Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

In the "Little Things That Make A Difference Department", we have the following entry. In my efforts to launch my freelance copywriting business, I've been relying on direct mail to drum up prospects. Of course, this costs a bit of money -- postage, mailing supplies, et cetera -- but I've decided to go this route because I loathe the prospect of cold-calling. My last job involved a lot of cold-calling, and that was a business-to-business tele-sales job, selling pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical accessories (I tell you what!) to pharmacies -- none of that crap of calling Granny at home and trying to whittle down her meager sales resistance during the dinner hour in hopes that she'll authorize an eight-year subscription to Field and Stream. I never got very good at cold-calling prospects who had never spoken to me before, so I'm avoiding that like the plague in doing this.

My initial mailing consists of a sales letter, accompanied by a reply card requesting more information. The ones who actually return the card get a larger package: my brochure, business card, fee schedule, and a couple of samples. Then, I plan to call those people within a week of sending the package, because they'll at least be warmer prospects than some guy or woman who's only hearing of me for the first time in some phone call while they're doing something else. So far so good.

Except that in my first two mailings, comprising 120 or so letters, not a single reply card had come back.

I was prepared to chalk this up to a lousy sales letter and try again, except I decided to do one more mailing of the same letter-and-card with about 40 letters, but making one tiny change: I spent a little extra and put postage on the reply cards themselves. Today, three cards from that batch came in, and there may be more in the next day or two. Beyond that, and it's probably all done. Three replies out of 40 letters may not sound like much, but it's a 7.5 percent reply rate, which according to Bob Bly (the Joe Montana of FLCW's, and author of Secrets of the Freelance Writer) isn't bad at all. The key to success with direct mail is volume, which is why I'm trying to send out at least twenty letters a week. If I can get, say, 500 letters out over a few months, and get a 7.5 percent reply rate on those, that's thirty-seven responses, or warm prospects. And from that tele-sales job, I know that it's a lot easier to sell a warm prospect -- one with whom you've had some contact, and with whose needs you've made yourself somewhat aware -- than a purely cold one.

(But please don't ask why I didn't stamp the reply-cards in the first place. If I had all the answers, I'd be....well, the guy with all the answers, wouldn't I?)