It would really be great if you did reveal some of the leads generation tips you've acquired over the years.

Shaun

I've learned a whole lot more from my failures than my successes. Just consider the money you invested in that direct mail campaign part of your marketing education.

Thanks for having the guts to share that.

Dan

I actually have a horror story about lead generation via direct mail!

You see, I did everything wrong.

This was two years ago. I wanted to get writing clients so I targeted tiny business owners (my first mistake) then I wrote a lazy ass paragraph of a sales letter with no incentive to respond and mailed out a lazy 100 letters. Haha.

No response!
Back then I was surprised…

However, it's no real surprise to me now that I received ZERO response. I laugh at how silly I was back then but I haven't tried getting clients this way again since I'm doing pretty well with my two step Twitter plus Blogging system and I've grown in giant leaps as a copywriter.

I love reading and learning about this though because I know it works wonders when you do it right. The ol' Gary Halbert and Doberman Dan way.

Courtney James A.K.A. ObviousWriter on Twitter

Very good example of a highly successful lead gen campaign. Thanks for sharing that.

Here's an article I did about a lead gen campaign that generated a $36,000.00 annual income from a $240 investment.

I LOVE direct mail for lead generation.

But I actually left out part of the question in the article. The reason I suggested using the internet to generate the 1st sale was because the person answering the question had an INTERNET biz.

As I stated in the article, I DO use direct mail for customer acquisition quite successfully… and that includes lead gen campaigns.

If anybody wants to learn how to use direct mail for customer acquisition, I'll gladly share it. Not many people are teaching it nowadays.

Best,
Dan

(As opposed to a lot of nebulous "value" talk out there. Not naming names… just sayin'.)

Cheers everyone!

Two things:

1) you didn't address direct mail lead gen for brick and mortar businesses, like a service business. In my experience, direct mail lead generator (sales letters) has been massively successful.

For example, a few years back we decided to test a 3-step lead-gen and sent out 800 letters at a cost of about $450 dollars for my personal training business. The smallest-priced personal training service package available was $500, and the average package sold with that 3-step letter sequence was $2,500.

We did $47,000 of personal training sales in one month. With the success of the test, we then moved that letter to our second facility and did an $86,000 month, and finally at our third location that letter sequence brought in $103,000 in a single month.

2) And while I won't disagree with your suggestion to use the internet for your initial sale, don't you think that when a direct mail piece lands in your prospects mail box, it at least gives you the advantage over the internet when a customer may not know about a product or service?

You know the old adage, "If I own 6 swiss watches, and you own one, who is the most likely person to buy the next swiss watch?"

So, if the list is hot, and I want to sell to a person who I know has just purchased what I'm selling … it seems to me that they may not go to the internet looking for another "watch" … but if they get a letter in the mail, you may just convert them in mass. Or at least in enough numbers to build your list substantially.

Anyway, thanks for the thought provoking post.

A