Direct mail letter tip: Tell a real story & weave it throughout your entire letter.

Direct mail tip: Mixing typeset w/handwritten teasers on outer envelope can boost response.

Direct mail tip: For your next No.10 envelope mailing, test using No.11 or No.12 against it.

Direct mail tip: Place the name of the person signing letter above the corner card on carrier envelope in courier typeface.

Direct mail tip: When using No.11 or 12 carrier envelopes, make sure you also use larger carrier window.

Direct mail letter tip: “You” & “Your” most important. And type “I” instead of “we” most of the time. Keeps it a 1-to-1 communication.

Direct mail letter tip: Occasionally use 1-sentence paragraphs for emphasis. Even 1-word paragraphs are great.

Direct mail letter tip: Hook your paragraphs together with “connective” words – ex: And But Then Why – to build & keep reader moving.

Direct mail letter tip: Try using “handwritten” marginal notes in blue or red ink.

Copywriting tip: Read your draft copy ALOUD & anywhere u stumble, revise & smooth it out.

Direct Mail letter Tip: Write about a real live person — NOT just your mission statement or programs.

Direct Mail Tip: When using hand-written copy — be sure to keep it short (hard to read otherwise).

Direct Mail TIP: Giving a deadline date for reply can boost response, but give a believable reason for it.

Thanks John for these great tips. I look forward to doing a part 2!

Having your handwriting turned into a font allows me to create art that looks like it has really come from the hand of the ED or whoever you want.

I’m sure you are starting to get a sense of the possibilities.
And Chank has been gracious enough to make a special deal (only $149 US) for my readers and followers right here: https://www.chank.com/gofontyourself/
Thanks a ton Chank! And keep up the amazing work.
Hopefully once you have your font in hand, you’ll come to me to show you how to use it most effectively!
(And by the way, check out the rest of his font design too!)

Aside from “thanks”, “you” is likely one of the most important words in your direct mail letter. And that’s “you” as in ‘you the donor’. Get out your highlighter folks.

For those of you who might care, here is a quick tutorial on how I produced these video’s this week.

and lastly- Seth Godin speaks very appropriately for this post on why no one cares about – you – they only care about them.

1) You could work at a farm, helping in their fields or barn.

2) You could work at the feed mill, shoving and bagging wheat, feed and lots of other stuff.

3) You could work at the gas station pumping gas and stocking shelves.

For the record I did all three.

I recall many hours spent standing near the front door of the gas station waiting for someone to roll through our sleepy little village to get some gas and listening to the owner, Roger talk religion, politics, social issues, sports and weather with all the locals and occasionally lost soul.

He and one local farmer one time were having a very animated discussion over local politics and I remember as the voices started to raise, I think Roger was looking for a bit of solidarity from this young employee… Looking over the shoulder of the farm he shouts at me “John, what do you think about all this? What do you have to say?”

I looked at him for a moment searching my mind for some sort of insight to their conversation and I found I had none. I shrugged. He made some noise like a snort and continued on with the arguement.

A few minutes later as the farmer turned to leave, he stopped and looked at me and said something I always remember.

“Boy, you’ll always learn more from listening than talking.”

That advice has guided me well through the years.

I remember being in a client meeting where we were suppose to be working with the client to develop some ideas for a new package. This client in particular liked to take advantage of the fact that he was the client and liked to run the show. I think there were 10-12 of us there, my creative director and numerous colleagues all present… And this client spots me sitting at the other end of the table he stops and in a louder than necessary voice says, “So John, you haven’t said a word – what do you have to say?” I considered my words carefully and said, “I’m not sure (client name removed to protect him), but when I think of something valuable to add to the conversation, you can bet I will say so…”

That didn’t go over very well.

I think my creative director respected my approach but pushed me to be more vocal in these meetings. But as I told him, if I’m sitting in a room with people like him who have far more experience than I, and I have nothing at that moment to offer – why should I open my mouth to speak? I assured him there seemed to be enough people doing that already. I was going to learn a lot more by listening than talking…

I’m taking a long time to get to my point which is – as charities, or as people – do we spend more time listening or talking?

Do you listen more to your donors or do you talk more to your donors (or clients or customers)? Do you ask them what they think or do you always tell them what you think?

We all know we feel more important when we are asked for our opinion. It’s a validation that we have something to offer. Ask your donors what they think… Learn from them.

This post also serves reminder to me as a blogger or whatever the heck I am. I was reminded this past weekend, don’t blog if you don’t have anything to say. Don’t blog for the sake of blogging. (But I have a schedule! People expect it!) Don’t talk for the sake of talking.

Add to the conversation when you have something of value to contribute.(Thanks Phil!)

That’s sound advice that we all can learn from.

Here is a bit from the Step Inside Design article:

“We didn’t want to make something patronizing,” says Jason Smith, FontSmith creative director. “We wanted to make something beautiful that was easy to read.” So FontSmith worked with the client… to conduct a series of focus groups. The designers tested existing fonts to see which held the most appeal (Comic Sans?) and explored several in-progress designs, assessing how width, style, letterspacing and other factors affected readability. Ultimately, larger, rounder letters proved more accessible, and Smith hopes the new font, FS Mencap, becomes a standard in uder-friendly fonts, maybe someday rivaling Arial and Helvetica.”

I find this interesting because, like the CNIB study, it finds that a sans serif face is legible and readable. I would challenge any charity to try testing a serif face (ie: Times New Roman) vs a san serif (ie: Arial or Helvetica) in a letter.

If you decide to test it out, please let me know! And if I can convince one of my clients to try it, I’ll report back.

The problem I have is that it seems all charities want to (or can only afford to) mail are white #10 envelopes – and ‘lets slap some sort of tagline on it’.

I know I’ve said it before – be appropriate. If you have something inside that will be of some use to your donor, tell them, unless it’s something lumpy – then you don’t need to – they’ll open it any way.

Nothing says “I’m junk mail” more than a #10 with a boring tagline on it.

If you can only mail out a #10 – do something interesting with it. Use a different colour stock, use a first class stamp, use a label, make it closed faced, use some handwriting on it, use 2 windows, don’t (gasp) put anything on it… Some of these ideas will work better in prospecting than with your house file or vicea-versa…

As they say over and over – test it. And then test something else.

I don’t know if the envelope should be plain or if it should be bold, but as I’ve said before, if everyone else is letting their donors eat vanilla – send them chocolate.

Speaking of chocolate, I received this envelope the other day – talk about standing out. I had no idea what the American Power Conversion was but I was definitely going to open this thing.

And I promise this will be the last post about #10’s I do for a while!

Next week:

I have a special mid week blog planned. I was invited to be a part of a special Post2Post Book Tour hosted by Idea Sandbox. I will be interviewing the authour of “Jack’s Notebook”, Gregg Fraley.

The tour will be as follows:

Site: Education Innovation by Rob Jacobs – Monday, July 14

The Naked Idea by John Lepp (that’s me!) Tuesday, July 15

Marketing Fresh Peel by Chris Wilson Wednesday, July 16

Innoblog Thursday, July 17

The Brand Chef by Andrew Clark Friday, July 18

Hope you will join me for that.