Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Saying "Nothing" may be more important than saying anything

We all have stories about the the contradictions we see in marketing and sales. We'll say "no one will ever respond to this" or "this will really bring in the responses," and then you get more responses than you can handle or no one responds and all you hear are crickets.

Well, here is one of those stories.

I deployed an email for a client of mine yesterday to approximately 1100 prospects. Only when the email arrived, there was NO TEXT. No message, no nothing. A really big silence, if you will.
My client immediately called me and I immediately started digging into what happened.

Well, my client called me this morning and told me that I "may be onto something new." You see, in the past 24 hours, he's received over 20 phone calls from people who wanted to let him know that they received his email without any text.

That's a 2% response rate.

My client, being the resourcful fellow that he is, actually sold a $600 membership to one of the 20. That covers his cost of the campaign.

Why did this happen?

I think it primarily has to do with his association's brand to the people on the list - in other words, this is a good list. They are familiar with, and believe in the quality of, the association. So much so that THEY will follow up, taking time from their lives to qualify a communication.

Did I say this is a good list!

So, when you are struggling with your messaging, while you most likely shouldn't do it, why not think about doing the same thing - send out an email saying "nothing" and see what happens?

No comments:

Post a Comment