The Deadly Mistake In Our Most Effective Recruiting Videos

Our best videos use emotions to move us, use facts and evidence to confirm our feelings. A great video is like a bite-sized party platform. There's enough evidence to make each point, but not too much.

In some cases, it's simply reminding you of what you already know.

Most importantly, it proposes a solution.

But here's what's often missed: 

CTA

George Lincoln Rockwell's "What's Next" Direct Mail-Based Political Campaign

Every video, every mailer, every brochure, every effective blog post should conclude with a specific, clear call to action. 

One can be tacked on, but Rockwell, a marketing man would have known to include a CTA telling people where to go next. If you want people organized or better informed, you're going to include the instructions, such as the VERY old-school "Please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope for more information", very relevant in Rockwell's time. In fact, that was his exact call to action. Send an envelope for evidence. What Rockwell gets from this is a return mailing address to send a follow-up sequence by mail.

Every car dealership knows you've basically got one shot to sell a car because people will not be back on their own. But when you actively campaign, you more than double the number of conversions, sign-ups, recruits, requests, or whatever you're behavior you're trying to orchestrate.

Last I checked, a mailer still beats everything else as a means of cutting through the clutter and maintaining top-of-mind awareness. If you're organized and motivated, you'll mail those things as long as they're profitable.

For example, you'll probably solicit donations, even at a loss, just to find out which of the ten guys out of a million make donations. Then if he donates enough to pay the postage to cover it, you'll follow up with him at least 20 more times. Maybe more. 

And by the way, the cost of reaching out to him 10 more times covered by the biggest donors. If your letter isn't working, you follow up with a phone call and find out why. You use what you learn in the phone call to keep improving your mailer. 

This simple arithmetic allows you to be in his mailbox at least 20 or 30 times every time he donates twenty bucks and the check clears. If he chipped in twenty bucks, do you think he might consider making another donation (of any size) in the next 20 to 30 months?

If not, you might cut him loose and keep mailing to those who do, calling those who do.

Month 1: You could start with a $200 mailing budget. We'll call that 400 mailers, since maybe it's just postcards sent to those who requested info.

Ten guys make donations. Average size of donation: $10.  

Month 2: You now have a budget to mail $100 of postcards to those 10 guys. But guess what? You don't need $100 to reach those ten guys! So you now have enough money to mail each of those guys 10 times asking for donations, offering products and events, or even better, a surplus budget. 

You can afford envelopes this time. A dollar per piece. Maybe you'll look at what the 10 guys have in common, segment your list based on likely indicators (like the state which produce the most donors, last names, or other useful information you can detect.)

Month 2's mailing is a total dud! You only stimulate $20 in donations! But that gives you enough to mail donor list and the prospect list. If you keep mailing the likely prospects, you'll probably find another donor to hammer forever.  Let's say we find another donor.

Every month you get more than $22 in donations from these guys, you can afford to keep mailing envelopes. If you get six bucks, it covers the postcards. Each month, you're telling them about what madness is going on this month and how crucial, critical, and helpful their contribution is. (A "news" letter.) And, of course, it improves your outreach. Lots of manual labor, but it's worth it. Why?

That's very simple. It's because we've just established the average lifetime value of each donor. That's right. The average donor is worth $2 per month. ($20 divided by ten guys.) At this rate, if you successfully mail to them for only 5 years, they're worth $120 apiece. 

And this gives everything you need to know for your marketing budget, which helps you scale very quickly. But this is advanced marketing, so pay close attention.

If 10 donors kick in only $20 per month when mailed, then it stands to reason 1,000 of these donors could kick in $2,000 per month. Now it's getting interesting, isn't it? Where do we find these donors? From our request list. They didn't become donors yet, but if the average donor is worth $2 per month, then they're worth $24 per year. If they stick for 5 years, they're worth $120 apiece. Which tells us what?

If we finance our growth (with a credit card offering 0% interest for 6 months, for example) and the numbers hold, then maybe we can afford to spend up to $120 to find each new donor like that. And fellas, $120 certainly pays for a whole lot of postcards, doesn't it? 

Yes, it does. In fact, as long as you can operate at a loss for 5 years, you'd only need a 0.42% response rate from your "please mail me more information" list. And if your response rate is that bad, you either need better copy or a better list. 

By the way, if you hit these numbers, get excited. Because any investment that repays you 20% per year easily out-performs the stock market, so this is an easy win. Ask your friends and relatives if they'd like to earn 20% per year while you do all the work and they'd say "DEFINITELY." 

The thing is you really don't need to pay 20%. Some would be happy to earn 9%, 10%, or maybe 12% on their money, leaving you with the other 8+ percent to cover operational costs.

They'll certainly understand there's risk involved in any venture. And if you learn how to scale responsibly, working within the numbers, your little "publishing company" (or whatever you want to call it) can be a great success. 

For someone who has the ability to make a video like the ones, nothing prevents them from scaling up much bigger in order to reach more people. Anecdotally, I've heard that reaching a million people by mail draws less unwanted attention than reaching 10,000 people with a TV ad. Some of the guys who regularly do this are very humble. Some are self-aggrandizing. 

It's basic arithmetic. There's certainly more to know, but it's worth learning. 

If you want to know more, hit me up. Just send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to.... No, that's not it.

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