Leveraging response with lift letters. (Promotion).

Direct mail recipients fall into three categories: those who respond favorably to your offer, those who respond negatively, and fence-sitters. In short, the Yes, No, and Maybe prospects.

Properly crafted, a lift letter can move each group closer to a position where they'll be more receptive to your message and more likely to react the way you want. Lift letter copy can confirm the Yes propect's wise decision, unman the No prospect's objections, and shrink the Maybe prospect's hesitancy.

How can you target three dissimilar kinds of prospects with one piece of copy? Here are some suggestions.

1. Don't introduce anything significantly new or different. Example: Don't change or sweeten the terms of the offer to curry favor with the holdouts. The Yes prospects may read your note, too, so you don't want to alienate them by promising the No prospects something extra.

2. Employ an offbeat headline or story to fire the prospect's curiosity. Example: I wrote a lift letter for an investment newsletter that began, "The doctor who charges $336 just to touch your tongue."

3. Include a new sales argument, highlight another benefit, or insert a surprising fact, statistic or quote that plays off your main sales argument.

4. Pose a question. "Before you decide, ask yourself this..."

5. Reintroduce a mature product. Example: For a newsletter that had been around for 31 years, I wrote the headline, "It was over 30 years ago today..." and then showed how the company and the publication were even more relevant, credible and reliable today than yesterday.

6. Tie your lift note into something newsworthy or timely.

7. Describe a premium or a free gift. You can write an enticing letter about your bonus in place of an elaborate insert or mini-brochure. Example: For a reference book premium from a business-to-business journal, the simple "Please accept this with our sincere thanks..." worked well.

8. Build a lift note around a celebrity endorsement. The Harvard Health Letter used a testimonial from the late Ann Landers in several of its packages.

9. Or use the words and experience of a satisfied subscriber to tell how your publication is a godsend. Richard Armstrong's celebrated "The Amazing Money-Making Secret of My Crazy Rich Aunt" for Kiplinger's is a classic example.

10. Sign the lift letter with a different signatory from that of the main sales letter.

11. Refresh the tried and true. Instead of "Read this only if you've decided not to subscribe," you could recast it with reverse psychology, the exclusive "Why the Widget Newsletter isn't for everyone, maybe even you."

Robert Lerose is a freelance copywriter with over 20 years of experience in subscription marketing. He specializes in new subscriber acquisition packages and renewal and invoice series far both consumer and business-to-business publishers.

628 Meadowbraok Rd., Uniondale, NY 11533, 516-486-0472, [e-mail]