Testimonials in Direct Mail Marketing Sales Letters – Choose the Correct One of Three for Your Needs

Your direct mail sales letters must overcome three doubts if you are to make money through the mail.

These three doubts are floating around in the skulls of your customers and potential customers all the time, and surface whenever they receive a direct mail pitch from you (and other businesses), asking for their business.

These doubts are really questions that consumers and business buyers ask themselves as they are reading your mailer, while they are deliberating about whether they will buy from you or not. The three questions are these:

1. Can I trust you?

3. Will your product or service meet my need?

In every sales letter you drop in the mail, you need to overcome these doubts or you will not close a sale. And you won’t secure the long-term loyalty of your customer.

One of the best ways to overcome these three doubts is to include testimonials in your direct mail packages. A testimonial is a statement made by someone that either recommends, proves or pays tribute.

Recommendation Testimonial: This testimonial consists of a favourable report on the qualities or virtues of someone or something. It usually includes an explicit endorsement. An example is a statement from a satisfied customer recommending that others buy from you. This type of testimonial helps potential customers to trust you, particularly if the recommendation comes from someone that the potential customer respects.

Proof Testimonial: This type of testimonial is a statement that backs up a claim or supports a fact that you make in your letter. An example is a statement from one of your clients who used your photocopier toner cartridge and discovered that it delivers over 30% more copies than competing products, just as you claim it does. This type of testimonial helps customers see that your organization understands customer needs.

Tribute Testimonial: This type of testimonial expresses esteem, admiration or gratitude, and is made to honour or thank a person or business. An example is a thank-you letter from a customer expressing gratitude for outstanding customer service, or a note congratulating a business on receiving an industry award for sales. This type of testimonial shows customers that your organization meets customer needs.

As you can imagine, the type of testimonial you use in a sales letter depends on your goal. On some occasions, you need to build trust. On others, you need to prove a point. Your success depends on your ability to use the right type of testimonial with the right audience in a compelling way.