Being a Mail Connoisseur
Volume 11, Number 45
Issue 541
I think people still love to get mail delivered by the United States Postal Service. E-mail just doesn’t cut it when you want to communicate in a professional way. E-mail is great for quick, brief encounters, but, professionally, a personal letter is still the way to go. But envelopes prepared with personal attention seem to be vanishing from my mailbox. Where are the personal letters with real stamps that convey a sense of personal affiliation? And isn’t “personal attraction/affiliation” the way that you get someone’s sales dollars?
I get my Postal Service mail in a few different places: my offices, my homes, my post office box and I like to consider myself a very discriminating sorter of mail. You have heard of Wine Connoisseurs; I am a Mail Connoisseur. Personal letters always get my attention. Anything where the first class rate of postage (37 cents for the first ounce) hasn’t been paid (that isn’t a bill) immediately goes in the trash can.
For the better part of my life--first tagging along with my Father--I have been taking mail out of the little post office box and walking over to the counter in the lobby of the post office and sorting the vast majority of “mail” right into the trash can. Businesses spend billions and billions of dollars each year sending mail that consumers toss into the trash can. Heck, we could probably cure breast cancer with what will be thrown out just this year.
So, how should a small company go about designing a mass mailing that gets opened or a post card that gets read? First, realize that your greatest base of potential business are your own existing customers and contacts and make sure that the letters and cards that you send look like a personal letters or letters done in small quantities. Don’t do slick brochures because customers realize that they, in the long run, pay for them.
I get a lot of direct mail from law firms, banks and financial service providers. They seem to think that it is a new and great idea to send expensive slick brochures to all the CPAs in town. I much prefer getting a personal letter from a small law firm where a partner might have seen me at a community function or read something that I have written. In a fraction of the hours and thousands of dollars that it took to design a slick promotional brochure that is then sent “en masse” to strangers, they could have sent personal letters to a select few. The bottom line is that if you send 1,000 packages to strangers, expect to get about 1-2% (10-20) response rate, at best.
Save your money, keep the trash out of landfills and get better results by personally writing 50 people that you have “sharked” out--you’ll probably get a 50% response rate (25) for a mere fraction of the cost.
I have written previously about the power of the postcard and I won’t repeat that. Though I am a big fan of postcards, I’m also a fan of the hand-addressed envelope with stamps--multiple stamps. Sometimes people ask me why my individual personal letters are typewritten but my envelopes are hand addressed, “isn’t that unprofessional?” Well, I look at it in my Mail Connoisseur way and tell the person that I never throw away a handwritten envelope with first class postage without reading what is inside. If there are multiple stamps on the envelope, I am going to wonder more about the sender. They caught my attention. When was the last time you got a letter with multiple stamps (other than from me)?
For my mass-produced client letters, postcards and items of direct mail (that are sent in quantities of 10 or more) I use computerized adhesive labels produced from my client/contact databases. One thing that I do is make sure to use stamps, not a postage meter. In fact, I use multiple stamps, such as a 20, a 15 and a 2. I buy them from collectors in quantity. If you know where to go (call me and I will tell you), you can get full-gummed stamps in sheets or part-sheets at 90% or so of face value. That’s right, save 10% on your postage: buy old stamps from collectors and use them to make sure that your letter gets on top (AND OPENED FIRST) every time. You will, like I do, have your customers asking to be sent their bills because they love seeing the old stamps.
In short, forget the slick direct mail and, if you must solicit strangers, use personal letters. Use handwritten envelopes for regular correspondence and a mailing list program to generate white adhesive labels for your mass mailings to existing clients. Always use a #10 business envelope with a return address with your name and always use postage stamps and not a meter. Consider buying your stamps from collectors to make your mail personal and colorful.
If you would like to talk about any of these topics, please call me at 1-804-378-5096.
David B. Robinson, CPA
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