Make It Personal

I’ve been fortunate to write promotions that have been mailed, emailed or read or seen by millions and millions of prospects.

But I have always remembered, when I'm writing a promotion to sell a product or service, that it's really like I'm writing to ONE PERSON.

If you focus in on one person, then it forces you to think about that person: Who is he? What are his post urgent problems? What are his biggest needs? And how can the product or service you're selling help him, benefit him and make his business, his life--everything--better.

This is why, one of the first and most important questions I ask my clients is: "Who is your best prospect?"

Get this right, and you've taken a big step to creating a successful promotion.

Take the case of a very successful mailing I wrote for a company that specializes in creating personalized, signature line of hair and skincare poroducts for independent salon owners.

To prepare for writing this promotion, I did research on salon owners, picked the clients' minds, studied testimonials and even talked to a few salon owners.

The whole idea is, offer each salon owner an opportunity to sell top quality products in his/her salon with the salon's name on each bottle. No more selling somebody else's products--but your own.

To make an impact, I created an envelope with a bottle of shampoo with the salon's name "personalized" on the bottle--so the prospect would immediately get the idea that he could offer a line of products like this to his customers.
As you can see, "David Shitman Hair Shack" was imprinted on the bottle. This, of course, matched the same name personalized on the order card.

The promotion included a letter that made clear the challenges of salon owners, explained the many benefits of a private label and motivated prospects to order a sample kit.

It also included "Profit Tips for Salon Owners: 7 ways you can take control--and boost your retail profits."

By showing the possibilities of a private label brand of shampoos and skin care products, this piece generated a lot of attention--and many oders for a sample kit.