5 items to include in a mail shot

A mail shot or mailshot is a way to market to your potential customers by sending out unsolicited items of mail to a large number of people at one time, such as unsolicited letters, advertisements, or brochures. Mail shots can be sent either through the postal service or via email.Mail shot uses mail merge, target lists or a distribution list to reach large amounts of potential customers.Also, using targeted mailing lists to reach your audience is the most effective way of sending out a mail shot since it may encourage a higher response rate.

There are companies that you can hire to put together a mail shot for you, or you can do it yourself.The key component of a mail shot is a sales letter.Whether you are sending a brochure, a product sample, a leaflet, a catalog, or any other kind of marketing piece, you should always include a sales letter.A sales letter is meant to introduce yourself, provide contact information and highlight the main benefits of your product or service.It should also let the recipient know how to respond, for example order by phone or by filling out an enclosed order form.

It is cheap to produce.
- It provides physical, written information that your customer can refer back to in order to retrieve information.
- It can accommodate as much content as you believe necessary.Other media market sources, such as newspaper or magazine advertising, may have limited space and the more you print, the more it will cost you.However, if you have a long sales letter, the extra costs are only that of the extra printing and paper.
Here are five important items that you should include in your mail shot sales letter:

1. Personalization: Use your contact lists to personalize your letter.For example, if you receive two pieces of marketing, one with your name and the other one with a generic Dear Sir/Madam, chances are the personalized piece will get your attention much more effectively.However, if you don't have target names, try to at least use an applicable title.

2. Headline: A person casually glancing at a piece of paper will look first at the headline at the top so make sure your headline grabs their attention.If you are running a promotion, the words FREE or SAVE are often effective eye catchers.Your headline should be short, simple and should address a solution to a problem

3. Body: Try to tell a story. If you have captured your target's attention, your job now is to keep it.Here are some suggestions to catch the eye of your casual reader:
- Use short sentences and paragraphs to make reading easy.
- Use joining words like `moreover', `and that's not all', `what's more', `plus, we offer you', `in addition' and `as well as' to begin each paragraph so that it is not easy for the target to stop reading.
- Use the word `you' often to communicate the benefits to the target audience.
- Use bullet points to break up the letter visually and to highlight key benefits.
- Use underline, bold and other type faces to make for interesting reading.

4. Call to action: You need to let the reader know what they need to do next, such as call you, fill out a form, send an email, look at your website, etc.You can offer an incentive such as a free sample, a gift or money off if they respond quickly.However, make sure you can afford the incentive, and if you can't do it for everyone, try capping it.For example, the first 20 orders get a free CD.

5. The PS: The PS is the second thing that the casual reader will notice, only after the heading, so it needs to be catchy.The PS is located at the bottom portion of your letter and is used to communicate your key benefit or your call to action.For example: PS If you want your leaders to get better at leading, call us today.

In summary, the five things described above are important items that should be included in a mail shot in order to capture and keep your readers' attention.