The One About Sequenced Mailing Strategies - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #41

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast. Hey, everybody, It's Dean Jackson.

And Joe Polish.

And Joe Polish.

Yep.

So, Joe, I just arrived back at my house in Florida. Well, I just arrived back straight from the airport.

Well, that was my day. Earlier today, I came back from Chicago. I had had dinner with my good friend Mr. Dan Sullivan, and Babs and took Eunice, my assistant of 16 years, with me. And Dr. Joe Mercola came over for dinner at Dan's house last night. That was kind of cool. He's a. He's a big nutritional doctor online.

I like him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. Smart dude.

It's a cool guy.

Yeah, we're doing. That's funny.

We had our Dan Sullivan.

I had.

What an international. I mean, it's. Air travel is amazing, isn't it? So I had lunch with Dan on Saturday, and here you had dinner with him on Monday in Chicago. And now I'm in Florida and you're in Phoenix.

And here we are recording a I Love Marketing podcast in the middle of.

The world's getting smaller.

It appears that way. It appears that way.

So you know what?

We have to.

I have to give a little shout out to our friend Ed Dale, because these last couple of episodes of I Love Marketing are exponentially better audio quality. We're getting all the comments of that. People are really noticing that too. And I've noticed it. It's just night and day. Sounds like we're in a studio now.

Well, we kind of are.

Yeah. We kind of are. So, Ed, I was with Ed in Austin a few weeks ago, Austin, Texas. And he was recommending this particular Samsung go Mic that he uses for podcasts. So Joe and I ordered him up, and this is. It's great. Here we are, a whole new world.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's. That's our deal. And we were talking the last couple of episodes about using free recorded messages, secondary reasons for response, sifting, sorting, screening, different stick strategies, ways you can use free recorded messages to hire employees. You can get a free recorded message.

And then you left us with. You left us with a cliffhanger.

Right. And I said I would talk about a actual method of collecting money for those people out there that actually provide products or services. And then people, you know, need to pay them, and they have trouble collecting the money from these individuals. So I kind of want to go back and tell a story of how all this originated, these particular letters, and also the whole strategy, which I first heard about from Dan Kennedy when I first Started doing work with Dan Kennedy which was, you know, back in 19, I think 1993, 1992, 1993 was the first time I started reading and attended a Dan Kennedy event. Struck up a conversation with him, handed him a business card. He liked my business card so much that he actually wrote about it in his newsletter, the no BS Marketing letter. Because I had, you know, a free recorded message on my business card on how to choose a carpet cleaner. I had an expanded unique selling proposition. It was a double sided business card that was real education based marketing and unlike any business cards that most people had ever seen at the time or like we even see today. Because you know, although the world has advanced technologically, psychologically, marketing wise, most people haven't except those that listen to every single episode of I love marketing. And so basically it was sequencing and there was a great book written in the 50s called the Robert Collier Letter Book. And it had, you know, just great book about writing copy. And one of the lines that we've talked about several times in that book is as a, as a copywriter you want to enter a conversation that's already existing in your prospect's mind. And Robert Collier would have all kinds of clever letters and stuff. And so in a nutshell, it's a way to use direct mail which you can of course use with email. Even the launch model that our friend Jeff Walker created. And you know, we've, we've both interviewed Jeff, Jeff's in my 25k group. And you know, even product launches are a form of sequencing, continual dripping and follow up of sales messages in order to get people to, you know, buy. And so how do you actually use that same sort of formula in a situation where you're wanting to collect money? And so what I'll do is what I think Dean would be the best thing for me to do is if just kind of paint a picture. Imagine you have somebody that has put yourself in the place of, you know, a service provider and you've provided services to somebody and you know they're supposed to pay you and they are behind and you are in a situation where you either need to call them or send them to collections or you know, that sort of stuff. And you know, usually you got to do something.

Well, a lot of people don't know what to do. Yeah, you know, there's not, they're not really set up for that. They don't have a collections department and it's awkward and they're uncomfortable maybe you know, confronting people about it or they think it might Be a confrontation. There's a lot of, lot of fear and negativity around that.

Right, right. So basically, how do you approach people in a way to where they may be having money problems, but you also need to get paid because you are, you know, you're out of products, you're out of, you know, labor that you provided, and you need to get paid. And so how do you approach this from the standpoint of giving yourself the highest likelihood of collecting money and at the same time needing to be firm enough so they don't blow you off? And the, the. So the method came from, you know, actually selling stuff. And I learned it from, from Dan Kennedy. He talks about this set of letters that he had written for a restaurant. It was Giorgio's Italian Grotto.

Giorgio's? Yeah. From the romance director.

Yeah, the romance director, Giorgio's Italian Grotto. And it was a three step letter sequence where the first letter would be offering to have people come into the restaurant, wine and dine them, give them free stuff. Tells the whole story of, to improve the romance of your relationship. And then if people don't go to the restaurant, they get a second one for from Giorgio, the romance director really telling you you need to show up because if you don't, your relationships are going to be in trouble. And he puts statistics in the letter about how many marriages end in divorce. The whole thing's built around why you need to come to this guy's restaurant. Because it's going to.

Right, exactly.

And then there's a final sequence that says, can this marriage be saved? And that's after the last.

The final notice.

Right.

Hey, I know that we are, we're recording on the, on the mics here, but your phone is really. What I'm hearing on the other end is very digital.

Yeah, well, you know, it's funny you say that because I'm hearing the same thing on your end. So what I'm going to do right now, Dean, is I'm going to pick up another phone, so bear with me. Okay. And does that sound better?

Yeah, it does.

Okay, well, yours is still cutting out like crazy, which is great because for a minute, you know, you're trying to blame me. So now your phone is completely staticky and we'll just put up with it since we've got these fancy little mics, you know, taking care of us.

Perfect.

All right, so in the future, why don't you start having some concern for me and get on a decent phone where I can actually hear. So are you with me?

Yeah, I'm with you.

Okay, so basically, you know, Dan actually came up with the strategy for three letter sequences and that letter for Giorgio, you know, from a real life situation. One having been bankrupt before in the past and having gone through a divorce in the past, he was very familiar with, you know, collection agencies. And he was watching Oprah one day when he decided to write the Giorgio letters. And you know, he was. So the whole premise behind it is in the collection industry, if you are ever behind on bills, they will actually send out a sequence. Now, there's different things they do with the Internet than they, you know, didn't do before. But for the most part, you'll get sent a first notice saying, you owe us money, pay us. And if you don't, you know, send them money out, you'll get a second notice that'll be a little bit stronger saying, you know, pay us or we're going to have to report you to, you know, collection service. And if you don't pay that one, you know, you send it to a third, third notice is sent and then hopefully the people will pay on that one. Now the point is, is this is getting money out of people that typically don't have any. And a large portion, as much as 80% or more of the money can be collected through a three step sequence. And if you take that same sort of logic like, wow, well, if that sort of money can be collected from people that don't have any money in a situation, how well would that method work? If you were actually mailing letters and promotions to people that actually have identified they want something, meaning like someone that called a 24 hour free recorded message, left their, you know, phone number to get sent a free report and you're actually sending them information about something they actually requested. And so in my business, when I first started selling information products to professional carpet upholstery cleaners, it was very high. I mean, I got as much as 16% of my sales would come with a three step sequence in direct mail when I first started. It's different today than it was back then, but I would get like, you know, 7 to 8% off the first letter. I would get anywhere between, you know, 3 and 4% off the second letter. And then the third letter would get even more response. And so I would have just great conversion from doing three step sequences. And I'll read this code now.

Were these, these were letters for when you were selling your carpet cleaning kit?

Yeah, yeah.

To carpet cleaners?

Yeah, yeah, when I was.

Yeah, okay, that's what I thought. You were saying? Right, right.

Well. And by the way, Dean, just so you'll know, if we to use a backup for this particular call, you are incapable of being heard clearly from the recording. Just so I'm telling you on this end, your phone is cutting out so badly. So I just want every one of our listeners out there to know that Dean is a bad person.

Because I'm hearing it on your end.

Yeah, well, we should.

I wonder if we just have a bad one.

We should ask our friend that we have who is in the background. This. Liz, He's a great guy, and if he doesn't want to identify himself, I would like him to at least speak up. He doesn't have to say his name and say, can you hear me? Well, indeed. Or is it like this for both of us to our magic friend out there, can you respond?

That's what I'm thinking. And so do you, actually.

Wow.

I think there.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

Well, we'll just go with, hey, great thing we got these mics. This podcast could have been doomed. Doomed for.

That's right.

Okay, so let's just keep going. And to all listeners, apologize for the shenanigans back here. Hey, you know, we flew back and forth on airplanes today, but we can't get a phone line that actually works. Well, all right, so we can put.

A man on the moon.

All right, so I want to just share the actual collection letter and then I'm going to talk about different ways of selling, including something that I did with Bill Phillips. One of the. One of the ideas that I gave him, using this exact methodology on the first time he ever hired me for consulting, that made him $3 million that he never would have made had he not used multi sequence mailings. So I have a letter here, and this letter incorporates some killer direct response stuff, including a grabber. And a grabber is what you attach to the top of a letter in order to grab someone's attention. Gary Halbert was a very big proponent and user of lumpy mail, impactful mail. He would talk about, you know, the A pal versus the bpol, which we've talked about on a previous call where, you know, if you want to listen to the past episodes where we talk about Gary Halbert, very worthwhile to to either read the transcript or listen to the call. And people of America and for the most of the world for that matter, sort their mail out over a wastebasket. And it will go into two piles. Either the A pile, which is everything that is personal or appears personal, or The B pile, which is everything is junk or appears like junk. And so Gary would always want letters to look very personal. Handwritten, real stamp, an indicia on the upper left hand corner that doesn't have a logo or look like a company is sending it to you. And preferably just a person's name or just the address. And when they open up the envelope, either you have a headline or you have a dollar bill attached to it or some sort of grabber. In this particular case, this is just a plain envelope, number 10 envelope, a single sheet of paper with a piece of string attached to the top of it and a blue signature. So I'm going to read this letter. And the way this works is that anyone that owes you money, you send a letter like this to them. And this letter has successfully brought in in the millions of dollars of people in the professional cleaning restoration industry and other service businesses that have done, you know, corporate jobs, anything from restaurants, apartment complexes, insurance work, people that have owed them money and they were not getting paid on time. And so they needed a way to get people to pay them but not be so come across as so rude. So it says Dear Name. You personalize it. As you probably notice, I've attached a piece of string to this letter. Why have I done this? You ask for two reasons, actually. One, to get your attention, and two, so you could tie this special piece of string around your finger so you wouldn't forget to pay the bill below. This is just my friendly little way of reminding you that your account is past due. I know you're busy, so if you just tie the string around your finger, you won't forget to pay me. Please take a few minutes and write a check so I won't have to interrupt your busy schedule with a piece of string. Again, I appreciate your prompt attention. Signed, Joe Polish. P.S. please hurry and return this special piece of string with your check. I need this string for other accounts. Now, if you break down this letter, you're asking them for money. You're using a clever way to do it, an engagement device with a string. It's a nice letter, it's a friendly letter. But also, the PS is huge. The reason you want to use PS is the PS reiterates the offer or the request. In this particular case, you're not trying to sell anything. You're actually trying to get people to pay you for what you've already given them. However, it is still a sales letter because everything is a sales letter, even when trying to collect money from people that owe it to you. You're making a request and you want them to take an action. You want them to respond. Hence why we call it direct response. So this is direct response in the form of trying to collect money. So, P.S. please hurry and return the special piece of string with your check. I need this string for other accounts. So what it does is it makes, you know, it makes the point that other people may be in your shoes. So this helps that. I mean, it's a subtle little thing, but that helps people maybe that are embarrassed or cannot pay their bills feel like, oh, you know, there's other people in this situation. So it's just a friendly way. And, you know, it even says this. You know, this is my. Just my friendly little way of reminding you that your account is past due. So that's letter number one. Now, what happens is about 50% of the money that you know. And again, this will probably be different from different industries, different types of economic types, times different, you know, clientele that you're servicing, that sort of stuff. But this letter works for about getting half the people to actually submit a check. And so if someone does not send a check. And when I say that, I'm talking about the. The professional cleaning and restoration industry. And again, you know, so I'm just reading these letters out here. You use them at your, you know, you know, basically I have these copyrighted too. So I'm really giving away something here. If I was to sell these letter, this letter sequence I'm reading here, which, by the way, you can go read the transcript and have the exact word for word copy here. If I sold these for 1000 bucks, it would be a bargain for many people because I've had people that this has solved, literally solved as much as they can, their collection problems void of using a collection agency. And in some cases, I've had clients tell me that these letter sequences they ended up sending out themselves worked better than collection agencies that they had hired that were taking a piece of everything they collected. A pretty big percentage of everything they collected. So that's great. Yeah. So the second notice you can send out a week to two weeks later. And it says, headline, second notice, here's that piece of string again. And then there's another piece of string. And I like using colored string, like a green piece of string or a red piece of string. So it kind of stands out. So, dear name, I was hoping this wouldn't happen, but I haven't heard from you, so I'm forced to send you another piece of string. This string works if you Tie it around your finger right now. You will not forget to pay your outstanding bill.

This one works.

Yes. And then in parentheses, I told you this was a special piece of string. Sometimes these things happen. I understand that once in a while a bill may slip by and you don't even realize it. Please take care of your obligation now. If you're unable to pay the overdue bill in full at this time, please call my office to arrange a payment plan. I understand that occasionally life throws us a curveball, but before it counts as a strike against us, we can correct it sincerely. And then name in the company accounts receivable is then signed under the name, because that sounds a little stronger. And then a phone number at the bottom. P.S. i need that special string back. I'm running out.

So that's, you know, that subtly tells them they're not the only ones getting it again.

Yeah, exactly. And so basically, so if I go back into some of the copy, it says, this string works. If you tie it around your finger right now, you will not. And will not is in upper case. Forget to pay your outstanding bill. And then you talk. You know what I say in here? Sometimes these things happen. I understand that once in a while a bill may slip by and you don't even realize it. This is making the assumption that they're not doing this on purpose. They've forgotten you're reminding them. But then the last paragraph says, if you're unable to pay this overdue bill in full at this time, please call my office to arrange a payment plan. It's giving them the option to say, look, man, you may not have the money. And the follow up line is, I understand that occasionally life throws us a curve ball. But before it counts as a strike against us, we can correct it. Now, you can have this particular letter come from you, or you can use another person in your company that's in the accounts receivable department, depending on how you want to word it. But that's basically how it's worded. And of course there's always a date on the upper right hand part of the letter. And by the way, these letters were written years ago and to this day they still work very well. So if they have not then responded to either letter number one or letter number two or called you, then there is letter number three. And this one says, third notice, I'm running out a special string. Dear name, this is your third piece of special string. I'm running out of special string. Please pay your overdue bill right now or tie this special Piece of string around your finger so you don't forget. I've got a problem. You see, I really am running out of special string. This is the very last piece I can afford to give you. If I don't receive your payment or a call from you explaining your situation, I'm going to be forced to turn this over to so and so collection agency, you know, whoever you would use. I don't want to do that. You see, once the so and so collection agency has your name, your credit rating will reflect your non payment. This could possibly affect you the next time you get a loan or from anyone that you would like credit from. I don't want to do it, but my hands are tied. I've done my part. I've sent you two other notices and I haven't heard from you. It's our strict company policy that states all overdue accounts must be turned over to the collection agency. After three attempts have been made to collect, you still have a way out. If you send your payment in the next five days, this will all be avoided. You must act quickly, sincerely in the name and then, you know, accounts receivable. P.S. hoping my special string will work its magic. And so that's the third notice. And that is about as nice as you can be while.

Simon, really?

Yeah, yeah. While simultaneously being firm. And then of course you're introducing the fact that you're going to turn this over to a credit, you know, a collection agency, which then becomes a very bad thing. And I would always make a joke with people and saying yeah, and if they don't pay you off the third notice, you can send them a fourth notice that has a, you know, a noose on it that says here it attaches a noose to this letter. But anyway, I won't go, I won't go any further with that. But, but the point is this type of multi step sequence works for getting money out of people that obviously are just flat out don't want to pay you. But most of it is financial problems. I mean they're juggling and when you start thinking about if this is happening to you, they're probably getting letters and collections and phone calls from other people. And human beings will tend to pay the people that are giving them the least amount of stress. But also you can't just leave it up to crossing your fingers and hoping they pay you. And this is, you know, just a very effective direct response way to use it. And I know for a fact this, this works. And so any comments you have on that and then I can talk about how to use multi step sequences to actually, you know, make money.

Well, I think that, you know, that part of what you just described there, the benefit for people is that they're already done for them now is a collections system. And that's what, you know, when you write those letters and like you said, you could sell those letters because it solves a big problem for a lot of people. You know, when you've got that, those letters written, that's an asset in your business. You set that up as a systematic way that this is how we address collections. This is when somebody owes us money, this is what we do. And that's just one of those things that you can, can and clone and, and have somebody run that whole little system for you. And there you go. I think that's a fantastic solution for people. And it, you know, it's already done. Just go right to the transcript there and start using those letters.

Yeah. And you know, when someone buys my marketing kits or either one, mine and yours, you know, we don't just give them ideas and strategies, we give them specific tools and templates. Like at the I Love Marketing, you know, conference, we recorded the whole training and we had that big, you know, million dollar manual. And in that manual there's actual, you know, examples of word for word promotion and campaigns and, and exact strategies. Because it's one thing to give someone an idea, it's another thing to give them a template, to give them the exact recipe. And if people follow the recipe and follow the formula, it will work for them. And I mean, you know, in my Nightingale Conant program, it's been the number one selling marketing program in Nightingale Conant since 2004. And you know, the reason is because, you know, it's just not marketing ideas. There's actual tools, there's actual strategies.

Right.

At the last meetup group that I attended at my office, I took the people in attendance through a consumer guide generator, which is a tool that allows them to collect, you know, information. I mean, they come up with them themselves. It's stuff that every person does where they start listing whether the misconceptions and the fears that exist in their, their industry. And if people document it and think it through, it helps them, you know, come. It helps them put together a script for a consumer awareness message, a consumer awareness guide, a free report, a sales letter. I have a thing called a teleseminar script developer. And I've had people that have never done a teleseminar in their life and they want to do a teleseminar to their list to either sell them information or just as an added service to help people that have bought something from them and how to work through it. And if you have just a process to follow, it just makes the job of implementing an idea that much easier. So one of the things that we do our best is to not only share really great marketing ideas for before, during and after the sale on I love marketing, but also give you the process and the path and occasionally the copy. One of the things I want to be careful of is reading a series of letters like this and people saying, oh yeah, that's kind of a clever letter and not having anyone use it. Because truly, if you were to go out and hire a copywriter to write a sequence like this, it would not be rare to spend 5, 10, $15,000. If you were to go and hire a world class copywriter to write something like this, that works. And I know for a fact this works because we've been using it for years. So anyway, so having said that, the way to use this to actually sell something is the same way if you ever have someone that raises their hands, like in your particular case, Dean, you created the first squeeze page on the Internet and someone gives you their name and they give you their email. So what you start doing is a series of sequences of communications. When you start getting frequent communications from people they're sequencing, the key is knowing in the sales letters that are actually making an offer where you have a call to action, what sort of response do you get from letter number one or email number one or in some particular cases you've seen many like NordicTrack that ran infomercials for many, many years very successfully. Tempur Pedic mattresses. One of their methods is like Tempur pedicure is phenomenal at doing direct mail sequencing. I mean, I have received, I've bought two Tempur Pedic mattresses in the last decade. And part of it is because they're just relentless with their marketing. I mean, they will, they literally will mail over and over and over again. And they're not doing that because they like throwing away DVDs. I mean, they'll do everything from direct, you know, open brochures. They'll have magalogs that are magazines that look like catalogs that look like magazines. They'll have all kinds of different shapes, sizes and forms of direct mail. But they know that if they get a lead and they invest in some cases they're probably investing several hundred dollars on depending where that Lead first came from where people will call a number and request to be sent a DVD or to be sent a report on their mattresses. They know for a fact that they're going to convert X number after a certain amount of sequences. So they do it and that's why they built just a multi, multi million dollar business because they understand the marketing.

Yeah. Part of the thinking behind that too is realizing that that's. But it's a major purchase and not everybody is going to make that purchase right away. We talked at the I Love Marketing conference, we mentioned that of all of the people, people who inquire about things, about half of them are actually going to buy what they've inquired about within the next 18 months. But only 15% of them are going to actually buy in the first 90 days. So having sequenced messaging, having a way to continue that dialogue with people beyond that 90 days is really a, it's a profit activator. I mean it's a way of having something that is going to pay off just knowing that 85% of the value is in what you do 90 days. You know, beyond when somebody inquires. Most people are not, you know, they're not set up for a, you know, six month or 12 month follow up sequence. They're set up for, you know, a six day follow up sequence. And if they don't buy right away then they're, they're, you know, they kind of fall down.

Right, right. What I found when I first started selling stuff to, you know, professional cleaners is that they never even heard of it. I mean, and I doubt people, you know, literally would argue about why, you know, I don't want to bug people and send them a letter two or three times. I'm like, oh, so what you're saying is, you know, you don't want to, you know, make any money then basically. And they would spend all this time to try to, you know, get a sale they wouldn't think about. Well, you know, some people will buy but you know, they're. Life is a moving parade. That's something that J. Abraham would always talk about. You know, I mean when you're in your own life, you know, you aren't thinking about a washing machine, you know, until your washing machine breaks or you need one. Then all of a sudden you start noticing, you know, like ads for washing.

Machines on appliances this weekend.

Yeah, yeah.

Meanwhile they have a sale on appliances every weekend, but you just didn't notice it until you need one.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so this is so in this particular case, like one of the things that I, you know, Bill Phillips ended up hiring me for consulting end of 1996, beginning in 1997. And at the time I was charging a whopping $3,850 a day for consulting. And so he flies me out there to do a day of consulting with him on his company, eas. And he had a magazine called Muscle Media. And, you know, he had, he had purchased a company called Experimental and Applied Sciences, EAS is what it stood for. And he had just come out with a supplement called Myoplex and different sort of supplements, Beta Gin and different related phosphagen and stuff that had creatine. And it was a pretty big company doing about 60 million a year in sales at the time. And I sat down with Bill within the first 10 minutes, he shows me this promotion. And he said, you know, Joe, I am the marketing department in this company. I've got. I think he had like 150 people working for me. He's like, I'm the only one that can write copy and I need more copy like this. And he showed me this letter that had brought in $2 million in sales that he had sent to his list. And his list was pretty big. It was several hundred thousand people that were mostly bodybuilders. He was yet targeting mainstream America, which he eventually did with his book Body for Life, which became one of the biggest selling, one of the best selling fitness books of all time. And so he shows me this letter. And the letter basically told this story of how he had showed three semi trucks that were EAS logoed semi trucks. And I mean, he had a really nice facility in Golden, Colorado. And the letter said, you know, basically the story in the letter was he had ordered placement from his, you know, manufacturer for a shipment of Myoplex. And unbeknownst to him, his general manager had also placed an order and they had double the amount of Myoplex sent to them that they had space to actually contain in the warehouse. And so they had three semi trucks filled with Myoplex. And so they're having a 40% off sale. And so they needed to unload these trucks with the myoplex. And so 40% off. And it was like one of the rare times that he actually did price discounting on his supplements. And so he had sent that letter out to a bunch of people and brought in 2 million in sales. And he's like, and I need more letters like this. And I said, well, do you mind if I write on this letter? And he's like, no. And I go, you ever heard of three step mailings? And he's like, yeah, sequence mailings. He's like, yeah, I've heard of it. I go, have you ever done it? He's like, no, not really. And I'm like, okay, so what you do is you take this letter and you write second notice. And I literally hand wrote on the letter. And this was stuff that I had been doing with Dan Kennedy and that I was teaching my professional cleaners. So this was not like something I had not done before. I mean, I was using it in my own business. It just worked. I was using it to sell marketing kits. I used it to sell carpet cleaning services. I mean, it doesn't matter what business you're in if someone is interested in what you're selling. Sequential marketing works in this day and age. It's like sequential emails electronically or snail mail. It still works. I said, you know, what you do is you write with a marker and handwriting. So it looks like you literally took a letter and you personally wrote on it and you print it that way. So it's all mucked up, you know, this nice letter, but it's, you know, got margin handwriting in it. So handwriting in the margin. So it's in second notice. Dear friend sent this letter to you a couple weeks ago. Have not heard from you. You know, you've got another. I think the expiration date was something like a month from the time that letter had gone out. And I said, you can extend it if you want. And so I said, I want you to mail this letter twice. And if it keeps working, mail it even more. This is an important line to remember. Although I said three step letter in this particular campaign. And including the string letter I read was three sequences I've had one of my cleaners actually mailed a letter, the carpet audit in a free room of cleaning letter, different versions of it 21 times to a particular neighborhood until it was no longer profitable, until he literally went negative. Meaning mailing the same offer to the Same people every two weeks 21 times before it actually cost him money. It was costing more money to mail the letter than the amount of business it was bringing in to quit. Going back to the well is when you stick the bucket in the well and you pull up the bucket and there's no more water in it. But as long as you're getting, you know, water out of the well, keep dipping in the bucket. It doesn't have to stop at three. Okay? So having said that, I put an X through One of the semi trucks. And it says, you know, we still have, you know, more, you know, supplements that we need to unload. So respond while this offer, you know, still exists. And he's like, that's it. I go, yeah, same. You don't have to pay a copywriter to write a single stitch of copy. All you need to do is handwrite this and mail the same letter. And I go, so then after you mail this letter, you write. And then I wrote third and final notice. And I put another X through another. The picture of. Because there's a picture of three semi trucks backed up against the warehouse. And I x'd out one of the semi trucks, right?

Yeah, right.

And said, third and final notice. I've sent you this letter twice. This is your last opportunity to get 40% off myoplex and place your order now. So he mailed that letter two more times with a variation of that handwriting, margins. Because I was showing him an example of how you would do it. And you would circle things and you would underline the offer expiration date. I was just showing him how to ugly up the letter. That's really what you're doing. You're making the letter look like you pulled it out, you hand wrote all over and blue marker. And you put it in an envelope and mailed it to him again. And so he mailed that letter two more times, and it brought in an additional $3 million in sales. So here's the point. Had he stopped at letter number one, he would have had a successful campaign. It brought in $2 million in sales. And it was one of his very successful letters. And the first thing out of Bill's mouth when he first met me for consulting was, you know, I need, you know, more copy. I, you know, I. I'm writing all the copy myself. And I gave him a technique that allowed him to leverage his existing copy by sending it out a second and a third time. So all of a sudden, Bill started doing multi step mailings, and he started squeezing more juice out of his existing campaigns. And had he stopped at letter number one, he would have literally not brought in an additional $3 million in revenue. So from that point forward, Bill started paying me $10,000 a day whenever I would do a day of consulting with him. And he eventually ended up buying me a convertible Jaguar and various other stuff. And we became friends. And he sold his company. He built his. Then we did the make a wish campaign where he used a documentary he made called body of work for his physique transformation contest. And he Raised just a ton of money and still does for this day, for the Make A W Foundation. And then he sold his company for a couple years later, he built up the revenues to 200 million plus a year in sales. Very fast growth from 60 million to over 200 million. And he ended up selling the company for $300 million. And millions of people all over the world transform their bodies and their physiques using his exercise methodologies. However, it was marketing. The difference between Bill getting his message out and other people that were very smart exercise and nutrition and supplement people, was his ability to get a message out and to get people to respond. And a big part of that was all of the direct response stuff that he was doing. I showed him everything that I could, but just that one method alone. Within an hour, the first hour of him hiring me for consulting, I gave him an idea that made him 3 million bucks within a month. And that is the power of a single idea when it is implemented. And Bill was an implementer. And there you go.

That's great, you know, because how many people are sitting on things that are just like that, that they could do again? But, you know, it's kind of like Jay Abraham says that, you know, we get tired of our marketing long before the. Our market gets tired of it.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

You know, you might not think, well, I already sent out. I already sent out that letter. Now I need a new letter.

Right.

But that's not really. That's not the case. I mean, when you look at it in our getting listings program for. For realtors, for. For getting listings in the neighborhood, I mean, we essentially mail 12 sequential postcards, one a month, that the only thing that changes is the. The date on the. On the postcard. I mean, we send out and we offer the free October 2011 report on River Oaks house prices, and then next month, we offer. Send this exact same postcard and offer the free November 2011 report on River Oaks house prices.

Yep. And the deal is an ad is brand new, or a sales letter is brand new, or a website is brand new, or an email is brand new, or free recorded message is brand new, or a video is brand new for someone that has seen it for the first time, even if you see it every single day. And. Yes, right.

That's what Jay is kind of saying. Of course, we get tired of it because we see it all the time. Yeah.

And so the point is, don't think that because you live, eat, and breathe your story in your message that that somehow means you need to constantly change it because as the business owner, we're always wanting to do something new. And if you sit and think about what is the bait that I fished with in the past that got the most bites, that got the most response, what I've had many of my clients do is they'll have. The newspaper will run an article about them and they'll get business from the article. And I'll say, well, you know what? Why don't you take the same article and then pay the newspaper or the magazine, if they will, and sometimes they do, to run it as an ad. If you got response from it before, say, you know, we're running this article for a second time because so many people liked it and you pay them money to run it again because it's the credentialization of the magazine that is running. And a lot of times, if someone, you know, Gary Halbert would always say, you know, if you really need some great pr, literally pay a, you know, reporter to come out and write the most glowing story about you and use that as the basis for your ad if you want pr. And so it's just reminding people to think about what have you already done in the past that is working or what are you currently doing now that you could leverage and exploit at much deeper levels? Because there's usually something and it's usually right in front of your nose, and you don't think about it because sometimes you go numb to it because you're using it all the time or you're seeing it all the time. And there's such a tendency to want to try a new technology or a new marketing method or whatever. And a lot of times it's just right under your nose. And so, you know, the whole point behind talking about sequencing is anything that is producing some sort of result that you can get in the mail more frequently so that you can repurpose existing, you know, copy, do it. You know, one of the things that I. I had a carpet cleaner hire me for consulting early on. It was one of the very first times that was it. Carpet cleaner hired me. Because most, most of them, you know, my, my day daily fee is so darn high compared to buying one of my kits that I always, I do that purposely. I'm like, you know, just buy one of my courses. Don't hire me for consulting when people try to hire me for consulting. Because right now I'm $25,000 for half a day of consulting. And I do my best, if it's a right fit person to say, just join my 25k group. I just really think you're going to get more out of your 25 grand than hiring me. And part of it is because I don't really want to do a lot of full day consulting. So I price it so high that it is that way. One of the first people that ever hired me for consulting in the cleaning industry, they wanted to change a phone book ad that was getting a five to one return and they were using my stuff. That's why they were hiring me, because they're making money. They had bought my, my kit and they were using one of my yellow page ad templates and it was bringing in five to one. And they thought that they could improve it with a different headline and a free recorded message within the ad and bigger list of benefits. I said, they're like, what do you think of this new ad? It was good, but the ad that they already had was bringing in five to one. And it's one of those, you got to be careful when you're tinkering with a working wheel. And once you run an ad in the yellow pages, I mean it's going to be there for a year. So what if they ran the new ad but it only brought in 3 to 1? You can't change it every month. So I said, look, since you're dealing with a media that's going to be there for a long time until the next phone book comes out, why don't you test this in a postcard, take this ad that you're already running and send it out as a postcard in your new ad and send it to the same neighborhood but do a split test and half get this ad, the other half get this one on a postcard and they're like, that's a good idea. So they did it and the existing ad that they were already getting 5 to 1 actually doubled the response as a postcard. So they didn't change their ad because they found that, ah, less people were responding to this one, the new one that they thought would be better than the old one. So sometimes you can always just test, you know what you're going to run as an ad or run as a promotion. And of course on the Internet you can do that literally by the second by revolving banner ads and various other things, you know.

That's fantastic.

Yeah.

You know, when you really start thinking about it, you realize how many things that we have that could be kind of repurposed, right?

Totally.

Yeah.

No, no.

Without having to.

Yeah. I mean, I really think one of the services that we Provide people, you know, because sometimes people get really mad because they'll hear the same sort of technique said in a hundred different ways or whatever. And again, I love the Emerson quote, which you'll probably quote this every five episodes of I Love Marketing is you ask for a new idea when you haven't used the last one that I gave you. And you know, Emerson and it. It's so true. And I think in a lot of ways, one of the best services that we provide to our clients is we're just a reminder service. When we do coaching for people that are part of our coaching or mastermind groups, a lot of times they'll come in there looking for methods to build their business, and we get them thinking about, well, what have you done in the past that worked, that you've abandoned? What are you doing right now that's working, but you're not exploiting it? You know, what are the things that you're doing right now? Just yourself that you. Yeah. That you could go get a joint venture partner to do for you. You know, that sort of stuff.

And there's a thing, you know, when you start thinking about it, when you sometimes just sending the same thing again is even better than just been trying to improve what you're already sending or trying to, you know, come up with something new to send. And that's been, you know, I think I shared with you. One of the things we do with our getting listings sold program is getting. Is whenever somebody gets a new listing, we get the data overnight, so it automatically knows who they are. And the next day they get an email that goes out and has the address of the property in the subject line. And, you know, we send that message and get 30% of the people who go on that to. Who get the email to click through. And, you know, we're wondering, you know, how can we improve that? What can we do? And I said, well, let's send it again to the people who didn't. Who didn't click on it today. So you, you know, that's one of the things you can do with email and same thing with direct mail is send something again to the people who didn't respond. You know, if they already responded, you don't need to send it again. But, you know, we do that and we get over 20% of the people who get the second message click. So, you know, we're up pretty close to 50% of the people who get, you know, who just got a new listing end up coming to the site because we send sequential messages. You know, and now we've started sending, even sending a sequence message that, that is based on whether they clicked or they didn't click, you know, to the next one. That's the, that's kind of the really cool thing about using email is that you, you can dynamically change what happens. You can, you can segment your groups based on their behavior. You know, did they click or did they not click? And you can send a message based on, on what they actually did.

Right, exactly. I mean, and there's so much that technology allows us to know about the, the person, their behaviors, and to set it up so it's completely robotic. And that's what, that's why I like calling it elf marketing. Because when you're doing this, there's a setup stage. And the setup stage of developing an elf business isn't always easy. A lot of times it's just flat out hard. And sometimes the hardest part is just understanding the psychology. I mean, everything that we're explaining from the mechanic standpoint is not difficult. I mean, send a letter, send out an email. I mean, we're not talking about sophisticated things where we're telling people to do Steven Spielberg production TV commercials here. I mean, we're giving people very simple methods of communicating with people. It's just learning the psychology behind it and setting up a system in the beginning so that you're going to have these contacts. But once the system is set up, you can use it over and over and over again. And that is the advantage today. I mean, it's so much easier to do any of this stuff than it ever has been. Been.

Yeah.

So, Dean Joe, now what I'd like you to do is to come up with something better than everything I just said in the time we have remaining on this. I mean, I want you to take everything that I just talked about and make it seem like just child's play.

That was nothing. So if you, if you like that, wait till you hear this. That's what you're looking for.

No, I don't care. No, I think we should just end the call right now. When I say call, this is because we're talking on the phone. But the episode, I should have everyone sit down and knock out a three step letter sequence. Look, if anyone owes the money and do a follow up. But we're going to keep going. What I want to propose to everyone listening is to list the top five things or think about them. If you're listening to this podcast while running at a very breakneck speed on a treadmill, while exercising in the gym or driving your car, wherever the heck it is you're listening to this episode, think of or write down, if you can, the top five most successful promotions. Be it an ad, an email, a sales letter, a video, a webinar, a teleseminar. I mean, out of any of the delivery systems that you've used, any of the messages that you've put out there, what are the top five things that generated the most business? And once you list those five things, was there sequencing involved in them? Meaning in order to get someone to respond, did you do a singular sort of promotion or were there steps involved? Meaning what is the sales cycle, how did it work? And so have a list of that. And then once you've identified that, look for, can you repeat them again? Are you still doing those things? Because a lot of people have really, really successful promotions and campaigns and then in the busyness of modern life, they abandon it and they go and try something new. And so can you dust it off? Can you bring it back out if it's something that you used to use in the past or did it quit working? And in most cases you will find, if you really think this through, that, wow, there's stuff that I did before that, if I did it again right now, it would probably work well. And then the second thing to look at is how can you further exploit it or expand it, or repurpose it? Meaning if you tried a certain email or you tried a certain offer to one list, how many other lists can you go after? And they either will be lists that you generate on your own, your own existing client base, or, or they could be other people that you can do joint ventures with. And so look at all of the different ways that you can repurpose or exploit something, because a lot of marketers have great marketing, but they don't exploit it. And so part of the key of growing stuff, and as I say this, I could do the same sort of audit and I do on a semi regular basis in my own business, because there's always things that, you know, I could do more of this, I could sequence that. And, and whenever I'm in a situation where I really want to just make more money, part of the making of more money is not coming up with some creative, brand new marketing campaign. Part of it is just saying, what have I done in the past that worked? What are my clients buying from that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, honestly, I mean, most of the money making in my business is like, okay, what's the shit that I've done? In the past. Let me go do more of that shit and just put it out there. And so I'm asking all of our listeners to do the same sort of thinking in their business. This is not rocket science. It's just kind of doing. It's taking recipes that have a proven track record and putting on the oven, just doing it again.

For all the raw food people picking up those cookies. That were great.

Yeah. For all the raw food people that listen, because we do have. I've had a lot of people that are in the raw food business, like my buddy David Wolf and Kelly over at Chocolatri in Sedona. They sell these love cups in whole foods, these raw chocolate, which are awesome. A lot of raw food people actually listen to the I Love Marketing podcast. So they will just take the same spinach and lettuce and goji berries and stuff that you put in your Vitamix and just. Just do it again, and you'll have another green smoothie. So I don't even know if that was even worth saying, but we're going to keep it on the podcast anyway. You know why? Because, yeah, we don't edit this stuff, right? Well, why would we need to? I mean, this sheer brilliance mixed in, even if every single thing is not exactly what you want to hear, you know, I still think it's good.

Can you believe. I mean, 41 episodes and we haven't edited yet.

I know. What does that say about us?

But you know what? That's the thing. I think that part of the. Part of what I get out of these is that we never know. I mean, just the things. Just having the conversation really even reminds me of things.

Oh, totally. Yeah. That's another lesson here. And we talked about this at the I Love Marketing conferences. There's three ways you learn something. You can either learn through the school, school of hard knocks, where you just go out, you try things, you can learn through the experiences of others. You can read their books, go to their seminars, hear what they say. Or the fastest way to learn is to teach things to other people, get involved in discussions about it, which is why we are recommending that you start a meetup group or at least attend them. I love marketing meetup groups, which I have to say, I'm completely stoked about. All of the people out there that have started meetup groups, that are running meetup groups, you guys are awesome. You guys and gals, they're all over the world now. There's new ones that are excited, too. Yeah, there's new ones popping up every week, you know, you go to meetup.com and type in Ilove Marketing. Or, you know, go to ilovemarketing.com and look at the tab. We have a How to start a Meetup group guide. You know, we're not charging any money for any of this stuff. Meetup.com, you know, has a very nominal fee in order to order to start meetup Groups. But, man, the reward that will come back to you. And the discussions are lively. People are learning things. And, you know, when you go out and start facilitating groups like that and just having these discussions with other people, there's the power of the mastermind. And so we're bringing that encouragement and this curriculum and these conversations to everybody so that we can just have all of the marketers that are out there just killing it with their businesses because you're using really effective marketing. And the people that are showing up at the Meetup groups here in Tempe. I mean, this is unbelievable. I mean, very, very savvy.

That's exciting. I can't wait to get to the group in Orlando and then maybe start one here in Winter Haven, too.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But the fastest way to learn is just talking about it. So when me and Dean, you know, get on the phone and we actually record these episodes, I mean, it's causing us to have to think back out of all of the seminars we've attended, all the marketing we've implemented, all of the things that we've helped clients with to remind us. And you know what? As soon as I finish an episode, I'm in a. You know, I'm in a. In just a state of more capability to go back to my own company, Piranha Marketing, and implement stuff that I myself have forgotten to do. So that's. That's it. Anything else? I think we're. I think we're almost at the time, right, Dean? I. You know what's funny? We're recording on GarageBand, and I am yet a novice on GarageBand. Actually, what's really funny is Dean actually has to walk me through every time what I need to click on and all. All that in order to record this. Because this is only like the third episode we've recorded with this new way. And, you know, there's this. There's these measures down at the bottom, but it doesn't give you an actual time. And I always forget to look at the, you know, look at the time at the up, you know, because I'm like a dumbass. So, basically, yeah, I can't tell by looking.

How many measures are you at?

Yeah, this is like 1821.3.

Yeah, that's me too.

I'm like, what does that mean? I don't, I don't know what that beats. So of course there's a recording guy out there that says, oh, well, you know, this is real easy. This is what it means. But I don't understand what it means. But I don't really care. All I need to know is marketing and you telling me what time we're done and then we're done. So we're done. Okay, good. That's it. So the next episode we're going to continue to talk about some killer direct response stuff. Love to hear your comments on this. Try the multi sequence mailings and if you make it ton of money with this, then, you know, donate to a cause that really needs it. And yeah, that is it. So as usual, awesome. Thank you for listening everyone. We wish you a very wonderful week and we will talk to you on the next episode of I Love marketing.

Thanks, Joe.