Sovereign #12. The Lost Art of Sales Letters

Welcome to Issue #12 of The Sovereign Seller. A weekly email with practical tips on how to use inbound + outbound marketing to generate leads, and get the attention of, and appointments with … your most in-demand prospects.

Sunday, November 23rd, 2025

7:11 AM

Indianapolis, IN

The simple, repeatable system that get your letters opened, read — and acted on.

25 out of 100 bought.

Not responded … they purchased.

I could not believe it.

That was my first direct mail campaign overseeing corporate sponsorship for Ball State Athletics.

IF I did nothing but cold call and email the same list of prospects - I would’ve converted maybe 3% into clients. With much more of my labor and time spent.

Here’s exactly what I did. Starting in May of 2021, I sent “sales letters” to the 100 businesses spending the most on advertising in the Muncie area.

5 months (and 5 letters) later, as we began our football season - 25 new sponsors purchased one of the sponsorship packages offered in each letter. I got the most response after the third letter.

This generated $90K in new business - 10% of my goal that year.

But the real value was most of them stayed sponsors … and signed bigger and longer-term deals the next season. The actual lifetime value was well over six figures.

Here’s the best part: I outsourced this campaign.

I wrote the letters, and curated the list, but the mailing firm did the rest. It cost me about $400 per 100 letters sent, or about $2,000 total.

That is an absurd response rate. I wasn’t expecting it, and you shouldn’t either.

But the biggest reason it worked is because it stood out.

None of the top advertisers in my market were getting pitched in the mail.

Further - nobody was getting a compelling personalized pitch in the mail.

The secret to direct mail is making it personalized. Both in the delivery method (envelope), and in your pitch (sales letter).

What doesn’t work … and will be a gigantic-disappointing-waste of money is … impersonal, bulk, junk mail.

Here’s how to do it right:

1. Your List: Aim Small to Win Big

Forget big lists and databases. Your advantage is precision.

Because you are spending money on paper and postage - it’s wasteful to send mail to people who can’t buy.

Build manageable list of your best possible buyers.

You want the actual decision makers who spend money on exactly what you sell.

When I worked at Ball State, I scoured every media platform to see who was advertising in the market. These were my most ideal prospects.

One of my consulting clients targets enterprises who spend $25,000 or more per month on telephone services. That’s who we mail to.

Here’s my favorite free resource to build lists: Data Axle (formerly reference USA).

You can build a list based on dozens of criteria, including “expenditures” … like telecom spending and advertising.

Run that list through an AI service like Apollo to verify as much of the information as possible AND … to find the email addresses of your targets … so you can follow up!

Then, before you spend $3 (per letter) mailing to them, have a human call every one of those businesses and verify you have the right contact name, spelling, and mailing address.

Use that call as a fact-finding mission to verify data. It’s not about selling - BUT - some of those calls may turn into appointments. Don’t skip this step, or it will cost you!

2. Your Envelope: Attention Getting + Personal = Opened

Your envelope’s job is to get the letter delivered and opened.

Make it look personal - no logos, no machine print, no bulk postage indicia.

Hand-address it - preferably in blue ink. Good mailing firms have machines that can do this for you and it looks pretty good.

But if you can address the envelope personally, or hire people to do it for you (personally), nothing generates more curiosity than real handwriting.

Some have told to me this type of mail looks un-professional. I see the point, but your goal is not branding. Your goal is to keep your envelope from getting chucked into the trash. Curiosity gets letters opened.

Things turn professional when they read your sales letter, more on that soon.

Use a live first-class stamp. Pick a stamp with meaning. I love using commemorative stamps.

Most of the time a #10 white envelope is all you need. Lately I’ve been using colored envelopes. I send orange in the fall. Green at Christmas. Red for Valentines Day.

Sometimes I’ll use an over-sized envelope so I don’t have to fold my letter.

When you have verified whale-type-prospects, send your letter via Fed Ex. Costs about $14, and guaranteed to make an impression. Consider what your averages sale is worth, I bet much more than $14.

3. Your Message: Write Your Pitch on Paper

I’m going to be very frank, and do not want to discredit the hard-working people and athletes of Ball State Athletics, but very few fans (or alumni) give a hoot about our program. We haven’t been good-in-the-sports-that-move-the-needle (football + Men’s basketball) in over 25 years.

Muncie is also depressed economically, once a booming factory town now reliant on a hospital and the university.

So my pitch had to position corporate sponsorship in a new way:

That was my sales letter. Then I created three sponsorship packages: Gold, Silver and Bronze, and detailed all of the cool marketing and hospitality benefits available at each level.

Having "packages" is frowned upon in my industry. Everyone talks about customization. But having these packages allowed entry-level prospects to make decisions without having to meet with me, and most important - having offers is what gets response. Which is the whole point. This saved me time so I could focus on upselling renewals - a more profitable use of my time.

Here’s a quick template to follow, use Chat GTP to help you, but always refine and keep your own style and words.

1. Dear first name
2. Hello, I’m Geoff Jefferson and you’re receiving this letter because we researched the market and identified you as someone who could benefit from our product/service
3. Here’s my unique value proposition
   • Here’s how we can help you
   • Do/Get (benefit)
   • Better/Cheaper/Faster/Easier
   • Even if (worst-case scenario)
4. Here is an offer, to educate, to test, to learn, to buy now if applicable.
5. Thank you,
6. Your signature in blue ink
7. P.S. Share how you work with a peer company of theirs, or a company they would know …. or share a testimonial from an existing client. Any type of PROOF you can share.

Get these 3 things right and you have now added a powerful 1-to-many advertising tactic to your outbound effort.

Thank you for reading Sovereign #12

To your success,

Shane

P.S. I devote an entire chapter to direct mail in my book, you can download a free digital PDF here @ WhiteCollarProspecting.com​