A: Dear Lance
Mail-order campaigns (postal or electronic) in any business vary hugely in their success rates, depending largely on two factors: how carefully the target audience has been selected from the total mailing list available; and how carefully the message has been matched to the audience's likely needs. Done poorly, as in most insurance and financial-services mailshots, you can get a response rate of 0.75-1.5 per cent; and of those one-in-a-hundred responses, one in ten might turn into sales. Done well, as Reader's Digest used to do it in its peak years, a mailshot might generate results a hundred times better; the mail-order campaign for one book I edited there, called 'What to do in an emergency', generated sales (not merely responses) of 13 per cent.
Regards, Tony

Tony Scott is a management consultant, trainer and coach, and the director of a London-based international consultancy (http://www.oliverscottconsulting.com). He specialises in helping businesses and people to communicate better – face to face or on paper. In his spare time, Tony chairs a secondary school and makes furniture. He's also invented a device to ease t... show bio