Mailbox blunders that would make Gary Halbert cringe

Okay, good morning. Here we are. A little gloomy. Not gloomy, overcast. Sunday morning I was at breakfast and I was reading through my Gary Halbert swipe file, volume one, getting ready for it's actually Bond. Gary's son is putting together a pretty cool event where he's going to have a bunch of us who knew Gary and were mentored by Gary share some of the stories. And this reminded me, it just seemed very timely that in my mailbox this week I got a couple of things that if Gary were alive, he would be, you know, so disappointed in these because so many things that he figured out, people try and smuggle into direct mail now.

And there's, you know, the things that he figured out were speaking to one person is the way if you think about the process. And in a video, earlier video, I talked about the idea of if you could only mail one letter and you had to get a response months, what would you do? And you know, part of that thinking process is what led Gary to believe that you would make your mailing look as much like it was a1of1Personal mailing only for them as you could. And you know, he talked about using handwritten address on the envelope and real stamps and, you know, nothing on the return address aside from the address if you put it there.

So you get the letter mailed or you get it delivered and you get it open. That's the most important piece. So I haven't even opened. Oh yeah, I did open one of these. So look at this one is trying to do this same thing and it's addressed to current resident 115 Woden Way. And you can tell very clearly that this is a handwritten font. It's not even handwritten. And I think that there's, I think you have, you would be better off just using courier font or using a, you know, even just printing the address on a, on a discrete label and putting it on here.

In fact, we did a mailing just this spring in a big, you know, 9 by 12 cardboard envelope and experimented with some of them being handwritten. We did the handwriting on the envelope and then the others we did with it was coming from a law firm to a law firm. So the other thing we did was we just put a big label with the law firm's logo and return address and printed on the label and that there was no like lift in the handwriting. So I learned in that kind of a situation, you know, making it look like it's just for them is more important than doing, you know, making it smuggling in the handwriting where it's, it's not really necessary here.

Right. So then PO box is the return address here but and a you know, sort pre sorted stamp on here. All of these things kind of lead you to believe, hey, this isn't a one of one letter just for me. So what do they, what's this message that they want to deliver to me? Dear neighbor, very personal. Dear neighbor, I hope this letter finds you well. My reason for writing is to hopefully share a scripture with you. It's found at second Timothy 3, 16 and then there's a little tract in there. What is, what are they trying to get me to do? Please Visit the website jw.org where you will find a wealth of Bible knowledge.

Also JW, is that Jehovah's Witness? Is that what. Yeah. Jw.org okay so be well Judy. No last name, just Judy, my neighbor apparently from St. Petersburg. That's where this is mailed from. So I think when you look at this, if you get stuff in the mail you probably get stuff that is trying to make you believe that it was the only one that you that was mailed that day. And they're failing at it. Here's another one. This came in like a birthday card or invitation type size email which I really like these by the way. I like this size. There's something very personal and again nobody is falling for these handwritten fonts.

Not a single person alive is going to believe that this was handwritten written. If you're going to do the handwriting, do the handwriting. Do it. Actually that's, you know, it's a big thing. Again there's the pre sorted, you know, bulk in stamp on there. But nobody is, nobody's buying it. Nobody is buying it. So what did I get inside here? This is another thing that was done a lot is using these, what looks like a legal pad. So it looks like you just wrote the, the letter. Now as far as the, you know, as far as the font goes, that's actually not a bad handwritten font.

But our brains are what Jerry Spence, when I talked about the how to argue and win every time. Our brains are equipped with psychic tentacles, he calls them. And we're constantly going out and evaluating things for authenticity and for realness. And it can detect what he calls the thin clank of the counterfeit. And that's where a lot of this you can tell because the printing on this is faded a little bit and it's not, you can tell this wasn't directly applied to the, to the Page here. Right. But hello neighbor. Again, nothing says personal like hello neighbor. Now's the time to get your windows and doors updated with this exclusive offer.

Now's the time. Our team is currently in your area and I've included a special offer card just for you. Buy one window or door and get one 40% off. And they made it look like they double printed on top of that to make it bold. C card for details. Don't wait. This offer ends 1031 26. It ended yesterday. It's already too late. Call my office today to schedule your free in home design consultation for. Thanks Clyde. And there's his phone number there and there's the card that looks like it was handwritten by Clyde but expires 1031 26. And there's the thing, you know, I, I picked this up in the mailbox today and, and it's already expired so it must have arrived just yesterday.

So there's something very interesting in everybody trying to smuggle these things in. Now here's the most valuable thing that you can take from this is the reason that direct mail works so well and I like it so much as a vehicle if you are communicating with visible prospects. Meaning if you're going to a specific person and you know who you're trying to reach, you know, make it like it's just for them. The big thing that Gary Halbert did, and this is a, this was the amazing thing is Gary figured out in the 70s when you could not there were really no computers were just starting to get a thing where it was very, very difficult to personalize things.

But he figured out that by doing a coat of arms that he could mail what looks like a personal letter to all the McDonald's in an area and have it be personal. And here's there was the example of the letter in the, in the swipe file book. But basically it was from Gary's wife Nancy at the time. And it looks like a personal letter. Looks like it was just sentenced to one person. Dear Mr. McDonald, did you know that, that your family name was recorded with a coat of arms in ancient heraldic archives more than seven centuries ago? My husband and I discovered this while doing some research for some friends of ours who have the same last name as you do.

We've had an artist recreate the coat of arms exactly as described in the ancient records. This drawing along with other information about the name has been printed up into an attractive one page report. Like the whole thing just explodes. Lanes. Hey, we did this. We've got these reports if you'd like one, just send it back an envelope, put $2 in, and we'll mail you the report. And that letter may, to this day, still be the most mailed single letter in the history of direct mail. So so many lessons in this. In the swipe files here. And using direct mail to do what it's supposed to do is mail something.

You're delivering a message. You're hiring a uniformed government employee to deliver a message right to the doorstep of any person in the world. It's pretty amazing. For less than a dollar, whatever. Forever stamps are now 78 cents, I think, something like that. But it's worth it to figure this out. More important that you figure out what you would say to one person if you are mailing one letter, and then figure out the logistics of how to do that at scale.