Tag: direct mail

Thank You Notes

My question for you today is in two parts...

First of all, do you collect your customers' physical addresses?

Second, do you send your BEST customers handwritten thank you notes in the mail?

I do both -- as of earlier today.

(If you don't feel like reading the rest of this blog post... just scroll down and leave a comment answering those questions.)

To be honest, I only switched from the "no shipping" option on all my PayPal buttons... to optional shipping last year... and didn't lose any sales. Last month, I switched from "optional shipping" to required shipping on all my buttons, and didn't lose any sales! In fact, May 2008 was my best month to date.

Don't get me wrong. I am very much AGAINST ignorant order forms like JVManager that require customers to fill in their shipping information TWICE (once to get them in the order system, a second time into the payment processor).

There is no excuse for crap like that. Processors like PayPal will capture the address info and then save it in your logs or even pass it back into a script.

If someone is paying with a credit card, they have to type in their billing address anyway... and if they are paying directly out of a PayPal account, their primary shipping address is already PRE-SELECTED!

Every time I go to a seminar, the big boys who make $10,000+ per week always tell you to take your customers offline. They offer postcards, free CDs (where you pay shipping only), and big markup for those $997 packages with 30 DVDs that probably cost under $100 to produce.

You don't have to get all fancy like they do. In fact I just about guarantee you that if you try to set something up with Kinko's online, or some kind of automated postcard mailing service, that you will make everything way too complicated and get yourself confused.

Here is what I did. I downloaded the history of all my PayPal transactions of the past 6 months or so, onto an Excel spreadsheet.

I filtered the spreadsheet to include only those addresses that contained the phrase "United States" and sorted by highest purchase amount first.

After removing duplicates, I ended up with a list of about 50 Americans who bought a $30 or higher product from me in the last six months. There were many many people who paid less than $30, lived outside the United States, or just didn't provide any shipping information.

How pathetic is that? I average 566 sales per month with an average price of $19.06 per sale... I made 2,829 sales from January 1st to June 1st 2008... and I only ended up with about 50 decent physical leads.

Don't make the same mistake I did... require shipping on your PayPal account, even for online orders.

To write my thank you notes: I sat down on my couch to watch a movie and made use of some idle time. During that two hour movie, I wrote 50 personalized thank you notes.

I printed out that list of leads and a little bit of buying history from each person (because I funnel everything into a list, it is VERY rare for someone to only buy one product from me). I mentioned the product they bought, thanked them for being a loyal customer, asked them to take action on that product.

If I saw a trend in the products they bought from me (i.e. ONLY JavaScript how-to products, or ONLY the scripts themselves, or ONLY copywriting products) I would recommend something else they might like.

I wrote each of these in one of those fat little diary books, one thank you note per page, then hand-addressed each envelope, tore out each sheet of paper and stuck it in the envelope, added a stamp... then today, I stuck them all in a mailbox.

I did this all with mailing materials I had in my house. I didn't have to go outside, I didn't have time to talk myself out of it... I just needed a monotonous task to get me through a boring movie.

Watching the movie on its own would have been too boring... stuffing the envelopes would have been too boring... but I was completely happy doing both of those things at the same time.

So go ahead and check your order history (cross reference them with your mailing list to make sure they haven't unsubscribed) and write some thank you notes if you're going on a plane ride or watching a boring movie.

If you're one of those people who needs to add it as a routine to their schedule, just write and mail 4 handwritten thank you notes per day. Do it on a trial basis... you can stop after 30 days.

It has to be handwritten. I can't tell you how many pieces of mail I've thrown away just because they weren't handwritten.

They have to be mailed to your current customers ONLY. No cold mailing. I've thrown away plenty of those envelopes in my mailbox as well.

Even if those thank you notes don't bring in any more sales, it felt good to write them. George Bush Sr. supposedly wrote hundreds of thank you notes per day. He carried a box of thank you cards around with him and wrote thank you letters sometimes minutes after speaking with someone.

This was just a test. If the thank you note thing works out then I might send thank you's out to all my high-ticket customers, maybe throw in some Starbucks gift cards, hire someone to write them, who knows.

The important thing was: I took my customers offline, even if it was just a little bit.

Are you doing the same thing?

Please answer me in the comment form below because I need 10 comments to continue posting.