Referrals: Writing a Letter that gets you More Referrals
By Jeffrey Dobkin
This Article: A fast-paced 9 minute read with a great FREE offer:
See the bottom of this article to get a FREE copy of the “Thank you for your referral” letter we use around here!
Here’s Exactly How:
To get more referral business simply write a “Thank-you for your referral!” letter.
First, you get a referral. I know – I’m as surprised as you are, but sometimes it happens!
Someone liked you… and somewhere down the line they passed-on some good words to a new customer or prospect… who calls you. Bingo!
Encourage customers and friends to refer you again and again
by sending them a “Thank You for your referral!” letter.
Jeffrey Dobkin at the game.
Level 1. First, calling and thanking the person who referred someone to you with a simple “Thank you for your referral!” call definitely elevates you from the silent majority — you know – the masses of people who never bothered to express their appreciation for receiving a referral. Your simple acknowledgement definitely gets you noticed!
Level 2. Thank people who refer friends and colleagues to you in a letter! Whoa! That certainly is a level up! Your letter that says “Thank you so much for your kind referral!” places you well above 99.9% of other people who have received a referral and never even said thanks, let alone wrote a nice letter.
Kindly note there is a huge difference between a phone call thanking someone for referral business and a letter to thank someone is not the same.
Calling is fine, and it’s appreciated. But when you hang up the phone, you cease to exist.
A phone call just doesn’t have the impact of a thank you letter.
Whatever you said on the phone fades into yesterday…
But a letter?
A real ink on paper, “oh-my-God you took the time to write it?” letter!
You placed it in an envelope, found a stamp and mailed it letter? Wow.
Yes, that kind of special thank you has time to sit on the recipient’s desk as a lasting remembrance of your sincere appreciation.
A phone call just doesn’t compare to the lasting visual goodwill generated by an appreciative Thank You letter.
If written well, “Thanks for your referral!” becomes the single most valuable letter you can write… because it brings in new business.
“Thank you for your kind referral. I appreciate the privilege to be of service
to your colleague. I don’t take referrals lightly – or for granted – and assure you
I will always provide good value…”
Continue through your letter till you conclude, “Thank you so much for your referral and your trust.”
See how powerful this “thank you” statement becomes?
~ A referral is the highest level of trust a client or friend can show. ~
A personal referral the leap of faith that you’ll perform exceptionally well for someone else, even when completely out of view.
The person who recommends you puts his or her own name and reputation on the line for you.
Doesn’t it deserve a thank you letter? We think Yes! Yes it does! But wait, there’s more…
Why is your “Thank you” letter so, so effective at getting you more business?
First, it makes the person receiving it feel comfortable they’ve recommended you.
They now know you’re going to do the best job you possibly can.
It serves as an immediate ready reference of your great work and spirit.
And offers the new prospect a level of trust you can’t buy anywhere.
The new person who received your recommendation hires you knowing you’re going to lean over backwards to look good and do an outstanding job to make the referring person look great.
You can’t make new customers feel this good, this confident about your abilities with an advertisement, a brochure or a phone call…
With a single personal letter of thanks – one single sheet of paper – it’s easy to convince someone who has referred you
that you really do appreciate the trust they’ve placed in you, your firm, your products and your services.
You can make them feel, well, like they should refer more people to you… all the time!
Because you absolutely appreciate it! And you’ll absolutely do the best job you can.
If written well, “Thanks for your referral!” becomes the single most valuable letter you can write…
And therein lies the beauty, the value, and the monetary worth in the most valuable letter you can write: the “Thank you for your referral!” letter. The recipient will remember it, and when the opportunity comes up again, they’ll continue to refer more people to you.
Part II · Writing Thank you Letters
The “Thank you for your referral letter!” is the best advertising ever! And it all costs under a dollar…. Amazing!
You’ve heard word-of-mouth advertising is the best (and the cheapest) form of advertising?
Not quite. A “Thank you for your referral” letter is better.
It’s a combination of both word of mouth advertising, plus it has built-in longevity.
Your letter can sit on a desk to be viewed, admired and re-read.
The longer it sits on a person’s desk, the better it works over time.
Word of mouth is fast… and forgetful. A thank you letter is a permanent reminder of your gratitude.
So now this “Thank you for your referral” letter has become the least costly AND the most effective piece of marketing for getting additional business, bar none. Least costly? AND most effective? Hummm…
Writing the Letter
Since the “Thanks for your kind referral” letter has now become the most effective piece of advertising you can create, it’s no longer in the “I’ll just dash off this letter in 10 minutes” category.
It becomes an art form: a personal ad in the form and style of a letter. You now have the opportunity to make it a great, memorable letter. And why not? Spend the extra hour and make it something nice. Or spend the extra two hours (that’s what it takes me!) and make it something exceptional!
Write your own great Thank You for Your Referral Letter, or get one FREE from us.
Write a well-written, personal and nicely designed letter, or use the one we wrote for our own client referrals. (See our FREE offer at the bottom of this page.) We feel it’s something special that will sit on a recipients desk for a while – and make the reader smile every time he or she looks at it.
Take your time, and write a great letter. No, I mean it: take your time and write a G-R-E-A-T letter.
Once you have written a great “Thank you for your referral” letter in your own personal writing style, feel free to modify it, tweak the personalization and use it again and again over time whenever you get a referral.
Might as well do it right the first time.
Spend the extra few hours fine tuning the writing AND the design (the often-forgotten other part of the letter).
That’s what I did.
My own letter is short and crisp. It builds trust, and is a sincere letter of thanks. All in a couple hundred words.
You can get a FREE copy of our own referral letter on request. No strings, and no charge. You don’t have a join a mailing list and we won’t spam you. We won’t sell your name to anyone or send you offers for Viagra, Cialis or Russian women, or turn your name in to the Prince of Nigeria who says he has several million dollars for you but needs your bank account and social security numbers to get it secretly out of his country. I promise. It’s just our own nice FREE offer. We know everyone on the web hocks you to sign up for this or that, and sends you spammy emails. We don’t. We had a mailing list but… turns out it’s a lot of work. The creative writing always landed on my desk as the senior writer. It was too much for me to consistently write to our own mailing list, and I abandon it. If you’d like to read more of my writing, this website is 250 pages. If you get through all that, lemme know and I’ll send you one of my books. No charge. There will be, however, a short test to see if you know what’s on page 220.
All requests for our “Thank you for your referral!” letter go directly to Jeffrey Dobkin’s email inbox, and he responds personally to each request. He’s funny like that. OK, he’s weird like that, geeky marketing guy that he is….
Sending a Hard-Working Gift
All kinds of Letters written by Jeffrey Dobkin
What does our own publishing firm do for people who refer direct marketing consulting or copywriting clients to us?
We send them a Cross Pen.
Nice gift!
And of course a wonderful letter with this gift that says thank you so much for your kind referral and your trust.
The gift is truly for their benefit. It’s a great pen, I’ve used a camo-colored cross pen for years, and it’s still my favorite writing instrument — always somewhere on my desk… yes around here somewhere. Hey, what th… whereisit? Oh wait… it’s camo—and hard to find.
To make the Cross pen extra special, we have the person who made the referral’s name engraved on it.
I figure the only person who wants a pen with my name on it is… me!
Even though the pen we send has THEIR OWN name engraved on it, I’m pretty sure they remember where they got it!
When was the last time you received a nice pen with your name engraved on it? Yea, see what I mean. If you received this as a gift, you’d remember I sent it. I;d make sure if it – because I’d send it with a great letter!
While the pen is for their benefit, the letter sent with the pen is where we get the benefit.
It’s a beautiful letter that they also remember for years. It looks simple, but yes it’s that powerful.
By the time we ship a new personalized Cross pen to them, and of course our own personal letter of thanks for the referral, it costs us about $35. Everyone I’ve ever spoken with has remembered this gift – and who sent it – for years! In business meetings years later people still come up to me and thank me for it. Trust me… they remember.
Is it worth it? You tell me: the person who received the kind referral about our firm trusts us immediately because he or she received the personal recommendation of our firm from a friend. You can’t really buy that level of trust, you have to earn it.
In our geeky marketing world, marketing doesn’t get any better than that: building trust with a sincere letter. Or a small gift and a sincere letter.
If we do any work for the new client, our copywriting and market-consulting fees range from… well, we get our $35 back pretty quickly. Many clients stay with us for years.
We don’t convert all the prospects referred to us into actual rent-paying clients. And that’s OK!
Some don’t need our level of marketing skills. Some aren’t ready for our brand of tight direct marketing sales letters – or direct selling sales material. Some aren’t ready to launch products or expand their business just yet; and some are just not ready to move on anything just yet. That’s fine. I’m good with all that.
We still send an personalized engraved pen to the referral source with a nice letter of thanks all the same. They did their part – they referred someone to us: a possible new client , and I appreciate it. Sincerely.
Funny, the more “thank you for your referral” letters we send, the more referrals we seem to get from our referral sources. Which we really do appreciate.
If you’d like to get more business, write an exceptional “Thank you for your referral!” letter, and keep it at-the-ready – to personalize and send to customers and friends (with or without a small gift) if and when someone gives you a referral. Hey, it could happen…
You can’t buy that kind of advertising – that goodwill or trust, or those kind referrals – at any price. Or can you?
Jeff Dobkin will now take your questions. Email Jeffrey Here: Jeff at Dobkin dot com. No, seriously… call or write him with questions.
Jeffrey Dobkin, still rides…
Dobkin is a direct response writer. Still passionate and effective in his craft. But it doesn’t stop there… he’s also a marketing consultant (marketing plans, pr, market strategy, plan analysis: audits and review, media review) who happens to be an amazing writer and designer of corporate literature, articles, brochures, ads, collateral, annual reports, technical material), specializing in direct-selling print and web (DR Ads, catalogs, TV scripts, web copy) and direct marketing material (letters, direct mail, mailing packages brochures, catalogs, web copy and did I mention post cards?). Whew – did I leave anything out?
Dobkin is also pretty darn good at analyzing marketing campaigns, catalogs, analyzing ads and reviewing direct mail packages. He has written over 250 articles and 5 books on direct marketing. He can be reached at 610-642-1000.
Poke around at JeffreyDobkin.com for additional direct marketing articles and poke fun at more of Jeff’s fun-filled, typo-prone and grammatically-challenged writing. Don’t forget to buy Jeffrey’s Books and audios – he needs the money! Click Here: Bookstore to see what’s available! Just kidding – you don’t have to buy his books and audios. Just send the money.
More articles: How to write highly responsive sales letters · Article Home Page
Creative Samples of Dobkin’s work · Sample Insurance Sales Letter · 63 Marketing Audit Questions · Invention
OK – Finally —
Get a FREE COPY of our “Thank you for your referral letter!”
If you’d like to have a copy of the “Thank you for your referral” letter we use around here, please email us. Jeff’s writing on this site is pretty loose, but the Thank You letter we mail is pretty formal to reflect the seriousness of our acceptance of the work we are to perform, and our sincere appreciation for the referral.
Since it was requested so frequently, we now additionally send a free copy of the letter we include with a Cross Pen to people who refer us.
No spam is involved and we don’t ever sell our mailing list. In fact, we don’t even mail to our own mailing list ourselves – turns out it’s a lot of work. Frankly, we feel you deserve our “Thank you for your referral!” letter just for reading down to here. Thanks!
Hope you enjoyed this post, and really… thanks for reading down to here. Email Jeffrey Here: Jeff at Dobkin dot com goes right to his desktop. Your comments – both good and bad are most welcome. Well, the good ones, anyhow…