* Great
   Headline!

* Great 
    Opening
    Sentence!

* Smooth,
    Powerful
    Copy!

* Tells It
    Like It Is!

* Shucks
    Right Down
    To The Core!

* Makes It
    Seem Easy!

And guess what happened? Yep. They stayed away in droves! In fact, so far, just one used car dealer has been smart enough and had enough "hustle" to respond to my pitch. Now, that particular car dealer is one smart cookie and he's probably going to make a lot of money because of reading my material but, the point is this...

What I Thought Was A Sure thing
Was, In Fact, A Total Bust!

But I found out cheaply. It ran about $1,300.00 to mail those 2,600 letters to those used car dealers and now I can go on to something else.

Hear this: Most new marketing ideas fail. That's OK. You just keep swinging the bat till you hit a home run and then, once you've got your winner, you simply milk it for all it's worth. But, what's important, really important, is to find out if your idea has any merit as fast as possible! And, the way to do that is by...

Giving It Your Best Shot
On Your Very First Test!

Let's go back to our "homing pigeon" golf balls. Here's how we'll give our first test our best shot. The first thing we've got to think about is what mailing lists we are going to test. There are many options. You could test the 434,000 names of prospective members of country clubs available from American Golf Lists. You could try a test to the subscription lists of the various golf magazines. Maybe there's a warranty card list of people who've just purchased golf equipment. There's also a list available from the Austad Company totaling several hundred thousand that has several interesting "selects." The description of the list in the SRDS Book says:

Well, I'd call my list broker and see if he could get me the very best parts of that list. I'd tell him I want only the recent, direct-mail generated names of multi-buyers of golf equipment. And, if there are "hotline" names available (like people who bought golf equipment in the last 30-days), I'd tell him those are the names I want.

And, after all this, I'd tell my broker that these are the names I want unless he happens to know of an even hotter list of names who've bought golf equipment by mail.

The point is this: I'd do everything possible to get the very best, very hottest names available for my first test.

Onward. O.K., now that we've identified our very hottest prospects, the next step is to determine the elements of our offer. I'm talking about price, terms and so forth.

Let's begin with price. For your first test, you should offer the lowest price possible with which you could conceivably make a profit. I don't know much about the wholesale price of golf balls, but let's say our cost of our new "radio" balls is $3.00 apiece and we're going to sell them in packages of six. That means our product cost is going to be about $18.00 and that we're probably going to have to pay another $3.00 or so for packaging, postage and handling.

The net result, of course, is that we've got to shell out $21.00 for every order we fulfill.

Now look, whenever I'm thinking about direct mail, I always mentally budget $.50 apiece for each letter I send out. Some of my mailings cost much more, some of them (created for my clients) are considerably cheaper but, just as a "ballpark" number to give us an idea of our total mailout cost, $500.00 per thousand letters mailed is not usually too out of line.

So, let's see what happens if we charge $69.95 plus $3.00 shipping and handling (total $72.95) for a six-pack of our golf balls. Since it costs us $21.00 to fill an order, that means on every sale we are generating a $51.95

"Contribution
To Overhead"

Now, let's divide this $51.95 "CTO" into $500.00 which as you remember, is our cost of mailing 1,000 letters. Hmn? According to my calculator, that means we've got to get 9.6 orders (let's round it off to 10) to break even on mailing 1,000 letters.

Well, that sounds "maybe doable" but, since we want to charge the lowest price possible, let's see how it works out when we charge only $39.95 plus $3.00 (total $42.95). O.K., subtracting our fulfillment cost of $21.00, that price leaves a $21.95 CTO on every order. And, by dividing $21.95 into $500.00 (our cost of mailing 1,000 letters) we find we've got to get 23 orders for every thousand letters we mail to make our nut.

Doable? Yeah, maybe. But I sure wouldn't be comfortable charging any less so, at this point, I think we've discovered the lowest price that even gives us a chance of making a profit.

Now, what about terms? We can insist on cash-with-order, we can offer terms (half now and later), we can ship COD, we can let them charge it to their credit cards or, we can do what we ought to do for this first test and tell them to...

Send No Money
We'll Bill You Later!

What else? Well, for one thing, send the strongest piece of copy you can create, attach some kind of "grabber" (reread the issue January 6, 1988 of this letter) and always, always, test your letters...

By First Class Mail!

Back to our golf balls. What's likely to happen here? Gosh, we're mailing to...

Our Hottest Prospects
at
The Lowest Price Possible
and allowing them
To Send No Money
and sending
Very Strong Copy With A Grabber
by
First-Class Mail!

Again, what's likely to happen? It's this: We'll probably fail. Yep, even after all of this, most likely we're going to strike out. You see, probably 9 out of 10 "brand new" marketing ideas don't cut the mustard and, if your idea is in that category...

You Want To Know
As Soon As Possible!

In life, time is the irretrievable element. Unfortunately, most of us live our lives as though it were some sort of dress rehearsal. It's not. This is it. Therefore, if you are in a business deal or personal relationship that doesn't seem like it will ever work, what you want to do in the interest of "salvage" is to get out as soon as you possibly can. And, until you've given the situation your "best shot," you'll never know whether you should keep struggling or not.

As far as direct mail is concerned, it is really frustrating to have initial results that are "marginal" and then to drive yourself crazy by testing the "maybes."

"Maybe if we had charged a lower price...?"

"Maybe if we had mailed only the recent hotline, multi-buyers...?"

"Maybe if we had offered credit...?"

"Maybe if we had offered a premium...?"

"Maybe if we had hired Halbert to do the copy...?"

Etc., etc., etc.

And, you know what? Maybe if you had done all that...

Maybe The Damn Deal
Still Won't Fly!!!

Please. Don't let all this discourage you. You should take the content of this issue as good news! You see, by using this "best shot" method, you'll be able to test more ideas, test them faster than ever before and...

Test Them Cheaper!

Which puts the odds on your side. Which means that, after a period of six months, while your competition is still wondering if "maybe we should lower the price on our homing pigeon golf balls," you'll have known half a year ago that the idea sucks, you'll have tested 16 other ideas and found three that work and you'll be well on your way to a roll-out of millions of letters on these three "winners" and you'll have the luxury of testing the fine points...

While You Are
Making Money.

How sweet it is!

	Sincerely,
	Gary "Best Shot" Halbert

Copyright © 2003 Gary C. Halbert.  All Rights Reserved.