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Where Can I Find Good Direct Mail Campaign Ideas?

A reader asks: "Where exactly is the best place to get ideas for good direct mail campaigns?" He wants to integrate direct mail into his business but believes he is stuck at step 1. Here are a couple of the ideas we shared with him: 1. You can hire a direct mail expert to help you That’s one way.  An expensive way maybe - but it's a direct way to step into the world of direct mail and work with someone who's been there, done that, and sold enough t-shirts that his was "free". If you can’t afford to do that, the easiest way is to... 2. Check your own mailbox. It is absolutely one of the best learning facilities for direct mail. It’s like higher education. Every day you get new samples and new ideas. You should collect them and make one separate file just for your competitor’s mail. Most direct marketing agencies, direct response writers, and people that design direct marketing  keep piles of all of this direct mail information. ==> INSIDER TIP: These collections of other people's marketing materials has a name - they're called “swipe” files. We have dozens and dozens of binders with thousands of pages that we use when we brainstorm ideas for a salesletter. It helps us in a couple of ways: 1) if we're "stuck" looking for a direction we can go through the swipe files and come up with ideas, and 2) It helps us keep track of what is working for other people. What types of things should you look for when creating your swipe file? You want to look for ideas for headlines, effective design, attention getting inserts, and copy that is written very effectively and gets your emotions going. We recommend a different binder or a different section for each item.  Headlines in one binder, bullets in another binder, PS's in still another binder - that way when you're assembling YOUR salesletter you don't have to hunt all over the place for that awesome bullet point you read weeks or months ago. That’s what we’re going to talk about as we continue to explore hybrid marketing and creating repeat profits. How to create these different variables. A large collection of samples will help you get the juices flowing when you’re ready to create a marketing campaign for yourself. There’s an old headline that says, “Do you make these mistakes in English?” That caught everyone’s attention and they read the ad. You could say,

• “Do you make these mistakes when hiring a carpet cleaner?” Or
• “Do you make these mistakes when hiring a plumber?” Or
• “Do you make these mistakes when going to your favorite restaurant?” Or
• “Do you make these mistakes when buying a diamond necklace?”

You starting to get the idea? Sort your samples by those that are aimed at businesses and those toward consumers. Look for ways to save money.  Look to see which campaigns are in full color. Read newspaper and magazine ads as well and see if you can spot those ads that are created to get you to take action. You’ll see that you can use this type in your own business also. You might want to go ahead and request some of the free information and see how they mail to you.  (We do this ALL the time.  We subscribe to offers just to see how the marketing process works, so we can model successful campaigns and processes in our own business!) Not all direct marketing is effective and there are a lot of pitfalls to avoid. By the time you finish with this hybrid marketing course, you’re going to know what to look for and be able to review all your samples and distinguish the good ones from the bad. One real key to knowing whether something is working or not is if you keep getting the same things in the mail. One could presume that this means they must be making money because they couldn’t afford to continue sending to you more than a couple of times. But if you're seeing the same ad running in multiple places, or if you're getting the same mailing 4, 5 or more times then you might want to grab those and put them aside. And don't think this just applies to OFFLINE, although that is the way the discussion was geared today you can do the same thing ONLINE with your emailbox.  Stop being frustrated by SPAM and use that information, study that information to determine what's working so you can use it in your own business. I hope this gave you some ideas.  If it spawned more questions, leave a comment and we'll get you an answer.

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