Personal Marketing Pays Off

If you’ve been a follower of mine for any length of time, you know I am a huge fan of connecting with highly personal marketing.  In my opinion, nothing beats a personal, me-to-you looking marketing effort to get attention and get response.

Today, I want to share yet another story of how personal marketing gets results, and in this case a $9,704.99 furniture sale with me as the targeted customer.

But I digress, let me start from the beginning.

Recently, my wife and I bought a new home.

If you’ve done this, you know the flood of “welcome to the neighborhood” offers that fill your mailbox and mine was no different.

Countless postcards and a few generically-printed envelopes addressed to NEW HOMEOWNER, or in the rare case where the person sending had some sense of marketing, addressed to MIKE CAPUZZI.

Which is why a marketing geek like me got excited when this envelope arrived in my mailbox.

A real, hand-addressed envelope being sent to my wife and I from a local Raymour & Flanigan salesman.

This simple, friendly-looking envelope, stood out and beckoned me to open it.

Inside it, I found a message from David Feldman, congratulating my wife and I on our new purchase and inviting us to a $100 savings on a furniture purchase.

Short, sweet and simple and literally within a matter of a few days of receiving this invitation from David, Becky and I went to visit him.

Interestingly it wasn’t the $100 savings that prompted me to go furniture shopping.  I simply wanted to meet the man who took the time to send me this personal marketing offer.

As you would expect, as soon as we entered the store, the next salesperson who was up, greeted us.  I showed her the envelope and asked for David.

Within two minutes a middle-aged man greeted us and was all smiles when we showed him the invitation he sent us.

Immediately he told me we were the second recipient to bring the piece in, which is when I started firing question after question at him.

His answers are instructive for all of us.

First off, he took it upon himself to create this personal marketing campaign.  He was the only salesperson in his store to take this “old school” approach to send a personal welcome message via direct mail.

He told me he contacted the local county deed office and got a list of people who moved into certain neighborhoods.

He then handwrote every envelope himself.  On a side note, I wrote about doing this type of “grunt work” in the past and how it can pay off for you.  You can read what both Gary Halbert and I said about this here.  Make sure you read the comments too.

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that he even told me a few of his younger colleagues laughed at him for literally handwriting a stack of envelopes.

So, after gushing over his good effort at doing something different, my wife and I did a little shopping.

Two hours later, David’s simple invitation turned into an almost $10,000 sale on a quiet Sunday afternoon and I was happy he made the sale.

Now while I am sure his effort could be improved (I doubt he had any second step or follow-up), the bottom line is his personal marketing effort got my attention and made the sale.

One of my favorite Dan Kennedy quotes sheds some light on why this type of personal marketing works so well.

“It happens constantly and it is the hidden secret reason why so many marketing campaigns fall way short of their potential; not because the offer isn’t good or wouldn’t be welcomed by all the recipients; simply because many of the recipients never know about it because we fail to command their attention.”

David’s authentic letter to my wife and I got our attention, which is perhaps, the biggest challenge we all face as marketers, and he connected with us at just the right time (what new homeowner doesn’t need some new furniture?).

The combination of connecting with handwriting and focusing on “an audience of one” turned out to be a winner.

Kudos to David Feldman!

You too can leverage this simple technique and here’s how.

Figure out a micro-segment “avatar” you can make a special offer to.  This type of approach works best for higher-ticket offers.   You only need a handful of prospects – less than 100 for sure.

Then create a highly personal, me-to-you, multi-step marketing campaign that answers “What’s in it for me?”

Literally write to an audience of one and keep this person in mind when crafting your offer and message.  Your campaign could include both offline and online components.

Send it out and watch what happens.

If you’ve done everything right, this type of highly-personal marketing should pay off like it did for David.

If you’ve done something like this in the past and it’s worked for you, leave a comment below and let everybody know about it!