I send people on a hot buyer’s mailing list an invitation-style card in an envelope. It looks very much like what an invitation or birthday card would look like in an envelope that looks like the address was handwritten. (I use a free font website called www.1001fonts.com to get special handwriting fonts to print on the outside envelope of my mailers.)
The invitation card is an offer for the prospect to get a free book if they go online. They just have to cover shipping and handling which varies between $7 and $10. So, the prospect goes to the website and gets the book. He or she is upsold on 3 different options in addition to the book. OTO (One-Time-Offer) #1 is offered at $97 to $197, OTO #2 is offered at $197 to $297, and OTO #3 is $297 to $397 (if there is a 3rd OTO in the first place).
On my best mailings – now, this will knock your socks off – give me about a 3% response rate (sometimes higher on excellent mailing lists but this is the average I get) on my mailings…far exceeding the “unicorn” mailings of getting 2% in sales that old timer mailers used to get back in the 80s and 90s. This means that I’ll sell 3 books per 100 mailed pieces or 30 books per 1,000 mailers that go out.
But…what happens after these, say, 30 books go out?
How many buy something else that’s more expensive?
In my experience, 20% will get at least one of the upsells on the backend. So, out of the 30 book sales, 6 of those will include an upsell either at the $97, $197, or $297 level. And out of those 6, about 1 will get 2of those upsells.
Let’s talk about the money part.
It costs about $1 to mail each mailer (tops). So, for 1,000 pieces, that’s $1,000. When you sell only 30 books (basically covering printing and shipping costs), you’re not really making money. For a $10 book, you’re only grossing $300. That’s not near enough to cover your $1,000 mailing cost. About 6 of those will buy ONE of the backend OTOs.
Remember, there are 3 possible OTOs: $97, $197, and $297. It averages out to be $197 (when adding all 3 together then dividing by 3.) So, those 6 people will worth an additional $1,182. Then ONE of those 6 will buy an additional upsell, driving it up to $1,379 + the $300 in books, totaling $1,679. So, you paid $1,000 to do the mailing but had to pay about $300 for the books and shipping costs. Since you paid $1,000 for the mailing, you grossed $1,679 and you came out ahead $379.
That’s not TONS of money but…increase your mailings to 10,000 (instead of only 1,000) and you can add a BIG FAT ZERO to that…So, now you just came out ahead $3,790.
And if you do that once a week, that’s not too bad. You’re making $15,160 per month!
Not chump change anymore, is it?
By the way, these are VERY conservative figures. I don’t believe in jazzing anybody up with unrealistic pie-in-the-sky numbers. I believe in telling you like it is. And this is the way it is. This is how freaking profitable this business can be!
But…we’re not done yet. We haven’t gotten into the REAL money yet!