What's a clever incentive to mail to sales prospects?
My company wants to send something to potential customers. We want to spend between $10—$20 to send a couple hundred people something that puts a smile on their face. The people receiving the gift will be busy executives that works for large retail companies and ironically, their job is to manage large plastic gift card campaigns. The theme of our mailing is “what if you could…” and we’ll send them lots of different ideas they may not have thought of—creative ways to structure their gift card campaigns. Anyone have creative suggestions for what we could send them in the mail—along with our “pitch” letter?
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16 Answers
I second @marinelife – cash will get prospect’s attention like nothing else.
Agreed, cash is memorable. I’ve seen that done.
We haven’t tried this, but we were thinking of a Visa gift card, $25 or $50, activated IF they call us back.
Philanthropy can be an incentive and can make people smile. Based on your keywords (food, cooking, baking), perhaps a portion of the gift goes to a food bank local to the prospective customer(s). Multiply out $1–5 per person, and you’ve got win-win – a person gets $5, and so does their community. “what if you could… feed the hungry?”
I’m in marketing, and I don’t agree cash is the best incentive. I’ll be happy to give you some tips offline.
I really enjoyed a Dayclock I received from a contractor. It only has one hand and points toward the day of the week. Don’t know how much per piece they were but I got a real charge out of it. Its now hanging over my chair because retired guys forget what day it is.
My favorite as a marketing device is a credit card size magnifier, and second favorite is a credit card size flashlight.
I don’t see how you can avoid giving a plastic gift card and setting up your campaign in a way that they can copy it in their role. One idea would be to set the cards up as prepaid closed loop and then allowed them to become prepaid open loop IF they responded with a larger “prize” going to the 100th respondent or something. You can use the cards and distribute gift codes electronically to demonstrate how this method reduces fulfillment, labor, and shipping costs.
If the product you sell (probably a gift card of some sort) is Green, now would be a great time to promote that and teach these buyers how to do the same thing.
I guess, in other words, I would give them a gift card that takes advantage of the many creative ideas you are trying to promote to them.
@Spider‘s idea -LOVE IT will steal it and use it with my Christmas Broker Mailings…......
When you came up with the theme, “What if you could…” what did you have in mind?
I received an invitation but they sent a literal platter with it to represent it was being sent on a silver platter. It was pretty clever.
@Kayak8 I really like your idea, have your tried this before? If so, what percentage of your mailings were positive and what did you try before this idea that you suggested? Great Thinking! ;-0
A condom, a lottery ticket, a four-leaf clover, and a horseshoe.
@SmashTheState The condom may go to a family or individual that may to put it lightly, frown :-( on the gesture and the lucky items may also go to someone that does hold any faith to these items. So in essense whoever if anyone tries this idea may find this venture not cost effective enough. just a thought.
Mail lottery scratch-off tickets. Again, what is the intention of the campaign? We can come up with ideas all day, but if they’re off-message, it’s a time waste. @SmashTheState‘s ideas are perfect for “Get Lucky” but they’re off message for “What if you could…”
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