From: dlhpfm!dlh@NCoast.org (daniel lance herrick)
Newsgroups: misc.entrepreneurs
Subject: Re: Super fast and inexpensive marketing
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 92 11:51:10 EDT
Organization: dlh Performance Marketing

burgoyne@highlite.uucp (J. Robert Burgoyne) writes:

> dlhpfm!dlh@NCoast.org (daniel lance herrick) writes:
> : markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Hunk) writes:
> : 
> : >   If I have a software product that expands on a smaller version which ha
> : > proven track record of popularity in the public domain, would it then mak
> : > sense to start marketing the larger package by a direct mail campaign?
> : > 
> : This is how the fortunes are made in mail order.
> : 
> : The list needs to be people who buy mail order.  Not everyone does and
> : mail to those who don't is wasted money.  It also needs to be people
> : who have use for your product.
> 
> I would like to add "recent" mail order buyers. I once rented a list which
> claimed to be 100% composed of buyers within the last six months, and
> more than 8% of the list was undeliverable. The project lost money for
> that and a variety of other reasons.  

Robert is saying he paid the tuition and is offering you, for free, the
lesson he learned.  It is worth a lot more than you paid for it, but,
because you paid so little for it, you are likely to ignore his
experience and insist on paying your own tuition to learn the same
lesson.

> : Second, the letter needs to be an effective selling document.  The most
> : important thing is to test different letters against each other.  John
> : Caples' book Tested Advertising Methods will help you profit some from
> : other people's testing.  Claude Hopkins' book Scientific Advertising is
> : about why and how to test.
> 
> Both are good books. For letters, you should also look into "The Robert
> Collier Letter Book". Though dated, it has excellent ideas for how
> to write sales letters.
> 
> And one final note on direct mail software sales. I don't know about you
> folks, but my mailbox brings new offers of heavily discounted name
> brand software everyday. This is because sales are falling off for many
> companies. Thus, your sales materials have to be as good or better than
> the big guys in terms of selling power or you'll fall on your face.

You do have an advantage over the big guys.  They have to sell
thousands or tens of thousands to be profitable.  You can succeed with
tens or hundreds.  This means it is easier to target real prospects. 
You can find a list of a hundred with ten real prospects on it while
they find a list of a million with a thousand real prospects on it.  If
you put your passion for the product into your selling documents you
can get much better percentage results.  If you sell half of those real
prospects you get 5% response.  If he sells half of those real
prospects, he gets 500 out of a million or one half of one tenth of one
percent.

And many of the giants in this nascent industry of software marketing
still haven't learned the old lessons in Hopkins and Ogilvy and Caples.

dan  of dlh Performance Marketing  POBox 1419  Mentor Ohio 44061
       NCoast.org!dlhpfm!dlh or ab.com!dlhpfm.uucp!dlh   (216)974-9637
"`Bad, bad,' says the buyer; but when he goes his way, then he boasts."
Proverbs 20:14