The assistant coach writing me the e-mail I opened late last week was excited.  Really excited.

Why?  After she and the rest of her D1 women's basketball staff had gone through one of our SFC On-Campus Workshops about a month ago, she was applying one of the principles that had talked about in our two-day session at her college.  The results are what she was excited about: She received her best response ever to her initial mailing that they did to their group of prospects.  The secret to her success?  Well, I can't reveal everything that we talked about with her staff, but it involved having her prospect reply to her with a physical action.  And it worked great.

Another one of our SFC Premium Members tried the same kind of principle late last Spring, this time with e-mails.  He had never had that great of a response with his e-mail campaigns to his prospects.  However, asking them to do something specific as a reply yielded a great response.  His best ever, in fact, for an e-mail campaign.

What is the secret to their success?  They asked their prospects to do something physical.  They required their recruit to react to their mailing or e-mail with a physical action. 

To many mailings that I see coaches putting together are passive, rather dull, and not requiring any kind of reaction of the receipient.  And some coaches wonder why they don't get good responses to their mailings?  It's because you're not giving your prospect anything to react to.  No required physical reaction, no reply most of the time.  It's just that simple.

Professional sales organizations known for years that when it comes to their marketing campaigns, it's a good idea to encourage your prospects to take some sort of physical action.

For instance, a mail-order marketer of pipes (the kind you burn tobacco in) told his buyers: "If you are not 100 percent satisfied with the pipe, snap the stem off and mail it back to me in an envelope for a full refund."

One reason this worked is that it was dramatic and unexpected: The marketer actually told the customer to destroy his product if dissatisfied. But it also made the guarantee more tangible by linking it to a physical action: The copy creates a mental image of breaking the pipe in two with your bare hands.

One of my all time favorite "take action" marketing campaigns was a magazine ad for a fireproofing compound. The headline of the ad boldly stated: "TRY BURNING THIS COUPON." The copy tells the reader: "Hold a match to this ad. It will start to burn. Now take the match away. It will stop burning, because it is treated with our special fireproofing chemical." (The ad was an insert sheet coated with the chemical, not a regular page of the magazine.)

Coach, how can you add physical action to your mailings and e-mails?  What are some things that you could ask your prospects to do (besides filling out those tedious player questionnaire forms that you send along with your letters) that requires a physical response?  Look at your current letters.  I'll bet there is a lot you could change that would require your prospects to get more involved in a response to the letter they just received from you.

If you're a SFC Premium Member, you'll be getting a series of e-mails this week that will give you some proven ideas on how to bump-up the response rates in the letters and e-mails that you're sending out as you start the new recruiting year.  If you're not a Premium Member, sign-up so that you can receive these ideas we're going to be revealing throughout the week.