Boron - Chapter 24

Impact is the impression you or your promotion makes on its
intended target. Someone once said that the average American
is subjected to about 1,500 commercial messages every day.
Probably so. Especially when you count billboards, ads on
TV, ads on radio, ads on the backs of buses, on taxicabs, on
match covers, in newspapers, magazines, direct mail pieces,
etc., etc.

However, out of all those ads very very few have any
appreciable impact. And impact is one of the things I strive
for.

And, what I want to talk about right now is my favorite way
in all the world to achieve impact with my DM promotions.
What I'm talking about is attaching things to the top of my
letters. I've mentioned this before but now I want to go
into it in considerably more detail.

The best letter ever to use this technique was the
classic "dollar bill" letter featured in "The Robert Collier
Letter Book." (must reread)

This was a first class letter that was designed to raise
funds for a children's hospital. When the recipient opened
the envelope he discovered a personal typed letter with a
real honest-to-goodness dollar bill attached to it. The copy
explained that the writer wanted to donate a thousand
dollars to a certain children's hospital but that he
realized that a thousand dollars wouldn't go very far. So,
what he (the writer) had decided to do was divide his
$1,000.00 contribution into 1,000 - one dollar bills and
then mail these bills to 1,000 different people. Now, he
went on to say, what he hoped is that everybody who received
one of these dollar bills would decide not to keep it and,
instead, send it straight to the hospital with one or more
dollars of their own.

Did it work? Oh my! It was probably the most effective
direct mail promotion ever mailed. It got better than a 90%
response and the people to whom it was mailed eventually
contributed tens of millions of dollars!

That's Impact!

Today, in the mail, I received a copy of my Japanese "Penny"
promotion. This promotion, as you know, has a Japanese
"Penny" attached to the top of the letter and the copy says
that the writer is attaching the penny to the letter for two
important reasons.