Would you send out the following letter via US Mail? I would bet you would never. That's what sets us apart. I know being different takes giant leaps in your faith in the power of advertising and what works. He who stands out gets noticed. Why not be out of the Box...
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Greetings:
You may already know that we are frugal. We readily admit to that. This letter is sent via a recycled envelope and stamp that were thrown out. We cut off the other persons return address and reused the envelope. This letter is recycled paper that someone threw out. The printer and computer this letter was printed on came from a clean out job my son did. Even the tape used to reseal this letter was salvaged. We keep our costs down. This is why you can get great deals at our farm and nursery.
Now we are having our year end clearance. With this letter you will be able to buy all potted stock at 40% off. All Balled and Burlapped stock will be 20% off. We will even give away some off our surplus inventory. We know we can't sell it all. So come this week and take advantage of us. Bring this letter with you so we can reuse it.
You don't need money! If you have barter bring or drag it in. If it is trash, we will just put it in our dumpster. You will be rewarded for your efforts. On Saturday we will be serving roadkill soup. My father will be cooking it and I promise that we will all be in top form for the day. Bill Hirst 215 651 8329
www.seedlingsrus.com
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This was one of our most popular and productive letters we we sent out by US Mail. For every 10 customers that we sent this letter to, we had about 2 come to the nursery and spend a minimum of $200 each. Being that we really did recycle this letter and hand addressed each letter, it did take time but it made quite an impression with our customers.
This is just one of our many ways we keep in contact with our customers. Prospects are targeted with emails which requires no postage and are totally free.
The following is another of our marketing methods: Marketing our trees is better understood when you are thinking about marketing in terms of adding customers to your customer base and using free trees as a means of finding new potential customers. That's why we always have promotions that include free trees. You can see an example of on of our free tree offers by going to our web site http://www.seedlingsrus.com We like to add potential customers by using our E-Newsletter to help make potential customers aware of our offerings. We have plenty of dormant stock and stock that is surplus to our needs. This is offered within the E-Newsletter. Customers are made aware that the E-Newsletter will be used to notify of freebies. Customers to our nursery are also made aware that there are promotions and shown the promotions. All free items are offer subject to being on our E-Newsletter list. This readily gets them to sign-up for the news letter. Customers are offered discounts on stock when they bring their friends along while shopping. Thus we encourage group shopping. Free surplus is always sent along with group shoppers. Sort of like a volume discount incentive. We also use the tack of asking the customer to help us by finding other homes for our surplus. We might ask if their church needs any free surplus. This means they will ask others if they need our stock. The customer becomes an unpaid salesman but compensated by free tree offerings.
We always try to stand out from other nurseries. We try to be different. We find that people will finally come to our location for more than just trees. They want to find out if we really are real!!
What Can You Do About Drop-Ins? Promote even The Impossible!!!!See This Promotion>>>>
Bring your own bottle of water and pack your lunch.
Each year tens of thousands of meteorites hit the earth. One asteroid that showed movement not around the sun but towards Earth about three years ago has now made it to the top of the astronomers list of those to watch. This particular "NEO," or Near Earth Object, has odds of impact as it crosses our path estimated to be about 1-in-1,410 on May 4, 2102. That's a .071% chance. The asteroid, known as 2004 VD17, is the only one rated as high as a 2 on the "Torino Scale," a zero-to-10 ranking of space-rock risk. Zero is for zero risk, no apparent risk, of impact with the Earth. That makes sense. A 10 would mean impact is expected and we're all in trouble. The deepest trouble ever. Is there absolutely nothing we, as individuals, can do? Like shooting pool, it's all angles. Angles measured in astronomy are fractions of fractions of a degree, so understandably the most teeny-tiny difference can translate into an oncoming space object missing us by millions of miles. Usually, the calculated odds of impact go down as the space object gets closer - the angles to measure get larger and easier to see, and the speed gets easier to measure too. Usually.
If asteroid 2004 VD17 hits the Earth, it will be terminal for all life as we know it. Maybe, just maybe, some forms of bacteria will survive. Yippee. So what can you do about drop-ins from space? Look for the smaller ones and their fragments which have landed. You see? You can do something about them... Come collect them at our ranches. Space rock is worth really big dollars to the finders. And saying really big dollars is understating the situation like you wouldn't believe, so read on and see how big... Fillet Mignon steaks from a gourmet butcher at $34.99 per pound. Piffle. Imagine something way, way, way more valuable. In fact, meteorites and their fragments are worth way more than gold. Way more than even platinum. Way more than even rhodium at about $40,000 or so per pound (Regular Avoirdupois pounds like meat) based on, or based off, the $3,060 per Troy ounce price as of now, early March, 2006. You might say meteorites are the truest black gold. Crude oil, the original "black gold," is at record prices of $63 per barrel. Yet, with 42 gallons in the standardized olden days barrel, the arithmetic comes out to merely a measly 18 cents a pound. "Liquid coal," that's all oil is. Can we let the title "black gold" be for something worth only pennies-a-pound? Can we, when there's space rock on the ground worth more than diamonds? It's a fact. Meteorites are worth more than most "hot rocks." Well, most hot rocks anyway. Small diamonds, uncut diamonds, and cloudy low-quality diamonds, are worth as little as $200 per carat. We need just a little more arithmetic here, with 5 carats in a gram and 454 grams in a pound, to find these diamonds are worth $454,000 a pound therefore. About a half a million dollars for one li'l ol' pound of not-so-good diamonds! Meteorites and meteorite fragments, even little specks of these "space droppings," sell for $300 per gram and more. A 1-pound space rock can be worth a million dollars. $1,000,000. Oy. Haven't you ever gone on a vacation you wanted to be "unique" and "special?" Well, this one is honestly "out of this world" if you find a meteorite. You also will be able to say that you entered the Twilight Zone. When you come to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, a town which chose an out of this world name to begin with, you can visit the new tourist space station. It's a project that will launch tourists "out of this world" into space. And a few miles east is where you'll find Roswell, famous for alien drop-ins since 1947. All you have to do is some healthy walking to find your space rocks. Walk to profit physically for certain and financially possibly too. Hunts don't have to be bone-chilling adventures to the Antarctic where many searches are done for meteorites that have just arrived. The ground there may be flat and open with expanses of white that highlight dark space rocks before they're covered over, but the temperature is 50 below zero with 50 mile per hour winds. Hunting meteorites doesn't have to be like hunting polar bears. Meteors enter the earth's atmosphere everywhere. They impact everywhere. The trick in finding them is simply to look where their burned up remains have a good chance of being found. Duh. Our ranches are as wide open and flat as the Antarctic. Our loose beige to light brown surface can contrast the dark black meteorite rocks plenty well enough, only we're readily accessible by car with civilization, even tourist attractions, just miles away in a much more comfortable climate. Again, the trick to finding meteorites is to look where they have been concentrated by the Earth's natural forces and where they have not been destroyed by weathering. This means deserts are a grand place to search for meteorites. Deserts can change over the centuries, but deserts don't often have major weathering like rainy areas do. How could you look in a jungle or forest anyway? So, if you want to find meteorites come to our Truth or Consequences ranches. Adjacent to the Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico, there are trillions and trillions of terrestrial rocks (original Earth rocks) for each meteorite that could be there. Metal detectors are used by many professional meteorite hunters around the world because they can easily distinguish between rocks that have iron and those that don't, ferrous and non-ferrous rocks. Most all meteorites are ferrous, but this way, only the ferrous meteorites will be found by metal detectors. Modern metal detectors can compensate for dominant background rocks, enhancing their ability to find meteorites. Metal detectors create a constant hum which increases in volume and pitch as iron-rich objects are passed closely. You may find "exciting rocks" which produced a strong signal that is a false positive in a metal detector. But bringing home a one-of-a-kind paperweight or bookend with a wonderful story to go with it isn't such a bad memento from any vacation, don't you agree? Even if you don't bring home a meteorite, you'll bring home some other interesting rocks and that we know we can guarantee. "Detecting" requires concentration, using all your senses, just like fishing and golf. You will see lots and lots of "exciting rocks." As you keep "an eye out" for potential meteorites, you'll see interesting rocks which you find pretty, or you might find an Indian relic, or some other historical item, maybe even a fossil. It seems that the best way to find meteorites from our ranches is to use a combination of metal detecting and good "old-fashioned shoe-leather footsearch eyeballing." Yup. Your outdoors, possibly "out of this world," vacation will be in weather that is not hard to predict in the Truth or Consequences area. They say on Mount Washington, in New Hampshire, "If you don't like the weather, just wait a minute..." In south central New Mexico, it's the opposite, the weather is quite comfortable except in the hot months from May to October. Don't bother to bring a rain coat, it only rains 10 inches per year. The winters are mild indeed. The temperature may get down to 10 degrees, but not for many days of the year. A clear sky with a gentle breeze is the norm. Meteorites aren't only from asteroids, there have been ejections of bits of the moon and even 146 pounds of total Mars "drop-ins" have landed on the Earth. A final fun factoid - for all of last year, the entire production of 2005 from the De Beers monopoly was only 13,800 pounds of diamonds. You can see Bill's website for unusual travelers at http://www.huntingrelics.com or http://www.digatree.com
About the Author
Bill Hirst has been growing plants on his 200 acre farm in Bucks County for 30 years. His web sites are http://www.seedlingsrus.com and http://www.digatree.com Sign up for Bill's newsletter at http://www.seedlingsrus.com/123456signup.html
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