Direct Mail Postcard Marketing Tips

Direct mail has been a powerful way to get your message in front of people for many decades. In this article we will take a look at a few direct mail postcard marketing tips.

1. Choose a reputable vendor to print your postcards. If you are working in a business opportunity that suggests a vendor it is probably worth paying a little bit more to them, that it would be to cut corners and find someone yourself.

2. Pay attention to the offer on your postcard. Although you do pay for every square inch of your postcard it needs to be easy to read and feature your offer front and center.

You have a couple of seconds to get someone's attention and the offer should be what their eyes are drawn to. One good thing about direct mail postcard marketing is you know almost instantly whether you have hit upon a good design or not based on the results it gets.

3. Although email marketing is free direct mail postcard marketing is still fairly inexpensive. Based on this fact you should plan on multiple mailings as people need to see an offer several times before they act on it.

4. Include a link to a landing page where you can capture your prospects contact information and follow up for free for many years to come. You do this by using an autoresponder and it allows you to further promote your product or program to them via their email.

This is several direct mail postcard marketing tips that will help your next campaign be more successful.

Bill Bettler

Money On Command

Bill Bettler has been in sales and marketing for over 13 years. He currently makes a Full Time Living as Owner of Money On Command, an Internet Marketing and Direct Sales Company. He brings a fresh and innovative approach that's based on the principle of "Attraction Based Marketing". Born and raised in New York, Bill was previously co-owner of a Mortgage Lending company. Visit At:

[http://www.10K10Days.com]

You Can Get a Free WoW Gold Course to Start With, Before You Dive in to Buy a Guide!

If you play World of Warcraft you know that having gold is the most important thing in the game.

If you don't have gold, you will straggle to level up your professions, as well as getting the armor and weapons you will need to get ahead in the game. If you have gold, you can buy your way to the top, having the mounts, the weapons and armor you only see on the richest players out there. 

Spending gold whenever you want on whatever you need (or think you need).  When you have gold and you see an item on the auction house, buy it! This is the way to get a fast start in the game.

But how can you have so mach gold that it does not matter if it costs 100 gold, or 1000 gold?

It is well known that the economy of World of Warcraft is not equal for every player. Some will make more than a 1000 gold an hour while others will be poor, crying out and begging for gold near the mail box or the entrance to the bank. Do you think you can have some use of extra gold? If you answered yes, you need to get some help. If you will know the secret of making gold in world of warcraft, you could do more gold then you ever need.

So what help can you get?

If you type "gold guide" into Google, or even "free gold guide" you will get thousands of site that will recommend different gold guides or other WoW guides, some will even be for free, most free ones will give you a sort report (some with good tips), or a foggy and unclear, complex system, that you can never understand from a 10 page guide, so you will need to buy the complete paid guide to implement it. Now don't get me wrong there are some good freebies out there, it just will take you time to find them.

There are many gold making guides out there you can buy as well, and you should if you want to make it to the big league, but you don't want to start by buying a gold guide as you don't know what guide to get. You see most guides are good, but not all guides are good for everyone. You need to know what works for you before you buy a specific gold guide on a subject. Are you more of a auction house guy, or a farmer guy?

How to know what is right for you?

One place you can start in is by searching the web for tips and tricks to world of warcraft, or get a free gold making course, get to learn the language of gold making before you dive in to it. You need to try out some methods of gold making, even if there are basic ones. After you experience some of them, you will know the right way for you, and can go and get the more advanced guides.

You can get this free gold guide now, and all the tips and tricks of this free gold making course as well.

Alon Pyade is a wow fun and player that make the gold making process part of the game itself.

The Free Reverse Phone Number Lookup - Is it Really Free?

First of all you should know that this technology is not new, but it IS very accurate. The technology is very straight forward because it does exactly what it is supposed to do. Check out any phone number that you type in the empty box.

The Free Reverse Phone Number Lookup Is free, to a certain extent. In the beginning, when you first enter whatever number that you are checking on into the box, you will be taken to a screen that shows you a small amount of information. It will show you the original number, what city and state that the number originates from, and the time that you performed the search. To get a more in-depth and up to date report the website prompts you to hit the "continue" button, and when you do that, then you will be taken to a page that shows you exactly how much you will have to PAY.

The actual fee is nominal compared with what you will receive. The information given includes everything except the social security number of the owner of the number. You will get his or her current address, including current city and state. The subjects street address and full name. All this in about 10 seconds! To get this information years ago would have taken days if not weeks. So I believe that the fee is justified.

So in conclusion, the Free Reverse Phone Number Lookup is only free if what you want is a small amount of information. To get to the nitty gritty info, you will have to pay! And as I mentioned before, it is a small fee. But in its defense, this is information that would take you a minimum of days if not weeks to get on your own.

Kenneth White writes on various software-related subjects. If you want to read more visit the website at [http://www.reversephone-number.info]

Split Test Drive Direct Mail

If you aren't split testing your direct mail and other marketing campaigns you are wasting money and missing out on opportunities for more sales! How can I say this with such certainty? Easy because people rarely react exactly how we think they will, so if you are not testing your message chances are you have not hit on the optimum message for your target audience and so your sales are suffering.

Sure you might be getting some sales doing the same old mail out as you have in the past but what if you could double or triple your sales results.

If you use Google's adwords you are probably already aware of what Split Testing is about but for those not as familiar with this term here is a simple explanation.

"Split Testing is a process where you compare the results from two or more different messages to see which message produces the best results. By continually removing the poorer performing message and replacing it with a new message, over time you will arrive at a message that has the most appeal to your audience."

The real beauty of split testing though, is that small incremental improvements compound over time, often resulting in 100%, 200% or more increases in sales.

Split testing has been used by expert direct marketers for probably as long as people have been sending mail, however split testing as a marketing strategy has only recently come back into vogue for most marketers since Google developed adwords.

Unfortunately it is not quite as easy to split test direct mail as in adwords but that is no reason why you shouldn't try.

Split Testing Plan

Here is a simple plan you could follow to split test your direct mail campaign.

1) Firstly you need to only make slight changes. Sending out 2 completely different mail outs will only confuse the issue.

2) Secondly you need a large enough sample size to make differences in response statistically accurate, at least 1000 is probably needed.

3) Thirdly start with big factors first.

Often the biggest obstacle in getting sales from direct mail is just getting them to open the mail or read pass the heading. So a great starting point for split testing is to test the envelope and the heading. If you use a mail house you can easily get them to print two different messages on the front of the envelope. Or to really speed the testing process up, why not test two changes at the same time?

So I would also print 2 letters or flyers with a different heading on the top. So now you have 2 different envelopes and 2 different headings.

So if you have a mailing list of 4000 you could send 1000 each as per the following;

Envelope 1 Heading 1

Envelope 1 Heading 2

Envelope 2 Heading 1

Envelope 2 Heading 2

Now to track you results you might have a different promotion code that the client needs to quote to get the offer say E1H1, E2H1 etc. Or alternatively send 1000 each a week or two apart. (Not quite as accurate but maybe easier to manage and less printing changes)

Now by analysing the results you can see which envelope and which heading performs the best; For example say results were as follows.

Envelope 1 Heading 1 - 2.5%

Envelope 1 Heading 2 - 4.0%

Envelope 2 Heading 1 - 3.5%

Envelope 2 Heading 2 - 4.5%

From this example you can see that Heading 2 out performed heading 1 and also envelope 2 outperformed envelope 1.

Ok now the next time you do a mail out use heading 2 and envelope 2 and test this against a new heading and envelope or use the same procedure to test two different offers, or changes to your sales copy.

By continually improving your message you can literally increase your sales by 100% or more but how is this possible? The answer is in the effect of factors which works much like compound interest. A 15% improvement can equate to 100% in sales.

The compounding power of factors is explained further in my blog link below

Thank you for reading this far, I hope you found this article helpful.

The Power of Compounding Factors is explained further on my web marketing blog [http://funnelwebmarketing.com/blog]

By the way in Australia I choose to use B&C Mail for all my direct mail needs

How to Create an E-newsletter That Gets Opened

Junk mail. SPAM. We all know about these pesky e-newsletters and email blasts that show up uninvited in our inboxes. Most recipients simply hit delete, a few may actually unsubscribe to the e-newsletter they never subscribed to and sometimes a handful may even blacklist or report this SPAM to the "authorities." And while inboxes everywhere are being stuffed with unsolicited information, there is no question that value-driven, permission-based email is important - and it should be part of your marketing mix. A Merkle report showed that 50 percent of respondents of a survey said they had bought something based on a permission email message. Another 50 percent said that a company that "does a good job with email" can have influence over their buying decisions. Without permission, however, 32 percent said they stopped doing business with at least one company because of their own "rules" about email.

So once you've encouraged your customers and prospects to opt-in to your database to receive e-newsletters, then what? How are you going to not only tempt them to read further, but to take action? E-newsletters are great for disseminating information, but without a carefully thought-out plan that creates cause and effect for each newsletter "story," you will quickly fall short of reaching your goals and return on investment. It's easy to tempt your customers and leads with information, but how do you convert them into a sale or other action?

Here are some tips on creating effective e-newsletters that add results to your bottom line:

- Quality not quantity: E-newsletters are meant to be read quickly and are often times "skimmed" by the reader for valuable information. Create three to four entries for your newsletter and keep the content and copy short and to the point, just two or three sentences that give them the flavor of your information. Add in graphics and photos that directly relate to the story for those who are more visual thinkers. Remember that you are trying to tease your customer with information and inspire them to take action. If you give away the store in the e-newsletter, your readers will simply read and delete and nothing more.

- Use compelling headlines. Readers will skim your enewsletter so tempt them with intriguing headlines and give them a reason to read it from beginning to end. Use action verbs in your headlines (e.g., gain, uncover, lead, change, improve). Pose questions. Cite startling statistics like "A simple change to your email can drive 100% increase in your open rate."

- Lead them to your website: Each entry should include a direct link to your website, but not simply your homepage. If a customer is engaged in a story in your e-newsletter, directing them to your homepage will ultimately be very frustrating. Imagine being told to go to a new coffee shop without receiving directions. Would you take the time to figure out how to get there? Maybe not. But if someone handed you simple directions that guided you directly there, you'd go - perhaps again and again. The same holds true for your e-newsletters. After you've supplied a bit of information, provide a link directly to the location on your website where customers can find out more about a particular product, special deal, download a free white paper, or place an order.

- Intertwine selling and giving: While you ultimately want your customers and prospects to purchase your products and services, e-newsletters also provide a medium to position you as a forward-thinker and thought-leader. Are you aware of new trends on the horizon that your competitors don't know about yet? Do you have simple tricks that your customers can use with their end-users to better sell products and services? Leading your customers to informational sections of your website helps to reinforce their perception of you as the one with the insight and the answers, the "go to" guru to whom they'll return time and time again.

- Build valuable relationships: Utilize your e-newsletter to develop existing and new relationships with customers. Make your e-newsletter interactive and invite people to email you directly with comments, thoughts and problems. Provide a forum where customers can submit questions and challenges. Then post your solutions on your website and in your next e-newsletter. Invite customers to engage in your blog and establish an online community. Better yet, solicit articles from your customers for inclusion in future editions. By using ideas and articles from your customers, vendors and partners, you create even more credibility for your newsletter (and it doesn't just become self-promotion). It also encourages your recipients to think about what's important to them as well.

- Finding the right balance: Creating a timeline and a simple production schedule based on upcoming events, product releases, service contracts and the like helps to determine how often and when to email your e-newsletters. Rule of thumb is about every other week but at a minimum at least once a month. Don't send out e-newsletters for the sake of sending - if you don't have anything new or innovative to say, hold off until you do. Avoid Mondays and Fridays for delivery as well. Statistics show that Tuesday through Thursday mid-morning or mid-afternoon are the most fruitful times to hit "send."

Creating e-newsletters doesn't have to include perfect prose or award-winning graphic design. At the end of the day, the newsletters that people read and/or keep are the ones that provide useful information and a desire to want and to learn more. By creating a two-prong approach to your e-newsletters, you'll not only see measurable open and click-through rates, but also an increase of traffic to your website where customers can learn more, or even better, complete a transaction.

A dedicated marketing professional, Michelle Kabele has been helping technology companies develop award-winning channel partner programs and marketing strategies for over 10 years. Michelle has worked extensively with small businesses throughout North America.

Michelle has an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management (Evanston, Ill.)

Locating Email Addresses

There are a number of reasons why you would want to look for the email addresses of the people you want to know and people you want to gain more information about, such as your relatives abroad. You may also want to know the exact location of one of your internet correspondents. The internet has been educating us on how to use the email address locator and it is the solution for the above situations and more.

Email address locator can show you exactly where an email might be coming from. This website has its own databases where all relevant information can be gathered. Locating someone by email is an easy step. You just need to log on to the internet. Go to the email address locator website and then type in the address you would want to look for. You may now hit the search button, which is an email locator that is also called a reverse email lookup, and the site will then show you what you want. Aside form extracting the exact location of the owner of the email address; you may also have valuable information about him/her. It is definitely quick and easy!

Email address locator is indeed a great help for people who want to know where their pen pals or phone pals are located. It will also help some individuals who want to have an idea of where in abroad their uncles, aunts, sisters or friends, who are not always in touch are. If you would like to have information of a friend who you have never seen for quite a long time, then it might be an opportunity for you to talk to him again and eventually meet. Spammers cannot escape from this email address locator! They definitely will be punished.

I strongly recommend this email address locator and I advise you to try it on your own so that you will be able to see that it is defiantly worth it. There is no better option than trying it yourself and proving this service to be true and really reliable and best of all 100% accurate!

Create Free Home Business Leads in 7 Days

I know what your thinking another article on creating some MLM and network marketing leads. Well I'm here to tell you that this time its not the case.

I want to share my personal testimony to what has happened in my business and show you by example that it can happen to you as well!

The heart and soul of MLM and network marketing is people. People to add to your funnel either as downline or retail sale of some type. Without them your business does not exist.

Lack of people is why hardly no one ever creates a full time income in this business let alone become independently wealthy in the 7 and 8 figures.

Imagine 10 to 50 solid leads a day to work and when I mean work I mean having them call you ready to join your opportunity because they see you as a leader.

Well that's exactly what Ive created. I struggled in this business for 4 years doing what everybody is taught. Go to all the meetings, advertise in local listings, prospect people you meet in public and send out direct mail. All that these methods did was tire me out and drain my bank account.

Now I work from home full time. I create all my leads 24hrs a day 7 days a week. I have had the ability to put up "marketing soldiers" who do the work for me all over the web.

Uplines don't usually teach these strategies. They've usually got to be where there at by mastering something that worked for them. Through years usually of trial and error.

Here some examples of what I'm talking about:

1. Free websites like eBay and Craigslist are goldmines. I used these a lot in the beginning because I didn't have a lot of extra money.

2. Learning how to write and establish yourself on the top searches for Google and Yahoo for any subject you want.

3. Creating Mouse traps to hit your target market.

4. YouTube is used to market by a lot of people but how many use it right. Learn why the art of attraction is important if your going to use YouTube as a tool and not as a waste of your time.

5. There are over a 100,000 million people on MySpace and you have access to them for free! Sheesh people! Let's get creative and learn to leverage this.

These are just a few strategies to a good marketing plan. Remember, you only need a couple methods, master them and be creative.

Remember you need to be consistent with these day in and out...

To Your Success,

Dwayne Phelps

Dwayne Phelps has been an entrepreneur for over 8yrs. He has been in the marketing business for 7yrs. He works with individuals and organizations that span the whole US as well as some foreign countries and territories. He spends his extra time adding value to fellow entrepreneurs and travelling to his home town of Nicaragua. He currently lives with his wife and 3 dogs in Oregon. Catch His Free Course At: [http://DwaynePhelps.net]

Measuring the Return on Your Direct Mail Investment

In direct mail lore, there's a rule stating that you can measure the success of your efforts by a minimum response rate of 1-2%.

In other words, if you send out 10,000 pieces, you'll have a successful mailing if at least 100 recipients respond to your offer. (One percent of 10,000 is 100.)

That's one view of direct mailing success.

Permit me to offer a different perspective: one from the small business world. Specifically, I'm referring to those small business people who work by and for themselves. Call them "One-Man Bands," "Working Soloists," "Free Agents," or whatever you'd like.

To help you remember these two perspectives, let's give them a couple of catchy names:

1. The "Playing the Percentages" Perspective. This is the "industry standard 1-2% response rate on your mailings" perspective you've heard so much about. This is the yardstick favored by businesses that are sending large quantities of direct mail to sell mass market products.

For example, if I own a pizza parlor, and I'm doing a "use this card for 10% off on your next order" mailing to all residences within a three-mile radius of my business, I might have a mailing list of 10,000 names.

You'd better believe that I'm going to watch the overall response rate like a hawk, and I'm going to be looking at precisely where those hungry customers are coming from. If most of them are coming from a handful of apartment complexes next to a college campus, I'll know to send my future mailings to those complexes.

2. The "You Only Need A Few" Perspective. This is the one for those One-Man (or One-Woman) Bands who are selling services that take a fair amount of time to provide. Like marketing consulting, public relations services, graphic design, or customized computer software applications.

For these folks, a handful of new or repeat clients from a promotional mailing is quite enough. After all, as the owner of a one-woman graphic design studio told me once, "I don't want to be a victim of my own [direct mail] success."

Martha Retallick, "The Passionate Postcarder," hails from Tucson, Arizona, USA. She is the author of Postcard Marketing Secrets, a downloadable PDF manual that will show you how to put postcards to work for your business?profitably. Learn more about it at:

http://www.PostcardMarketingSecrets.com

Collecting Free Boxing Autographs By Mail FAQ

Q: When I write to a boxing star, how can I increase my chances of getting a response?

A: Keep your letters brief & to the point. Always be courteous - saying please in your request and 'thank you' at the closing. Always include a self-addressed stamped envelope and print your letter neatly & clearly.

Q: What types of boxing memorabilia can I send to be autographed?

A: You can send almost anything to be autographed! Flat items are the most economical, but you can send larger items, as well. Here are a few ideas: Ticket stubs, photos, index cards, etc. If you decide to send larger items, such as boxing gloves or trunks, these would cost more to ship and you will want to make sure that you cover the return postage, as well.

Q: Is it necessary to include a self-addressed stamped envelope when requesting boxing autographs?

A: Absolutely. This is the single most important thing that you can do to increase your chances of getting a response. More often than not - no SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope) means no response.

Q: How long will it be before I get a response or boxing autograph?

A: Response times vary depending on the athlete themselves, their schedules and time of year. If it's boxing season, for example, it may take a little longer to get that autograph from your favorite boxing star. However, if you write to an athlete during the off season, it may increase your chances of getting a quicker reply.

Q: How will I know if the boxing autograph that I receive is genuine?

A: You can always have an autograph authenticated, but that can get costly if you were to have your entire collection checked out. If you are a through-the-mail autograph collector, there are a few possible responses that you may receive. These include: authentic, secretarial, pre-print or autopen signatures. The first, and most obvious, is authentic and that's what we all hope to get. A secretarial signature is self-explanatory in that it is usually signed by the celebrity's secretary or assistant. The best way to explain a pre-print signature is that an athlete may sign one photo and then have copies of the real autograph made and send that copied photo out to fans. An autopen signature can be difficult to detect, but can be noted as an autograph that has a lot of 'squiggles' throughout. It also has very hard points where the pen would normally lift - it leaves a dark circle of ink where the machine presses so hard on the item being signed.

Q: Where can I find photos of my favorite boxing star?

A: There are many venues to purchase photos - many are listed online. In addition, you can write to promoters/agents and ask for a photo, which can be used to obtain individual autographs on that photo. Many times, the athletes are happy to provide their own photo if you ask them to do so.

Q: Where can I find the home, or email, address of my favorite boxing star?

A: For reasons of both respect and privacy, it's always best to write to an athlete via regular mail in care of his/her promoter, venue or agent. Requesting autographs via e-mail is becoming more popular, but it requires that the athlete pay for postage and, therefore, is not always an effective way of getting autographs.

Q: I want to write a letter, but I don't know what to say! Can you help?

A: Sure - politely ask the athlete for his/her autograph. Be sure to let them know how much you enjoy boxing as a sport and, in particular, their dedication as an athlete. Point out the fact that you have enclosed a SASE and kindly ask for their autograph. Finally, always be courteous and thank them for their time.

Q: I have a rare, one-of-a-kind, boxing collectible that I would like to have signed. Is it OK to send it?

A: Because there are no guarantees that any autograph request will be successful, and the possibility of items getting lost, it is recommended that you never send anything that you couldn't be without. If it's a rare item, hold on to it until an in-person autograph opportunity arises.

Q: I work for a charitable organization. Can I request donations in the form of boxing autographs for my cause?

A: If you want to request an autograph to be used for any type of charity, send your request on official company letterhead. Be upfront & completely honest with the athlete - if you plan to sell the autograph to benefit your cause, tell them. Many celebrities are happy to help with a variety of causes - especially if all you are asking for is an autograph.

Read the latest Anthony Hanshaw, Arthur Abraham and all other boxing news on http://www.sportsnews24h.com/Boxing/