Rock Solid Guarantee
No matter how powerful your direct mail might be, it is still just a bunch of paper that arrives in the mailbox. Trusting a handful of paper takes a leap of faith, especially if the recipient has never done business with your company before. To help people make that leap, you need to do whatever you can to establish credibility and reduce the perceived risk of making a purchase. One of the best techniques is to include a guarantee. A guarantee can be one of your most powerful selling tools. It’s proof that you're reputable. It helps lower perceived risk. And it almost always boosts your response.
Questionnaires
Questionnaires are worthy vehicles to motivate a reader to self-assess their fit to your product. Design them as scoring tools, or as visualizers. Use them as prestige builders, and certainly, use them to gather real market data. Given careful positioning relative to your reader's interests, a questionnaire is a likely dialogue opener for you.
Psychographics
When looking at your customers or prospects, more often than not, they are viewed in terms of demographics (age, income, etc) and geographics (location, areas, etc). However, with the addition of psychographics (activities, interests, opinions, attitudes, values, etc) a deeper understanding of their psyche can be obtained, providing you with a better, more precise, more complete picture of who really uses and would potentially use your products and/or services.
Marketing Tips posts authored by Leslie Goldstein of the USPS.