There is a method of marketing that has somewhat lost its luster in the 21st century. It is direct marketing or direct response marketing. Direct marketing or direct response marketing is where you send offers of your legal services to your potential or existing clients through snail mail. The recipient has the choice of responding by accepting the offer or not. If you have a list of potential or existing clients for your legal business, direct marketing is a worthwhile strategy provided you do it Guerrilla style.
These days, direct response marketing is often done online where you set up a webpage that elicits a specific response from your visitor whether it is to call a toll free number or give his email address or make a purchase. But when done through snail mail, you have one additional barrier to overcome in order to get your reader to see your offer.
The envelope.
Your reader must first open the envelope before he reads your message. Now if you just use any plain white envelope and hope for the best, then you are not Guerrilla marketing. Here?s how a Guerrilla Marketer would do it.
If you have to use a white envelope, make sure it is stamped first class and do not put the return address of your legal firm on it. In his book, Guerrilla Marketing for the 90′s, Jay Levinson stated that such envelopes have a higher chance of being opened because it piques the recipient’s curiosity. If you do use colored envelopes, Levinson advocates blue or red.
However, the choice of color should correspond with the offer you are making. For legal services, it would not do to have too bright colors like orange, yellow or pink. It would be better to go for more staid colors.
You may experiment with other frills like printing a rubber stamp on the envelope (Reader’s Digest has been using this technique for ages). A black or red rubber stamp signifies urgency. You may even print a post-it note onto your envelope, one with appropriate shadows. Both will allow you to highlight in it a pithy, punchy message that grabs your recipients by the eyeballs.
Message like, Your Lawyer does NOT want you to see this!? or ?Who says nothing in life is Free? Look Inside!? are geared to get the recipient to open the envelope. They both pander to our basic human nature ? the first to a fear of loss and the second to a promise of gain. This is applying sales psychology to Guerrilla Marketing.
But there is a caveat you must adhere to.
Never promise what you cannot deliver. In your bid to get the envelope opened do not promise the sky when you can only give the earth. This would only damage your own credibility.
Applying these simple strategies will result in a greater rate of response to your direct marketing because you would be doing it Guerrilla Marketing style.
