1. To transition from printed mailing piece to spoken, opening dialogue.
2. The person conducting the follow up phone calls felt less like a cold-caller and more like a selling professional who is following up with a promised call, on a tasteful, relevant direct mailing! 

The most frequent question raised by attendees at my sales prospecting seminars is: how do you know this copy and this greeting card selection will work?

My answer: I do not, but I do understand Human Nature. If you do something tastefully different with a whiff of imagination and you make a relevant point, mailed recipients will most often respond in a positive fashion when you call them.

Personalized greeting card mailing campaigns eliminate the cold-calling stigma. No matter how call reluctant or green a sales person,  this process has repeatedly achieved remarkable results.

In the course of my 32 years of conducting thousands of client direct mailing campaigns, I have dropped a few real direct mail bombs! 

For one client many years ago, who was selling $500,000 ocean-front condominiums, we created a very unique mailing piece with fine silica sand to remind recipients of their beautiful new ocean-front addresses nestled on the shores of one of Florida’s most pristine beaches. The accompanying 4-color glossy mailing piece and matching copy were brilliantly creative and printed on the most expensive paper.

The recipients never received their mailings! We failed to print ‘hand-cancel’ on each envelope. The Post Office sorting machines at the mail processing center ruptured some of the interior envelopes and literally ‘ground to a halt’ when the fine silica sand jammed their sensitive gears!  It happened with a few pieces so equipment operators shut the system down before irreparable damage occurred. 

When someone else handles the entire personalized message preparation with variable name-insertion for multiple addressee mailings and mail processing is completely automated including stuffing, addressing, affixing first-class stamps, sealing the envelopes and mailing;  it is a very welcomed relief.

Pictures and cartoon drawings of animals work well on greeting card covers.  The desired response is a person opening the folded greeting card to peek  inside.  One of my most effective greeting cards pictures a cat looking down at a tiny mouse inches from its nose. “Someone not doing their job?” is the caption copy.  Inside the card copy is: “We will”!

Suppose you were trying to get the attention of Information Technology (IT) Managers at Fortune 100 corporate data centers?  This serious group of decision-makers is under constant pressure. But, they are still people who enjoy a humorous pause from their stressful daily regimen. 

Back to the cat and mouse stare-down greeting card with “Someone not doing their job?” Add a 17-word sentence, inside the card, conveying the message your company “can do the job”.  Then, a second greeting card received by this same person 5 days later with an IT Manager’s testimonial quotation serves to reinforce your ‘can do’ theme. 

And, 5 days later a third, and final greeting card, arrives with another ‘can do’ statement and an announcement to expect a phone call, soon.  This is all it takes. Three folded greeting cards inside envelopes with affixed first class stamps, direct-addressed, not a label-address on the envelopes.

Our 2006 Test Mailing response rate of 83% was no accident. Proof: multiple, 3-peat greeting card mailings to b2b decision-makers in 55 industries since 2006 with response rates of seldom less than 62%. 

In our Age of e-mail and v-mail, this is proof snail-mailings thoughtfully executed can very effectively set the stage to enable sales professionals to ethically access decision-making prospects, on the first call.

If you are inclined NOT to experiment, buy my $40 Power Prospecting® eBook. This process is well documented and includes the original 83% response mailing campaign conducted in 2006. You will also find a set of follow up phone calling scripts with all working forms and a chapter of expectations and reality performance yardsticks to guide you through the process.