Gotta have a Guarantee

Alright, so before we took a short break last week for the holiday weekend we left off with a discussion on guarantees. We talked about the 3 mail different types of guarantees you can use, satisfaction, results, and perception as well as using multiple guarantees to boost your response. To review click over to my blog here.

There are two more big ideas I have to share before we move away from guarantees. First is the length in time of the guarantee. In almost all instances the longer the guarantee, the less refunds you’ll have. I know that may go against conventional thinking, that the more time they have with a product/service the more likely they will realize they don’t like it or don’t need it.

It’s actually just the opposite. The more time they have to use your product or service, the less likely they are to ask for a refund. Here’s why. When you only give someone 14 days to use it, at day 12 if they haven’t used it, or are not seeing results, they’ll ask for a refund.

If you give the same product 90 days, the chances that they actually will remember and use the guarantee goes way down. Now, you need to be honest and have integrity with this. If they ask for a refund on your guarantee within the time allowed, your darn well better honor it.

Finally, we’re left with unconditional vs. conditional guarantees. Last week I left you with our Triple Your Money Back Guarantee that reads:

Triple Your Money Back Guarantee - If you use both of your 30 minute One-On-One Coaching sessions, and your 2 Critique Certificates within the first 3 months, and you can show that you actually used our advice

It’s obvious now that this is a conditional guarantee as well. These can be used to bolster your “regular” guarantee, and really give you an added punch that can spark additional sales.

Here are a few examples of great guarantees I’ve seen and some I’ve written for myself and clients.

This is an unconditional guarantee used by Victoria Principal selling facial cream. It’s a whole lot better than just saying, “money back guaranteed”:

“If your friends don’t accuse you of having a facelift return the empty jar and we’ll give you all your money back.”

Here’s another I wrote for a client, a perception and unconditional guarantee in one, I call it the “You’ll be a Star” guarantee:

“If you don’t think my show wasn’t the most amazing you’ve ever seen, and people are not coming up to you after the show patting you on the back for having such a great event, then you don’t pay a dime.”

I can hear a lot of you out there saying you can’t guarantee your products or services. If you’re a doctor, you can’t guarantee patient health, if you’re in weight loss, you can’t guarantee that they’ll lose weight, if you’re a financial advisor you can’t guarantee monetary success.

But there are a ton of things you can guarantee. The doctor can guarantee that he’ll see you within 5 minutes of your scheduled appointment time. If you sell weight loss, you can guarantee that their coach will call them back within 45 minutes of receiving a call, a financial advisor can guarantee something similar to the doctor, or guarantee returned phone calls (wish my advisor did that!), or any number of things not directly related to the product or service, but to the quality of service they’ll receive.

What can you guarantee?

Last week we hit the tip of the iceberg with headlines. A conversation that, quite frankly, could last a whole year. To see that post click here to my blog. For the next few days we’ll discuss guarantees, another vital role in your copywriting and marketing.

First some guarantee ‘basics’ that we must address. There are three chief types of guarantees, with a very quick blurb on each. We’ll expand on them later.

• Satisfaction Guarantee
• Results Guarantee
• Perception

How you phrase the guarantee is nearly as important as having on at all. It’s best when it has a name. I recently wrote a guarantee for a promotion of our own and named it the, “The “You Cannot Fail With 3D Mail, $500.00 In Your Pocket” Guarantee. And here’s how I worded it:

When you place your first order of 3D Mail over $100 and use my FREE 30 minute consultation, if you’re not extremely happy with your mailing, I’ll refund 50% of the purchase of the 3D mail items up to $500.00.

As you can see, it’s a strong guarantee, but when you give it a name, it adds something extra to it. I’ve also used the “You’ll be a Star” guarantee and, “My Personal Make-You-Happy Guarantee” both with a great deal of success. My mentor Dan Kennedy, has used, “My personal, Big, Bold, Iron-Clad Guarantee” on many of his products for years, again with great success.

In addition, multiple guarantees almost always outperform single guarantees. Here’s an example of a multiple guarantee that we use when we go and speak at seminars and boot camps:

Money Back Guarantee - If you are not delighted with your results or not happy in any way what-so-ever return the system within the first year and I’ll give you your money back.

Triple Your Money Back Guarantee - If you use both of your 30 minute One-On-One Coaching sessions, and your 2 Critique Certificates within the first 3 months, and you can show that you actually used our advice when you created your campaigns, and you actually mailed at least two campaigns, and you’re not absolutely delighted with your results I’ll give you 3 times your money back.

You see, we gave a one-year, no questions asked guarantee (my favorite) but then added to it by adding the triple money back guarantee. Does it work? You bet. When we first offered this at a live event, we sold 83% of the room!

There’s also one more element to this guarantee, but you’ll have to wait until later in the week for me to reveal that one. See you then.

Testimonials – You Can Never Have Too Many

For the last week I’ve been discussing the 13 big mistakes I often see when critiquing sales letters. To review where we left off, blog post below from last week. Below are the next two mistakes copywriters often make.

8. No testimonials.
Customers who rave about your product or service are extremely effective and should be included in every sales letter. The words from the mind and heart of customers build your credibility.

However, most marketers waste the potential impact of testimonials. Common mistakes include using initials rather than the full name, as well as omitting city and state or country.

Tip: When getting written permission to use a testimonial in advertising, also request a photo. Most will happily agree. Photos help to add power.

9. No money-back guarantee.
Your response to any sales letter will be significantly higher if you include a money-back guarantee.

Tip: The longer the guarantee, the more sales and less returns or refunds requested. For example, 30 days works better than 10 days, 60 days works better than 30 days, etc. A full year "no quibble" guarantee works very well.

Testing Your Mails Hot Buttons

If I’m trying to beat a control, here are the “hot” variables I’ll look at closely, to see if there’s room for improvement:

1. The offer
2. The guarantee(s)
3. The urgency of response
4. The big idea or big promise
5. The overcoming of skepticism ie. credibility and believability
6. The style or tone of the writing itself
7. The look of the piece

By the way, little, very testable things DO sometimes make very big differences. Recently I saw an example in a marketing newsletter of a guy who just added four rubber-stamped words to the outside of his envelope, and beat his control by 300%.

I've also seen a TV infomercial come back from the dead by raising the price of the product. Gary Halbert saved the Pearl Cream advertising by adding a particular bonus. A dentist in Sacramento changed five words on his Val-Pak coupon and went from getting two or three new patients a month to 15 to 20. This is the sort of thing that makes direct-response advertising as frustrating as golf.

Obviously, you can’t test if you can’t, won’t or don’t collect accurate data. You have to code every offer, and track where every ounce of business comes from. If you have employees who are lax about this, you must educate them about the importance, discipline them if they goof it up, and ultimately can’em if they won’t do it right 100% of the time.

I confess that I fly by the seat of my pants in my business more than I should, but I can’t fire me, God knows there are days I should. Anyway, I can assure you: the clients I have with the best profits and incomes possess the best information about where their business comes from.

Next week I've got a doozie of a post. It will change the way you think about direct mail forever. I'll see you next time.

www.3DMailResults.com