Boron - Chapter 06

Possibility #1 - We could mail it to people whose names and address we get right out of a telephone book.

Comments: This is a terrible idea. There are too many non-prospects in this kind of group. The only thing in common that people in the phone book have is that they all have a phone. Some of the people won't have any money to invest. Some of them never purchase anything by mail. Some of them are too busy (or uninterested) to even read your letter. Some of them don't even know how to read! In short there is too much waste circulation. This is like shooting with a shotgun instead of a rifle.

Onward.

Possibility #2 - We could mail our promotion to people whose names and addresses we get from a phone book but only to those people who live in high income areas.

Comments: This is a little better, but not nearly good enough. High income areas are, incidentally, easy to identify because several companies have compiled statistics on every zip code in the United States and they can tell you with great accuracy the average income per person in each zip code. They can also, by the way, tell you the average education level; average age, how much they spend on automobiles and a bunch of other stuff.

However, as I said, this still isn't nearly good enough. For one thing, not everybody who lives in a high-income area has a high income. Some of these people might be the maids or gardeners or some other type of servant. (Come to think of it, I'm not so sure that quite a few gardeners aren't wealthy.) Some of these people may have money but are not interested in investing. Some of them may always buy books from a bookstore and never by mail. Some of these people can't read English. (There are more and more rich foreigners in our country.) Some of them may have money to invest but are only interested in investing in areas in which they already have expertise.

Whatever. Once again we are shooting with a shotgun instead of a rifle. Once again, too much waste circulation.

Let's see if we can do a little better.

Possibility #3 - We could mail our piece to a group of people that we are relatively sure have above average incomes. Like doctors. Lawyers. Architects. Top executives. Accountants. Owners of expensive homes. Owners of Rolls Royce automobiles.

And so on.

Comments: Not bad. We are now getting into areas where we at least have a chance.

At least we are relatively sure that most of these people have a high enough income to maybe be interested in investing. Whether they are interested or not, we can't know, but at least, if they are, they probably have the ability to do some investing. This group of people is certainly more likely to respond to our pitch than the first two groups but, as you shall see, we can do a lot better.