Steve Clark is the CEO and Founder of New School Selling Today (see www.newschoolselling.com) an international business development and marketing firm that consults and coaches thousands of sales executives and business owners annually in Australia, Canada and the US, and after you see what he’s done with his bank bag letter you’ll understand that Steve knows Direct Response Marketing and Copywriting.

This month’s direct mail promotion comes from Inner Circle Member Pete Mitchell.  Pete is a master at product launches, and he’s incredible at creating celebrity status, big pay days, and PR awareness.  If you’re interested in a product launch, visit www.BustOutTheBigGuns.com

In this example, I’m taking you back to one of the first direct mail campaigns I implemented.  It’s for Superior Display, a manufacturing shop we own in Bend, OR.

I stepped back a few years to get this month’s S&D example for you.  But it’s a good one.  Have you ever needed to get the attention of a VIP, big-wig, or important decision maker?  It can be brutal.  Gatekeepers, voice mail, unreturned phone calls and emails...  It can get frustrating.   But first, some background on this letter.

I had the great fortune about 14 months ago to meet a childhood hero of mine, Cal Ripken, Jr. at a seminar in Baltimore, MD.

As I was watching SportsCenter one evening a few days before the college football national championship game, the same reporter asked both coaches, Les Miles of LSU and Nick Saban of Alabama, in separate interview (and I’m paraphrasing), “What outside criticism has affected you and your team the most.”

It always amazes me at how few people do real, proactive marketing to trade show attendees at the events they attend. 

I catch some flack every now and again that all I show are consumer examples in this newsletter.  Frankly, that’s just not true.  A lot of examples come from my own businesses, all of which are B2B.  Given that this month’s new item is in the B2C world, I thought I’d throw you B2B’ers this one. 

Whenever you make an offer, you want it to be believable.  People are naturally skeptical, especially when it appears that an offer is too good to be true.  You’ll often hear this referred to as “reason why” copy in this newsletter. 

We’re going to talk about double readership path and copy cosmetic together this month, as they go hand-in-hand.  For both items, it doesn’t matter if you’re using a 4” x 6” postcard, a one page sales letter, or a 48 page magalog, these techniques still apply