Before you enter upon the use of mailing cards, be sure you understand the postal regulations regarding them. They are not complicated, but more than one concern has prepared elaborate folders only to be refused admittance to the mails because they did not follow specifications as to size and weight.
Postal laws require that all cards marked "Post Cards" be uniform in design and not less than three and three-fourths inches by four inches and not more than three and nine-sixteenths inches by five and nine-sixteenths inches in size. This means that all return cards, whether enclosed or attached, must be within authorized sizes to allow a first class postal rating.
Making It Easy For the
PROSPECT to Answer
PART V—WRITING THE SALES LETTER—CHAPTER 21.
The mere physical effort of hunting up pen and paper by which to send in an order for SOMETHING HE REALLY WANTS, deters many a prospect from becoming a customer.
The man who sells goods by mail must overcome this natural inertia by reducing the act of sending in an order or inquiry to its very simplest terms—by making it so easy for him to reply that he acts while the desire for the goods is still upon him. Here are Eighteen Schemes for making it easy for the prospect to reply—and to reply NOW
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There are few propositions so good that they will sell themselves. A man may walk into a store with the deliberate intention of buying a shirt, and if the clerk who waits on him is not a good salesman the customer may just as deliberately walk out of the store and go to the place across the street. Lack of attention, over-anxiety to make a quick sale, want of tact on the part of the salesman—any one of a dozen things may switch off the prospective customer although he wants what you have for sale.
Even more likely is this to happen when you are trying to sell him by mail. He probably cares little or nothing about your offer; it is necessary to interest him in the limits of a page or two and convince him that he should have the article described.
And even after his interest has been aroused and he is in a mood to reply, either with an order or a request for further information, he will be lost unless it is made easy for him to answer; unless it is almost as easy to answer as it is not to answer. A man's interest cools off rapidly; you must get his request for further information or his order before he picks up the next piece of mail.