SFM: Ep11 - Using "Forgotten" Direct Mail Strategies For Upselling

Welcome back to the 3rd part in this 5 part series. In episode #11 I'll be discussing RARELY used direct mail strategies which can be easily implemented (even automated) to take your back-end to an entirely new level.

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Sales Funnel Mastery podcast.

This is your host Jeremy Reeves.

Today, we’re going to be talking about Part 3 of this 5 part series of how to add upsells to your sequence, to your buying sequence, your marketing funnel, without pissing off your customers. We’re going through a couple different ways that you can do this that you can leverage that timing of when people are in heat.

When your customers just bought a product, you want to sell them to take advantage of the timing. They’re really excited to buy. They’re motivated to buy. They’re in the most susceptible state to buying other products that you sell, but you want to do that without being aggressive and annoying.

That’s what this series is covering. Just as a quick recap, so far we’ve gone over Part 1. It was showing how to use surveys and buyers auto responders to do this. Part 2 was using re-targeting campaigns; using things like Facebook or Perfect Audience or a couple different re-targeting pieces of software that you can use. There are all kinds. Just look up “re-targeting” and you’ll find a couple different ways to do that.

That’s the last two episodes. If you haven’t listened to them, make sure that you go back and listen to those episodes.

We’re getting into some really, really advanced high-level stuff here. It’s very, very actionable. That’s what we’re doing. In this episode, what we’re going to cover is sending out direct mail stick letter campaigns.

Again, what we’re doing is thinking of different ways that you can leverage the intensity of people, how often they buy right after they buy the first product. People are most open to buying another product or service of yours right after they’ve just purchased something from you. We’re taking advantage of that without pissing them off.

Some people don’t like the immediately upsell sequence and that’s fine. Even though I think it’s fine in some markets, it’s sometimes doesn’t do all that well. These are different ways that you can do that that are a little bit more subtle, a little bit more ninja-like.

What we’re going to do in this one is when someone buys one of your products or services; it doesn’t matter if it’s a physical product or digital product or service, really neither. We’re going send them a stick letter in the mail. I’ll explain that in a minute. This is an actual physical piece of mail that they’re getting. It’s not digital.

If you’re only doing digital marketing, you’re making a huge mistake. Just doing a hybrid marketing approach can add tremendous multiples to your profits because it hits people in different ways. I could write an entire book about that, but I won’t get into it now. For this specific example we’re going to use a direct mail stick letter.

A stick letter is a letter, usually, from the founder of the company. It doesn’t have to be. You can make it from whoever you want. It could be a customer service person or something like that. It’s a letter, usually one to two pages, that thanks people for their purchase, confirms their purchase. If you’re shipping them a physical product, this is something that you can put in the box with it.

Let’s say you’re selling supplements, you can put one of these stick letters in the box that they get. You don’t have to do that. If it’s a digital product, obviously, you can’t do that because you’re not shipping them anything. You would just send this out the same day that they bought your product.

There are companies that you can automate this with if you have enough volume. You can automate it with your printer. If you have staff, you can have one of your staff do it and save a lot of money. Print out 1,000 at a time and have a person on your staff do it.

Another way you can do it really cheap is find someone retired in your neighborhood that’s looking for a little extra money on the side. They don’t have anything to do. They’re just looking for something to keep them busy. That’s another really good way to do this.

Another way that you could do this really cheap is find a college student. They’re kind of hungry. They’re looking for money. College students are kind of broke. They’re looking for things that they can do, so they can help you do this.

Let’s go through, what’s a stick letter going to look like? What’s going to actually be in this letter?

There’s a couple different reasons that you send this out. Number one is to confirm that they made a good buying decision. You’re going to start off this letter by essentially re-selling them on the benefits and the reasons why they just bought the original product. That helps to reduce buyer’s remorse. It helps reduce refunds. It helps to increase retention rates. It helps people have a more pleasant feeling about your company.

It’s one of those things that you can track. You can track reduction in refunds and things like that, but it also just adds a lot of good will, which is awesome. It’s kind of like an invisible factor these days. It’s going to help people feel better about your company.

You start off by re-selling them on their buying decisions. “Hey Frank, you just made a great decision to purchase product X. Just as a quick reminder, here’s what it’s going to do for you. For best results, do this.” You just go into the benefits, a quick little bulleted thing. This takes up, maybe a half a page or so, just reminding them of what they bought, reaffirming that it was a good decision.

If you can, throw a surprise bonus in there. “Hey, by the way, I also wanted you to know that I like to give my first time clients a really nice surprise. If you want, you can go to www.whatever.com and I have a free surprise bonus for you.”

Again, it’s just a little bit of good will. Good will is always a good thing to have with customers because you want that experience. Experience is what is going to bring people back to your company again and again.

That’s optional. If you have something, that’s great. It’s essentially a bonus. If you don’t have a surprise bonus, it’s not like a make or break type of thing. It’s just going to help. It’s not going to hurt.

The next thing is you want to do is show other people who have achieved a great outcome. You realize that they’ve already seen the testimonials. They’ve already read all the case studies and stuff like that. The reason why you want to put this into this stick letter after they’ve bought is because they’ve forgotten about all those people.

Let’s just say, you’re selling a weight loss product. They read your sales letter, whatever you’re selling. They’ve already seen the case studies, the testimonials, the pictures, and everything like that. They’ve bought the product and a couple days after that, they don’t remember about those case studies. All they’re thinking about is, “Now I have to do this. Now I have to get these results.”

If you come back and say, “Hey, remember these other people who got these results? The reason they got those results is by taking action.”

That’s one of the biggest, number one causes of refunds with any product or service, mostly product, digital or physical. People don’t use it. They don’t consume the product. They don’t go through it.

If it’s an online, digital course, you have to have things in place to get people into that product, to get them to consume that information, or whatever it is that you’re selling. Software, you have to get them to login to the software, to fill out their account, to set up whatever they have to set up. Otherwise, they’re not going to use it.

So far, we have number one, re-sell them on their buying decision. Number two, if you have a surprise bonus, put that in there. Create some good will. Number three, show other people that achieved great outcomes and tell them what they did to get those outcomes.

What you want to do now that you’ve gotten them all warm and fuzzy, you have them on your side. You’re kind of an evangelist for them. You’re that person that’s helping them solve that problem. They’re really excited. They finally got the product. Everybody likes getting mail, so especially if this is a physical product. It’s a good experience.

Now that you’ve gotten them warmed up, you’ve got them reading. You’ve gotten them down the slippery slide. What you do is transition them into a complimentary upsell. You say, “What you just bought is going to get X results,” whatever those results are or help them overcome any problem their going to solve.

“By the way, just in case you didn’t know. We also have,” whatever is your upsell. You transition into why buying that next upsell. Again, it could be coaching. It could be a deluxe version of what you just sold. It could be cross-selling them a different product. If it’s supplements, a different supplement that’s going to synergistically enhance the results.

It’s kind of hard to go into specific upsells because there are a million of them. You transition into why this next product they should buy is going to give them better, faster and easier results. Those are the three big keys that you want to hit in upsells: better, faster, easier.

You sell them on the benefits. Sell them on the reasons why they should buy it, and then you give them a specific deadline. You send them to a page where it says, “If they’re getting this package on April 1st,” that’s the day I’m recording this. Let’s just say it’s today. You always have a specific deadline because it always helps increase conversions.

I like to reward the fast-action takers, however you want to spin that. You say, “It’s only available until April 7th,” then this goes away and it goes back up to the regular price.

The way that you can do that with specific deadlines and have real scarcity, all you have to do is use something that’s called Scarcity Samurai. That’s what I use on my page and I’m doing stuff like this. It’s kind of like an evergreen scarcity play.

I don’t like fake scarcity. I hate those pages when you go to places and it’s like, “You only have two days to get this,” and then you go back three days later and it’s still the same offer there. I hate that. I think it’s really disingenuous, it’s unethical, and it’s immoral and that kind of thing.

I use Scarcity Samurai. It’s just a WordPress plug in. It’s really cheap. I think it’s $97 or $197. I think the lowest price is $97 for a single site. If you have a bunch of sites it’s $197.

What you can do with that is it tracks when that person first gets there. It puts a timer on it, so they have something like 72 hours from the moment they hit that page. It really is scarcity. It really is a deadline for that person, because once they hit that page, it’s 72 hours. If it’s April 1st, it would end on April 4th or whatever it is. It automatically cookies them, so it knows who’s coming back and it automatically redirects them to another page.

Once 72 hours is over, it would go back to the regular price page. It really is a true scarcity because you’re giving them a deadline for taking fast action. It’s not true scarcity in the sense that if you’re launching a product and you only have it to a certain date.

It’s a little bit hard to do promotions that are evergreen like that. I think this is a good way to do that, where it’s actual real scarcity. You don’t have to lie to people. Don’t lie to people, please, but it’s real scarcity. It’s a way for you to increase the results you’re getting, get people to take action.

Remember when you’re selling them these upsells, you’re selling them something that’s going to help grow their business. It’s going to help them. Maybe not grow their business, whatever your consumer is. I’m thinking it’s something selling to business owners.

Anyway, whatever you’re selling them is going to get them better results. You don’t want to really be lax about this. You want to really make sure that the people that are going to take the next step really do take the next step. This is a really good way to do it.

Now, a couple other really quick notes. The type of language or tone that you should be using in the copy for this letter, it should be very, very caring, very genuine and not sales-y. This should not be a hard sell. It should just be a very genuine, from your heart, that kind of letter.

If you tend to get emotional when you have a couple drinks, literally, I know this sounds a little bit weird. Trust me on this, I’m a writer. I’ve tested this type of stuff. Sometimes what helps me if I can’t get into an emotional state when I’m writing copy, I’ll have a glass or two of wine while I’m writing, usually at night. I don’t do that at noon or whatever. Have a glass or two of wine. That brings out your emotions a little bit.

Just think about that person that you’re trying to help. Visualize the problems they’re having. Visualize the worst possible scenario that they’re going through and how your product or service is helping them get better results and get faster results, achieve things that they’ve never been able to achieve before. Get rid of problems that have been just plaguing them for years and years and it’s having a terrible effect on their life.

Your product is that savior that’s going to come in and help them get rid of that. If you get into that type of from-the-heart language and you write copy like that, it’s going to really help this.

Another thing is to make sure that they know that it’s for them only. Don’t do this for the general public. The offer that you make should not be something that you give to cold prospects or anything like that. It should be a special offer for your existing buyers only.

They need to know that, too, because it’s really important. When you get customers they want to be treated special. They don’t want the same offer as somebody else. They want to be treated special.

The last thing that you can do with this, if you really want to add a little oomph, a little bit of power to the campaign, is to add an optional email auto responder to go out with this. Let’s say that somebody bought your product today, April 1st, depending on how fast and you can time this in the various time zones or different countries. You can time this to figure out how to set up your auto responders.

What you do is figure out how long it takes to get to them. If somebody buys your product on one day, when are they going to receive that letter? If you’re sending to the same time zone, usually it’s one to two days. If you’re sending to one time zone over, it’s probably two to three days. If you’re sending across the country, maybe it’s three days. What you want to do is figure that out.

This doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect. If you have a big business and it makes sense to you to make this perfect, absolutely do it because you’ll get better results. If you just have a couple thousand dollars and it really isn’t going to make a big impact, you can just do four days.

Send out an email that says, “Hey, you should’ve gotten a letter from me within the last day or two, just wanted to make sure you received it. If you didn’t see it, I just wanted to send you to a page to show you what that letter said, and then have a link. Send them to an online sales letter that essentially says the exact same thing the direct mail says.

That’s it. I really hope you enjoy this. Don’t take this lightly. This is a really, really effective and useful strategy that any business can implement into their business.

If you don’t want to mess around with the actual direct mail, a two page letter, you have to do a printer and all that kind of stuff. I know Office Autopilot or now Ontraport that have a feature that I use. You can actually send automated postcards.

Instead of sending them a direct mail letter, send them a postcard. It’s automated, so you don’t have to wait and figure out how to do all the direct mail. You’re still getting that impact. It’s not quite as good as a stick letter, but it’s still the same impact. You just put your quick little story on there and a link to go to an online sales letter.

If that’s the case, I would recommend putting a video on that page instead of just text because you want this whole campaign to be a very, very personal type of conversation, a very heartfelt, genuine, personal conversation between you and that buyer.

I hope that helps. I hope it gives you ideas. More importantly, I really hope that you implement this because it is extremely important for you to do that. You can sit here and listen to it all you want and say, “That’s a great idea. Oh my God, Jeremy is so smart.”

If you don’t implement it, nobody wins. I don’t win. You don’t win. Your customer doesn’t win. Everybody loses. Make sure that you implement this. Make sure you tell your friends about it.

If you haven’t already, shoot me some feedback. You can go to my website,www.jeremyreeves.com. Click any of the contact me links and send me an email. Also, rate this oniTunes. I would really appreciate it. Share it with your friends.

I will see you next time for Part 4. I will talk to you soon.