Magnetic Marketing Magic: The Poetry of a Powerful Pull
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(photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuenteshe)
I have a man crush on Dan Kennedy. He is not a handsome man, but his marketing mind is drop dead georgeous. If you havent' checked out his stuff, and unfortunately for many online entrepreneurs he is a name of no repute or recognition, his best work was ( in my opinion anyway) mostly done offline and maybe due to decreasing interest on his part, a bit behind him as well. The direct mail principles that he teaches are not his by orgin, but he has certainly perfected them as his own, and you wont' find a great online copywriter or marketer alive today that won't list him in some way as a direct, if not major influence.
I share this for two reasons: One, I just sat through a 17 hour copywriting seminar that he did in 1998 or something on DVD. And I would have difficulty watching Angelina Jolie for 3 hours, let alone 17 - and I absolutely love Angelina Jolie ( even if she won't respond to ANY of my birthday cards or weekly rose bouquets). And yet while I wouldn't send him flowers, I have no problem parking my rear end in front of the boob tube with a box of yellow legal pads, a blue ballpoint and taking copious notes for a day and half on the magnetic magic of his best marketing campaigns.
The second reason is a bit serindeptiously coincidental to the first. I came home today to find, in the usual big pile of junk mail, a single lonesome, intriquing and compelling simple white envelope with my name scrawled lazily across it's face.
A simple handwritten return address on top.
And within the thin veneer of this particular envelope emanated a yellow piece of paper of some sort. I knew this because the lighter pound weight of the envelope revealed just enough of the color in the contents to keep me interested. And I didn't want to open it. I really didn't want to. Because I know better, and because I've been at this for long enough to just dump it back into the pile from whence it came with all of the other Kmart coupons, value flyers and other nonsensical waste of trees we call coorespondence……But I couldn't help it. Against my better judgement, I brought it into the bright light of the kitchen and tore it open.
On the simple, yellow legal sheet of paper inside, in similar lazy scrawled blue ball point ink it said:
Ian,
My name is Chip Lampert. My wife is Elaine. We'd like to buy your house at XXXXX, XXXX, XXXXX. Please call me at (123) 555-1212
Now you should know my house has been on the market for well over a year. Hasn't sold. I actually took it off the market in September because it, and nothing else in my city is selling at all. I dropped the price, moved out for the winter and all but BEGGED someone to buy it, but no takers. The market has all but dried up. And since taking the house off of the market, I am of course getting all of the solicitations from the local realtors about how quickly THEY can sell it if I hire them. Of course the same spiel was sold to everyone else on my street who has a new sign out front of their still unsold city brownstone. And each letter I've got has had a business card and a real nice letter on good company stock and looked at the first few, and through the rest in the "B" pile circular waste bin we call the garbage can. But this one here…….
They want to buy my house! Of course, I don't know who Chip and Elaine are, but they must be old friends, right? Or a couple who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows how badly I want to move back to Key West, Florida in time for Christmas so I can consult with clients in the warm glow of the winter sun, meditate every morning, marvel at the home where Ernest Hemmingway's wrote three of his greatest novels & groove to Jimmy Buffett until life feels so full I can't hardly breathe.
But I gotta sell my house first. And this is where Chip comes in. You see, I've done direct mail for a lot longer than I care to remember. When I was 22, just getting out of college, most of my friends were bartending at TGIF Fridays, or getting graduate degrees, or traveling the globe. I was running a direct mail business. And at 23, I had my own. And I have read, and seen, and studied all of the masters. And yet, somewhere in my psyche, and where it still sits on my kitchen counter, I really do BELIEVE that Chip wants to buy my house. And that his wife, Elanine, is excited about the prospect of moving to my street. Because, to be honest - theres a lot to love. It's a great area, safe, scenic and upscale. And that Chip isn't really a real estate investor who buys properties from guys like me who want to waste away in margaritaville before Christmas closes in. Or because he knows that handwritten envelopes with chicken scratch for print get opened at a rate that exponentially kills the pre fab promo for the same. That he didn't mail 12 of those out to other people, just like me. And did the same thing two weeks before.
You see, the magic is in the mystery. I know - but yet I'm still not sure. I'm sure - but want to believe I'm not. And it's poetry, really - how such a simple letter, so expertly crafted in it's ugliness - that it's beauty emanates from how you feel, after you open it. Hopeful. And eager to know more. And this is almost impossible to find anymore online, or anywhere else for that matter.
So easy to do, to incorportate into your own machine, yet so few people ever do. In the meantime I'm going to re-read it one more time before bed, and think about how much I can get for my winter overcoat on Ebay - just in case - who needs cashmere on the beach?