I like shortcuts, and easy opportunities to score big wins…

If you do, too, I think you’ll like this.

A couple years back, I was talking to Travis Lee, of 3D Mail Results.  Travis’s company specializes in a unique kind of direct mail — unique, but it will be familiar if you’re a student of Direct Response.

They help clients create, send, and manage “lumpy mail” direct mail campaigns.

That is, three-dimensional objects sent through direct mail.

I actually have a grab bag of many of the objects they send through direct mail…

— A tin “treasure chest” piggy bank, complete with enclosed key that rattles when you shake it…

— A mini-mailbox, actually delivered in the mail…

— Fake “”Express” mail envelopes that look like you paid more to get them to the recipient fast…

— A “bottle” delivered by mail, for when you want to deliver a message in a bottle…

— A pill bottle…

— A silver platter…

— A little plastic trash can…

— A bank bag that you can use as the envelope…

— A boomerang…

— A fortune cookie…

— A pair of socks…

— A compass…

— Shredded money…

— A whoopee cushion…

And on, and on, and on…

Now, my point in this essay is NOT to go deep into the virtues of using 3D mail — that’s another great topic, for another day…

But if you’re curious, this is a classic format made most popular by legends like Gary Halbert and Dan Kennedy.

For example, let’s say you want to deliver your sales letter in a bank bag…

The bank bag serves as a headline of sorts, drawing a huge amount of attention and curiosity to the message it contains.

And so you start your letter inside…

Dear Joe Schmoe,

As you can see, I’ve sent you a letter inside a bank bag — a real bank bag!  Why would I do this?  Well, there are two very important reasons…

—  First, I know there are a lot of demands for your attention today, and since my message is critically important to your financial future, I wanted to use this nice financial eye-catcher to get your attention…

— Second, and most importantly, because if you read every word of this letter, you stand to be loading up a lot of bags like this with fat wads of cash, and taking them to your bank to deposit…

Let me explain…

You get the point.  The unique piece of direct mail gets the attention.  You tie that to your message, and you’re off to the races.  Would the above work?  Maybe.  It’s a variation on the tried and true that actually goes all the way back to the Robert Collier Letter Book, that has since been adapted and adopted by marketers in nearly every industry under the sun.

Find something that can’t be ignored.  Include it with your direct mail piece.  Use that to get attention, and direct the attention to your sales message.

The big problem — that leads to how to get fast cash flow for yourself or your clients…

When I was talking to Travis, whose company specializes in this, he admitted something.

This kind of direct mail, he told me, is expensive.

Especially when you get into something like bank bags.  Or other bigger objects, that really can’t be ignored.

Each individual piece of direct mail must be hand-inserted.  No machine processing here.  Often labels must be affixed manually.  Sometimes odd folding is required.

There’s a lot of manual labor.  Which is way more expensive than machine automation.

Plus, you get to the cost of materials, and postage.

Bigger, heavier things cost more to mail than mere pieces of paper in envelopes.

And the items themselves definitely cost more.  Envelopes are cheap.  A tin treasure chest piggy bank?  It’s cheap for what it is, but it definitely costs a lot more than an envelope!

So Travis told me that they have a challenge, when a new client approaches them about doing business with them.

Oftentimes, the new client will want to go after new customers.

It’s like a drug to business owners.  (That’s my language, not Travis’s.)  New customers, new customers, new customers.

They always want new customers.

But there’s a problem.

Although you can make 3D mail profitable for acquiring new customers — and often the most exciting 3D mail campaigns are examples of that — it can be difficult.

Because if a mailing costs 5X as much to send out in a 3D mail package, you have to make 5X as many sales just for it to make sense!

That’s a high hurdle.

And often in new customer acquisition campaigns, you’re really just looking to break even or make a thin margin of profits.  Doing that at 5X or even 2X the expense can be tricky!  (I’ve worked with clients where we’re making format decisions based on pennies difference in the cost per piece mailed, and weighing the impact of that.  That’s NOTHING compared to the cost of 3D mail.)

All this to say — you don’t want to start off with a big loss!

And so Travis was telling me that he frequently tells new clients NO.  He refuses to let them test out his company for campaigns to get new customers.

We’ll consider that eventually, he tells them.  But not yet.

For the first campaign, he almost always goes for what he considers to be the low-hanging fruit.  The campaign that will lead to the biggest possible profits, almost no matter what.

He asks them about their best customers.

The ones who’ve spent the most with them.

Who’ve bought the most frequently.

The ones who’ve done business with them recently.

He’s looking for the whales among the client’s current customer base.

And he wants to know what offer he can put in front of those whales, that is both high-profit and has the highest chance of converting a bunch of them.

Then, he tells the client to go whole hog on those clients.  To send not one, but three consecutive pieces, as part of a sequential mailing.

Invest what you want, he ensures them.

And that’s where they test.

That’s where they focus.

This isn’t about 3D mail.

Even though 3D mail is a good medium for delivering this offer, that’s not the point.

The point is that going after your biggest spenders with a high-dollar offer is a stunningly easy way to get fast cash flow.

It’s a highly-effective method to get income immediately.  Often with the biggest margins.  And the lowest fuss.

You go to who you’ve served before.  Who you have a relationship with.  Who already knows, likes, and trusts you.

And give them what they want most.

It’s not that complicated.

But if it’s been neglected — in your business, or in your clients’ — it’s like a magic wand being waved that creates windfall cash flow.

And in some cases, even a small campaign like this, systematized and made part of your regular process, can double your business or better.

I’ve been buried for the past week-plus in creating my new training for BTMSinsiders.  It’s still on track for a Friday release.

It’s called The Most Valuable Customer Strategy.  And in it, I break down the customer’s journey throughout their relationship with your business in to 11 distinct steps.  The above falls under Step 9: Bring Your Customer Back Again For More.  It could also be used to implement Step 10: Turn Your Best Customers Into Members.

This is powerful stuff.  Because it shows specific opportunities hidden in just about every business, in just about every industry.  Opportunities to dramatically (and often rapidly) increase sales and profits in any business.

And here’s the kicker — it’s cumulative — it works like compound interest.  Improve each of the 11 steps by just 11%, and you don’t just add 121% to your business, you get 3X growth.  Improve each step by 25%, and it’s not 275% (that’s 11 x 25%) but a 1,100+% multiplication in the size of your business.

And if you do even better in any one area?  The increases cascade and multiply the results throughout the entire business.

You’ll hear more about this soon.  But I just wanted to give you this little taste of what’s to come.  If you want access to this as soon as it goes live, you can grab a BTMSinsiders All-Access Pass now.

Yours for bigger breakthroughs,

Roy Furr