I have been wondering why companies spend millions annually sending junk mail when most people throw it straight into the shredder without reading it.

Why not provide an incentive which gets them to read all the 'Key' paragraphs in your advertising copy by turning the whole letter into a puzzle which has a unique code word embedded in it.

The reader could then enter this code word on the companies web site to receive a reward, could be money off coupons for products or services at the supermarket, could be airmiles, could be a small amount of cash, could be they get entered into a draw for a large prize.The company could pay for the rewards by allowing others to advertise on their site or charge other companies to offer their promotions as some of the rewards.

The way I see this working is that at the end of the letter you would add a unique sequence of numbers.It would be unique to stop people emailing the answers to each other to get around reading the paragraphs that you want them to look at.

For example the numbers could look like this

1.1.4.1 (1st paragraph, 1st line, 4th word, 1st letter)

1.5.7.3 (1st paragraph, 5th line, 7th word, third letter)

2.6.9.6 (2nd paragraph, 6th line, 9th word, 6th letter)

3.2.11.1 (3rd paragraph, 2nd line, 11th word, 1st letter)

3.2.14.2 (3rd paragraph, 2nd line, 14th word, 2nd letter)

etc etc

you correspond the word and letter position numbers to the 'Key' paragraphs that you want the customer to read.You cannot help but read the paragraph while you are searching for the code letters and there are a lot of people out there who love to do prize puzzles.

When they have completed the search for the code letters they will have read most of your advertising copy and will have a sequence of letters that they can enter on the web site to claim their prize.You will then also get some feedback on how many people have actually read your copy.

You could start a competitions club for this and get some publicity for it on TV and the web with some big prizes initially to catch peoples attention.

What do you think of this idea or comment?
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