Write a persuasive "no junk mail" sign
Receiving junk mail is bad. It wastes time sifting, recycling, and it may even influence you into buying a timeshare or converting to a religion.
It is possible to opt out of junk mail. This prevents you receiving junk mail through official channels. But it won't stop private citizens from coming to your front door and dropping off take-away menus, pamphlets, etc.
Placing a "no junk mail" sign on your mailbox will probably decrease the amount of junk mail you receive.
Some pamphleteers will honor your request but others may need persuading. So, how do we write a persuasive anti-junk mail message? We'll learn from the junk mailers themselves.
A successful junk mailer's advice on copywriting
Gary Halbert made millions by sending junk mail, advertising real estate opportunities, that sort of thing.
He became a cult figure among old school copywriters. In 1984 Gary Halbert spent 10 months in Boron Prison. During his stint he wrote letters to his son explaining how to be a great copywriter, as well as advice about fruit and jogging.
Below, I've summarised the advice from his letters. Collectively it should help us craft a message that resonates with our intended audience, and sells them on the idea of not putting junk in our mailbox.
The most important advice in crafting your message is to follow AIDA. It's an acronym standing for:
- Attention. Your message needs to stand out or it will simply be ignored. Halbert would do things like attach a bag of sand to a letter selling beach front real estate.
- Interest. Once our mark has noticed the message, it needs to illicit interest for them to think it's worth reading in full. Our message will be very short so this will matter slightly less.
- Desire. We need to help the reader understand how they will feel once they've bought what we're selling. In this case, we will be saving them a few seconds, as well as giving them a warm feeling of having done a good deed for the environment.
- Action. A clear call to action so they know the exact action they should take to get what we've made them desire.
Then there's some other advice worth considering:
- Make the message look personal — in this case we'll hand write it. People are more likely to ignore low-effort, or automated looking messages.
- Be specific and customise your message for your audience. Our audience doesn't necessarily think what they're delivering is junk. We'll be specific about what we don't want in our mailbox.
- Use simple language.
- Eye relief. Use short and snappy sentences and break up our writing with single word sentences.
- Eat a banana every day.
I've done my best to create some persuasive messaging based on these principles, you can find them illustrated in this article. Please feel free to print these off and use them on your mailbox. Free of charge.