50 Top Tips  for

Fax Marketing Success

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1. Faxes Stand Out -- Your customers are swamped with printed direct-mail marketing solicitations and email, most of which is discarded before they’re opened. Faxes, however, are timelier and garner more attention from your customers.  

-- Almost nobody will throw out a fax without looking at it – unlike email which can be instantly deleted or printed mail which hits the waste basket without opening. 

2. Make It Easy to Order or Request Information -- A successful fax broadcast message should not only outline a compelling offer, it should also include room for response information -- commonly at the bottom, and with a headline to stand out -- so customers can place an order or request information merely by faxing back the same sheet. 

3. Focus on Your Customer’s Benefits -- A broadcast fax is another form of a direct marketing sales letter, so the basic rules of marketing apply: focus on the benefits your product or service provides to your customers, and help them see and understand what’s in it for them to do business with you. 

4. Grab Attention Quickly -- Like any successful marketing literature, your broadcast fax needs a compelling headline to grab your customer’s attention quickly and inspire them to read the rest of your offer. Your campaign is competing for attention with other faxes, the phone and other distractions, so you have to grab it quickly.

5. Broadcast Fax Gives You Space -- Faxes are generally printed on standard office paper which gives you a wider palette to work with than you get with email messages. A broadcast fax is roughly the size of a full-page magazine ad, but you can deliver it to a targeted audience for a fraction of the cost. 

6. Boost Efficiency, Slash Costs -- A fax broadcast helps companies avoid the printing and mailing costs associated with direct mail, and is an effective way to deliver timely offers to eager customers. Another efficiency boost is that once a broadcast message is created, it’s easy to distribute it to customers and prospects. 

7. Avoid Fancy Fonts -- To make sure your message is easy to read, consider the fonts you’re using in your broadcast fax. The letters have to be large and clear enough to render clearly on a fax printout. Arial is a good choice, and Times New Roman can be, if it’s at least 12 points. 

8. Don’t Use a Cover Letter -- Because you need to make your offer (which is the point of your message) quickly, including a cover letter provides your customer with a distraction that increases the odds that your letter won’t be read. Consider your message to be a stand-alone flyer, and send it by itself. 

9. Consider Your Frequency -- Depending on your industry, products or services, your customers may appreciate consistent reminders of your latest offer, and a weekly or monthly fax broadcast may be appropriate. A daily fax may be too frequent and lead to opt-outs or being ignored, so consider your timing carefully. 

10. Test Your Messages -- Before you broadcast an offer, fax it to yourself to make sure your message is easy to read and your offer seems compelling. A faxed document isn’t going to look the same as it does on your screen or printed from your computer, so fax yourself to see what your customers will receive. 

11. Personalization Boosts Responses -- Depending on the broadcast fax software you or your provider is using, you may be able to import customer names into the fax message itself. If so, that’s likely to improve the sense of connection the customer feels when the fax arrives, and could lead to better results for the campaign. 

12. Don’t Save the Best for Last -- Make your point or offer quickly, and use the rest of the broadcast fax to highlight benefits and explain your offer in more detail. Saving information to the end of the letter to make a big impact is risky, because a lot of customers might not read enough of your copy to see it. 

13. Only Broadcast One Page -- Consider a broadcast fax to be a hybrid combining elements of direct-mail sales letters and a flier. While the temptation is there to cram lots of information about your offer and company into each message, it’s more effective to be brief and make your point clearly, on a single page. 

14. Double-Check Your Message -- You don’t want the value of your offer to be overshadowed by spelling or grammar mistakes that can make your broadcast fax campaign look sloppy or amateurish. Careful proofreading can be an important step in making sure your campaign provides the professional image you’re seeking. 

15. Include Incentives -- Coupons, discounts or other attractive offers can make repeat customers more receptive to your broadcast fax messages. If, for example, your business serves a local market, inviting customers to redeem faxed coupons can bring in business and help you measure the effectiveness of your fax campaign. Travel incentives are also popular.  

16. Event Reminders -- An event such as a holiday, community event or a sale at your business can be a good reason to reach out to customers with a fax broadcast message. A lot of companies, for example, run sales events at specific holidays because that’s when customers have come to expect them. 

17. Contests Yield Contacts - Contests or sweepstakes can help inspire your customers to provide updated contact information and to opt in to future offers. You want to provide customers with a special offer or other incentive to show your appreciation for their business and to make them look forward to receiving your campaigns. 

18. Send Timely Offers -- If your business has inventory whose value is in danger of expiring, a timely fax broadcast can generate last-minute sales you might otherwise miss. If you’re running a hotel and you have vacant rooms just before a holiday weekend, contacting travel agents or past visitors with a special offer might inspire new bookings. 

19. Be Careful With Images -- Photos or complicated images that might look impressive on your web site or your email marketing campaigns might not appear clearly to your customers because fax machines typically provide a much lower resolution than onscreen or printed documents. Intricate images can also extend transmission times. 

20. Consider Your Resolution -- Sending your faxes with ‘fine’ resolution might look better than ‘standard’ resolution, but each message will take twice as long to transmit. Try to design your offers to look their best in standard resolution, and save yourself the time required to send fine-resolution offers. 

21. Avoid Graphic Blocks -- Using a lot of black lines to separate sections of your offer message is going to increase your transmission times. A border around a couple of highlights or a dashed line above your order information block might be appropriate, but consider whether any lines are helping your message or delaying its delivery. 

22. Printer Drivers Are Important -- When preparing an electronic document for fax broadcasting, be sure to use a fax-specific printer driver because drivers for documents printed on paper are designed to use the best resolution possible. Printer drivers, in contrast, know how to format a document to allow efficient transmission. 

23. Check Your Paper -- If you’re sending a small broadcast manually, make sure the copy you’re faxing is clean and not wrinkled. Stray lines or dark blemishes on your printed sheet, or wrinkles caused by multiple trips through your fax machines, will show up on your customer’s copy and detract from your offer. For anything other than a small broadcast I recommend a bureau such as FaxLeadsToday.com who can do the job much more quickly and more cheaply than you ever could. 

24. Align Your Benefits With Your Target Audience -- If your offer applies best to customers in a specific industry or at a certain corporate level, try to make sure that’s who you’re reaching. A senior executive may not care about discounts on office supplies, but a purchasing agent is likely to be very interested. 

25. Test Your Offers -- Before you broadcast thousands of messages with the same offer, it’s a good idea to conduct tests with smaller segments of your lists. If one headline or format is clearly more effective with one small portion of the list, that success will probably carry over to the rest. 

26. Consistency is Rewarded -- Like any sales process, sometimes turning broadcast faxes into orders requires asking more than once. Your offer may be compelling, but your customer might not need it on the morning your broadcast faxes arrive. But they might the second time you ask. Successful broadcasters are regular broadcasters. 

27. Focus on Your P.S. - Adding a postscript (P.S.) reminder that summarizes the highlights of your offer is one of the keys to an effective broadcast fax. Customers sometimes need a final prod before they place an order, and a reminder such as “P.S. - Remember, save 20 percent if you order today” can motivate them to act. 

28. Highlight Your Call to Action -- Your broadcast fax message should spell out, clearly and concisely, what you want the customer to do. Place an order? Call for more information? Sending information about your company or offer without highlighting your call to action is not an effective approach to broadcast fax marketing. 

29. Headlines Grab Readers -- What do newspapers have in common with broadcast fax messages? Both rely on headlines to grab a reader’s interest and summarize the contents of the letter (or article) so the reader knows what to expect. For marketers, the headline highlights the offer and starts to build the customer’s interest. 

30. Meet Your Opt-Out Obligations -- In the US, laws governing broadcast fax messages call for a number of opt-out mechanisms, such as listing an opt-out number or email address that is always available (many companies use automated systems).

31. Avoid Color in Your Fax Broadcasts -- Color text or images generally improve the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, but broadcast faxes are an exception to this rule. Because the fax is transmitted in black and white, your outbound fax will try to convert any color image to grayscale, and the results probably won’t be attractive. 

32. White Background, Black Text -- Sending a message or even a paragraph as white text on a black background is a bad idea for several reasons. First, the white letters probably won’t appear clearly as the fax is delivered. In addition, your customers might not appreciate your message using extra ink or toner. 

33. Testimonials Can Clinch Sales -- Customers who are unsure about your company, product or service might be persuaded to make a purchase if your offer includes an endorsement or two from satisfied customers. A short description -- even a sentence or two -- might be enough to convince the undecided. 

34. Divide Your Marketing Lists -- The odds are pretty good that a small segment of your customer list provides your business with a comparatively larger share of your revenue. Make sure you divide your broadcast fax campaigns so your best customers get the best offers, and contact them more frequently than less loyal companies. 

35. Repeat Offers Equal Repeat Sales -- If a broadcast fax campaign is effective, consider repeating the offer to the same list about a month later. You may not have the same success the second time, but because most of the hard work was completed for the first offer, a follow-up offer can be worth pursuing. 

36. Appeal to Emotion -- Customers think they make rational decisions when they purchase, but most people also base at least part of their purchase decisions on emotions. Reminding your customers about their problems, and then explaining how your product or service can help them, can boost the results of your broadcast efforts. 

37. Target the Press -- Broadcast fax can also be an effective way to keep the local press or industry publications updated on your company’s latest news. Most reporters and editors are getting deluged with email, so distributing a news release by broadcast fax may help it stand out and get noticed. 

38. Consider Delivery Times -- The time your broadcast fax message is delivered may have an effect on its ultimate success. Most campaigns are timed to arrive in the early morning, before customers are overwhelmed with work or other offers, but you should run some small tests to see if changing the delivery time improves your results. 

39. Welcome Back Old Customers -- A certain percentage of the customers on your lists can be classified as inactive. They may not have purchased in six months or a year, but they haven’t opted out of future offers either. Perhaps an enticing “welcome back” offer will remind these customers they once found you valuable and lead to new orders. 

40. Unify Your Efforts -- Most companies use a variety of methods to communicate with customers, but don’t always coordinate them effectively. A broadcast fax can be a good complement to an email campaign or provide an update to direct mail letters. The trick is to coordinate these efforts so you’re not competing with yourself for customers’ attention. 

41. Fax Broadcasts Generate Savings -- Compared with the costs associated with direct mail campaigns -- postage, design services, printing, envelopes and postage -- fax broadcast campaigns can deliver a more timely message to your customers while offering you savings well in excess of 90 percent. Often you can send up to 100 faxes for less than the cost of a basic direct mail letter. 

42. ‘FREE’ Is the Magic Word -- “FREE” is still the most effective word you can include in your offer, especially when you can couple it with other customer benefits associated with your product or service. Free shipping might be the most obvious example, but there are lots of other bonuses you can highlight in your broadcast fax campaigns. The word ‘Free’ in emails can alert spam filters. With faxes it doesn’t matter. 

43. Guarantees Ease Decisions -- Uncertainty can play a role in undermining other elements of your fax broadcast offer, but you can reduce this uncertainty considerably by offering a money-back guarantee to customers. Telling customers they have the option of seeking a refund drastically improves sales by reducing perceived risk. 

44. What’s Appropriate for Fax Broadcasting? -- While special offers are probably the most common reason for a broadcast fax, customers may also appreciate receiving price lists or rate sheets, trade show or event reminders, newsletters, press releases, inventory or account data, or other information that makes their job easier or saves them money. 

45. Faxes Can Open Doors -- An attractive broadcast fax with a compelling offer can be a standalone message, or may be the first step in a sales process that continues when customers call to learn more, or when a sales rep contacts the customer. Either way, the broadcast fax can be a great first step. 

46. How Are We Doing? -- Following up a customer order with a faxed message asking how they like the product of service is a helpful way to remind customers you’re out there. Most customers won’t take the time to respond, but asking is a good way to help maintain the relationship. 

47. Use a Conversational Tone – If using a letter or text format make it sound like a letter coming from a person, not like a boring corporate report. Work to avoid corporate or industry buzzwords or jargon that confuses readers and gets in the way of the campaign’s message or offer. 

48. Cascading Offers Cascade Sales -- Broadcast fax campaigns highlighting small offers can be a good way to build credibility that lets you sell more-expensive products or services over time. A reader may buy an inexpensive report or two, which in turn can lead to their investing more in attending a conference or online seminar. 

49. Monitor Your Success Goals -- Broadcast fax campaigns are so cost-effective that it’s not going to take a huge increase in sales to generate an attractive return on your investment. But small, targeted tests at the start of a campaign will give you a good indication about whether elements of your planned campaign should be adjusted.

50. Can You Back Up Your Promises? -- If a fax broadcast campaign succeeds beyond your goals, will you be ready? Be sure to follow up on each lead as soon as you can.

To set up your fax broadcasting account, call a representative today at (877) 462-6806 or for more information email us at adverfax@aol.com.