Christmas sales letter

[collettejoanne]

Hi,
I run a local community magazine. We are monthly and are currently working on our 3rd issue which will be delivered to 5,000 homes from 1st November.

I'm trying to design a letter to send to hotels, restaurants and local visitor attractions in the hope that they may advertise their Christmas events in the mag. I realise we are a little late (alot late), but thought we'd try.

I would really appreciate some advice on how to word the letter, paricularly the opening that would appeal to this market. We are going to include a copy of our mag with the letter and a booking form. We will follow up with a telephone call.

Any advice would be great!

Thanks,

Collette

 

[Mike W]

Hi Colette

I really think you've missed the boat for this Christmas. Hitting them the 2nd week of October, if you're lucky, for a publication due out 1st November, they'll think you're taking the mickey. You'll have no credibility at whatsoever.

They'll think you're a tinpot organisation, no matter what you put in front of them. How are they going to think and prepare that fast to get an ad to you in time? The only way anyone would entertain it is if it was cheaper than cheap ....and then that sort of defeats the object I'd have thought...?

If it was me, I'd put it down to experience, give it a miss and go for a late December publication focused on January sales and promotions.

Regards

Mike

 

Possibly you are a bit late. As for a sales letter when constructing your letter remember to make it benefit rich. Sound obvious but you'd be amazed how many people write letters and leaflets that don't offer the potential customer anything they might want. The following acronym is always good to remember and could also funnily enough to be applied to constructing a CV

Attention
Interest
Desire
Action

Writing sales letters is actually one of the services I offer - for very reasonable rates.

If you want to send me a draft I'd happily make some suggestions for free.

 

[jamie1183]

I worked with a local newspaper for quite a few years and did some xmas inserts and various pull outs, we often found that the letters to companies very rarely had a good response, my own opinion but I think the good old fashioned tele sales would have a better effect if you can find a email contact fire them an email a day or 2 before a call.

Get yourself a web version of the magazine if you have a PDF so they have the opportunity to see it if they want to, web versions of magazines are easy to create I used to do one weekly for the newspaper without any issues.

 

Many sales letter fail because they are poorly written. A sales letter is designed to create an opening,a spark of interest and then follow it up with a meeting or telephone call. Put in your letter that you will telephone.

If you have targeted effectively before writing your letter and your letter is well written then you are already strides ahead of most of your competition.

The reason for poor response rates is nearly always poor research, poor planning and poor strategy. Poor research causes a poor letter as you have no idea how your offer stand up to the competition or whether that prospect is even a prospect at all.

A letter followed by a telephone call will be more likely to work than just a cold call.

To be blunt if anyone telephones me trying to sell me advertising I just put the telephone down same as I do with energy supply calls.

PEOPLE LIKE TO READ LETTERS ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE A NAME ALSO HAND WRITE YOUR ENVELOP. IF YOU ARE SENDING OUT LEAFLETS PUT THEM INSIDE A HAND WRITTEN ENVELOPE. NONE OF THIS IS NEW BUT IT WORKS.