if you send any of these letters randomly to all of your list without testing it first.
If you send letter A, you’ll receive 10 responses.
If you send letter B, you’ll receive 20 responses.
And if you get real lucky and send letter C, you’ll receive 40 responses.
Thus for 2 out 3, or 66% of the cases, your response rate will be LOWER than what you'll achieve by first testing all three letters on separate 10% samples.
And that’s why I claim that testing the three different versions of your sales copy on three 10% samples would mean a 66% chance of increasing your response rate over the no-test case.
The testing imperative becomes all the more important as more companies are marketing ever more specialized products to smaller niche segments of the population.
Test, re-test, and prosper.
----------------------------------------------------
(385 w
Consider all the materials that we make stuff out of and how important they are to us. If you ask the average person they will immediately think of steel, aluminum, glass and concrete, then they will think a bit and say Plastic.Ah ha, Plastic indeed, yes plastic and they probably s
If you send letter A, you’ll receive 10 responses.
If you send letter B, you’ll receive 20 responses.
And if you get real lucky and send letter C, you’ll receive 40 responses.
Thus for 2 out 3, or 66% of the cases, your response rate will be LOWER than what you'll achieve by first testing all three letters on separate 10% samples.
And that’s why I claim that testing the three different versions of your sales copy on three 10% samples would mean a 66% chance of increasing your response rate over the no-test case.
The testing imperative becomes all the more important as more companies are marketing ever more specialized products to smaller niche segments of the population.
Test, re-test, and prosper.
----------------------------------------------------
(385 w
If you could identify mistakes that are killing your bridge game, or your golf game, or your exercise routine, or your budget plan, or whatever, would you take heed of that information and correct those mistakes?Of course you would, and so would I. But how about the critical mistak
The testing imperative becomes all the more important as more companies are marketing ever more specialized products to smaller niche segments of the population.
Test, re-test, and prosper.
----------------------------------------------------
(385 words, Copyright May 2006 Ugur Akinci)
by Ugur Akinci, Ph.D.
Creative Copywriter and Technical Communicator
writer111@gmail.com
www.writer111.com
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