Pick-up artists have a tactic called the “peacock” strategy – it’s where they wear something unique to stand out and win attention in a crowded environment.
It could be an interesting scarf, a funny hat or some other ridiculous item to paper over the cracks of their soulless life.
But it’s intention is to make them difficult to ignore and to start conversations with equally as soulless women.
Why am I telling you this?
Well, it’s because an almost identical strategy can be used for winning meetings or to catch the attention of potential new clients.
In fact, using “peacock” direct mail to get meetings with ideal clients has been the main strategy of our business, and something that we’ve helped many of our clients to also do.
In this article, I want to share how we used a “peacock” handwritten direct mail campaign to win the attention of one of the richest people in the world, and how we were able to pitch them on working with us.
Allow me to explain …
In early September, we decided to choose ten “dream clients” to reach with a unique idea for a campaign that we had – these were the kind of clients that we would both adore to work with and be worth a chunk of change (in its simplest form).
We decided upon our list of ten companies/brands and we researched the key decision-makers in each of the companies – from the CEO to the marketing managers, we wanted everybody that had influence within the business.
We sent each of them a heavily personalised handwritten card with a message that then urged them to visit a link to learn more information.
The link was personalised with their name, for example, www.scribblemail.co.uk/richard (not a live link, just an example).
When they followed the link, it then took them to a video that had personally been recorded for them.
The video explained how we can help them, what our business does and invited them to complete a form to set-up a phone call.
Each of these personalised pages on the website had in-depth tracking in place so that we could see exactly who watched each video, identically how much of the video they watched and be able to track what pages of the website they then went onto visit.
We applied first-class stamps and dropped the cards in the mail.
My expectations were somewhat low – we were going after some of the most heavily-guarded influential people in some of the world’s biggest brands.
So, what happened?
Well, upon the cards landing – we kept a close eye on our tracking.
We watched a handful of people come, watch the video then leave.
But then, all of a sudden – a name appeared that had us both giggling with glee – it was the name of the one contact that we mailed to the card who we thought wouldn’t possibly receive it, read it and engage with it.
An incredible woman who is the CEO of one of the world’s largest beauty brands and is in the top 500 richest people in the world.
She personally watched our short video presentation TWICE, she looked through four pages of our website and within a few hours, the companies marketing director completed a form to register their interest.
There was also another “dream client” that reached out who we’re currently in discussion about running a small trial for.
There was two big lessons we took from this.
Firstly, it’s a further reminder that handwritten direct mail as part of a well-thought-out campaign has the power to have an emotional impact on anybody, from the average consumer to one of the most powerful active CEO’s in the world.
Secondly, we better research some more dream clients and send this campaign again!
We’ll keep you updated with what happens next!